Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing

Designing Sound for Health and Wellbeing investigates ways in which sound and music compositions can ease the stress and anxiety of patients located in a hospital Emergency Department. The aim of this collaborative research project, comprising a team of composers, art producers and historians, writers, emergency medicine practitioners and health psychology researchers, was to test the function of environmental and electroacoustic music compositions especially produced for patients in the Emergency Department of St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne. The research and findings of this project provide new knowledge of the impact and use of sound and music in Emergency Medicine and the physical effect of sound and musical compositions on human health in general.