Sounds of Sanctuary:
An immersive installation of meditative soundscapes
for AAPI birthworkers and birthing people, June 2025

Sounds of Sanctuary was a multi-part project that explored the intersections of sound, memory and community care for AAPI birth workers and birthing people by artist and doula Florence Cecile Camacho Almeda in the spring of 2025. Florence led one-on-one meditation sessions for AAPI birth workers & birthing people in NYC, guiding participants in envisioning their safe, calm place.  Inspired by these sessions, she produced custom meditative tracks to bring participants’ safe, calm places to life. Each participant received an aromatherapy kit as a grounding tool to pair with their meditative track.

The project culminated in an immersive audio installation at the Queens Botanical Garden, a listening space for the public to connect & unwind. Composed of field recordings and sample-based instruments, these tracks rendered portals into memory and feeling, offering sound as means for deeper connection with themselves and others. Gentle field recordings of lakes, rivers, & ponds taken by Florence run in the overhead speakers as a nod to water as a symbol for life and birth, as well as participants' shared inclination for water soundscapes. The individual meditative tracks were experienced through headphones & CD players, accompanied by essential oils, in the seated cushion areas.  

Visitors were encouraged to take their time in the space to rest and recharge, allowing the sounds to guide their breath.



Searching for Sonic Empathy
An Electro-Experimental Sound Meditation, May 2022

What does listening mean to you? When was the last time you felt listened to? How might a heightened awareness of sound, in multiple forms, be used to help cultivate empathy? According to musicologist Marc Leman, an embodied sonic experience has the power to connect one person to another: ‘participation, identification, and understanding, as if the other's state of experience is one's own.’ In this participatory, electro-experimental sound meditation I seek to sound out this idea of “sonic empathy.”