Having grown up overlooking the Öresund strait between Denmark and Sweden and now living near Brighton Beach since many years, I wanted to explore the beach as a canvas and stage for human imagination. Through highlighting local history, current environmental concerns, and our relationships with the coast, the aim of Glittering Prospects (a title in homage to Joan Allen's book) was to entertain while also to indirectly invite participants to reflect on these topics.

My background in film sound design would come in handy, but I had never written a script nor exhibited an immersive experience before. The creative core of the project lay in blending fiction with documentary-style storytelling, inspired by 'The Night Watchman' by Stephen Schwartz (1971). His ‘moments interview’ technique prompts interviewees to “talk in a sequence of pictures” to capture sensorially detailed statements that feels grounded in reality.
The story's theoretical influences also include: Le Guin's 'Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction' that sees a story as a container for objects and experiences, not just a linear plot; Haraway's concept of 'Natureculture'that shows how nature and culture is co-produced, not separate; Derrida's concept of 'Hauntology' which explains how past presences linger, shaping present perception; Anna Tsing's 'Art of Noticing' that urges us to pay attention to the small, often overlooked connections, and Michel Chion's 'The Gap’ in audiovisual media activates the audience’s imagination when visual information is deliberately withheld.

The story investigates a model of reality as a web of interconnected systemic actors as slow-moving life-forces that make up the world. The philosophical influences and governmental structures serve as invisible infrastructure supporting the story rather than direct audience encounters, focusing on what the audience will actually experience; the reports, a detectorist mystery, and the gradual revelation of the transformed future Brighton. Character reference material includes Digger Dawn on YouTube and Marge Gunderson in the film Fargo; happy-go-lucky, unfazed by the darkness surrounding them, through whose eyes and ears we are introduced to the world. Old Sussex dialect words are sprinkled throughout the script to add a surreal and familiar flavour to the story.

Drawing from interviews with local historians, wildlife specialists, folklorists, and metal‑detectorists, I wanted to weave together place‑based knowledge into a narrative that sits at the crossroads of environmental awareness, personal memories, and site‑specific artistic practice. Rather than direct messaging, it subtly encourages listeners to contemplate humanity’s imprint on the coast, the layered histories buried beneath the sand, and the sea’s enduring mysteries.

The environment and detector function as characters through narrative sound design, while the audio reports themselves are framed as future recovered and declassified material, introduced by a freedom of information request letter (pinned in the experience to the beach hut doors). By pairing the high‑quality binaural sound experience with tangible artefacts and the sea view, I aim to strike a balance between mystery and realism in a direct and intimate way. The ocean itself becomes a character as well as an effective visual and psychological backdrop for the audience’s imagination.