Missing Frequencies | Iceland Academy of the Arts

Date

21 November 2026

Location

Hafnar.haus Tryggvata 17

Department

Department of Music

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Sylwia Bylica, a graduating student at NAIP's Department of Music at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, performs her graduation piece, Missing Frequencies, at Hafnar.haus on Saturday, November 21. The work will be performed twice, at 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM.

About the work

Missing Frequencies is a sound performance in which Sylwia invites the audience to a shared yet intimate listening experience. The work is based on field recordings she collected in Iceland and Poland in 2025–2026 and is rooted in personal loss. The listening is directed both outward and inward and is connected to emotions, places, and memories.

Sylwia creates the work in collaboration with other musicians, where together they explore how soundscapes and new listening situations can change our perception and attention.

What do we listen to when we step into another dimension of listening?

Admission is free and everyone is welcome.

Performers

Dmitri Drobko, cello
Eydís Kvaran, violin
Sylwia Bylica, voice, objects, and recordings

Sylwia Bylica, NAIP MMus

After two decades of fascination with Iceland's music and nature, Sylwia Bylica relocated from Poland to pursue the NAIP program at the Iceland University of the Arts, exploring artistic creation within the country from the inside out. This also meant taking on the challenge of a career change—pivoting from Dutch studies, with a joint MA from the University of Wrocław and Antwerp University, to audiovisual arts.

Bylica was previously a member of the Warsaw-based alternative family trio Hepcolgum, whose music was all about emotion, low-tuned guitars, and a girlish yet mature voice resonating with the slow pulse of the drums. Taking on the role of singer-songwriter and occasional bass player, she recorded two EPs with the band in 2018 and 2023.

During her NAIP studies, Bylica has focused on field recordings, vocal exploration, video creation, creative writing, as well as theorization around sound studies and embodied practices. In addition, she is currently studying Icelandic at the University of Iceland to familiarize herself with Icelandic culture from a language perspective.

“Missing Frequencies” is a hybrid sound performance by Sylwia Bylica that serves as an invitation to a collective, yet intimate listening session that connects to emotions, places, and memories. Through the event, Bylica transforms her solitary experience into a gathering that oscillates between the external and internal – listening both outward and inward.

Drawing on field recordings collected in Iceland and Poland (2025-2026), Bylica embarks on a sonic journey rooted in personal loss, through different modes of listening, leaving an open-ended resolution. The piece is grounded in her practice of embodied field recordings. This process involves attuning to the environment through listening and movement as well as experiencing and shaping sound through more-than-human tools, such as headphones and field recorders.

The metaphor of “Missing Frequencies” frames an inquiry into transformation as a living force and extends that inquiry into the development of an artistic method. The constant balancing of absence and presence and the blending of soundscapes generates an alternative reality, in which the sound becomes a driving force for experimenting with new perspectives.

Working in collaboration with musicians, Bylica explores embodied listening and performance practice, examining how soundscapes and altered scenarios for listening open up a shift in perception and focus. In placing her personal sonic material before the audience, she observes how it detaches from its origin and takes on a life of its own, hoping to let that sonic experience seep into their everyday life.

What do we listen to,

When we enter a different dimension of listening?