WORK
2025
UN/BOUND installation
Collaborated with TRANS VOICES and MONOM to create a holographic choral experience commissioned by the Barbican. UN/BOUND reveals the voice as a means of true expression, where listeners connect to a vivid soundscape by listening or using their own voice to illuminate new spaces of belonging and collective resonance. Supported by Neutone, MOTH & 4DSOUND. Earned 5★ from Financial Times.
RECURSE [infinite mix]
Commissioned by and in collaboration with MOTH: a generative quantum music experience. Infinite mix is a new sonic format – a continuously generating real-time stream of music; an infinitely extended remix generated using quantum AI. Trained on original music composed by ILĀ, RECURSE [infinite mix] represents an artist-first approach to generative AI creativity.
TRANSPOSE: SUBVERSE
Curated Transpose: SUBVERSE at the Barbican Centre’s Pit — a genre-defying immersive performance exploring trans and disabled artists challenging dominant narratives and defying binary expectations. Earned 5★ from Attitude.
MURMUR film
Collaborated with Ai-Da (robot artist), Imogen Heap, Guy Sigsworth, Jake Miller, Reeps100, and more between 2021 and 2025 to create a haunting meditation on AI, grief, and what it means to be alive.
Trained on the lyrical DNA of ILĀ and Imogen Heap, Ai-Da generated poetry in response to ILĀ’s film Daffodil, weaving a dialogue on memory, consciousness, and transhumanism.
Developed AI visuals featuring XR models of Ai-Da and ILĀ challenge perceptions of artificial intelligence and its ability to reframe human self-awareness.
Premiered at Future is Sound, Barbican.
SECURESCUE 360
Composed spatial sound installation with Coda Nicolaeff commissioned for Stroud Sacred Music Festival in collaboration with Loss><Gain (David Sheppard and John Best) and D&B Soundscape.
DISSOCIATIVE PRACTICES
Developed commission Dissociative Practices as resident artist in collaboration with Ray Felix Carter for Movements from the Margins at PRAH Recordings. Performed at Turner Contemporary and Barbican Centre’s Pit. Powered by Black-led Margate-based community organisation People Dem Collective and performance platform Diasporas Now.
2024
NGN2
Commissioned by MOTH to develop music through biological data sonification and quantum-coded DNA composition in partnership with Daniel Ortman (Cambridge), MOTH, Blanco Labs.
The resulting piece premiered at PuzzleX in Barcelona and was later presented at the University of Oxford’s workshop on quantum and art, organised in collaboration with leading quantum physics consortium QISS.
CONCURRENT REALITIES
Commissioned by Marina Landia to create soundtrack to Concurrent Realities, a futuristic art video about synergy between quantum computing and AI. It was inspired by the mysterious nature of quantum qubits and the very real promise of solving humanity’s problems with their help.
Film received an Audience Award at the Pebbles Underground festival.
2022
JESSE DARLING - MISERERE
Commissioned by Didier Rochard at St James’ Piccadilly, ILĀ led TRANS VOICES in working with Turner Prize Winner Jesse Darling’s MISERERE to create improvised immersive textures with Cherif Hashizume.
2021
SWAN SONGS
Commissioned by Submerge Festival, Quays Culture and Goethe Institute to create a feature length electronic soundtrack for Cygnus - a ballet of robot swans made by Loomaland for Lightwaves Festival , Salford Quays.
10 SONGS FOR A LAR
Commissioned by The Kent Medway Museums NPO Partnership to compose DCIII - a song translating physical matter into audio waves by exploring the resonant properties of a 2000 year old Roman ‘Lar’ figurine.
WALK WITH AMAL
Music for 9ft Syrian refugee puppet, Little Amal's welcome to the UK. Little Amal was created by Handspring Puppet Company (the makers of Warhorse) and the music was created in collaboration with young refugees from Kent Refugee Action Network. The project shines a light on the refugee crisis and has garnered critical acclaim internationally and across all major British newspapers and media.
2020
BRINGING THE INSIDE OUT
"Bringing The Inside Out" is a publication by charity Living Words which includes the powerful words of people with a dementia, staff in care homes, and relatives. Voices featured are from across the whole of the UK, and the book focusses on the experience of the Covid pandemic in 2020. All of the pieces have been created through our Listen Out Loud method.
transition
Arts Council England’s prestigious Developing Your Creative Practice fund. A vocal app exploring of identity/gender in real-time using AI in reference to consciousness and the creative relationship with technology.
DAFFODIL film
PRS Momentum Funded Debut music film Daffodil released on NOWNESS in 2020. The film is a surreal examination of the moral implications of artificial intelligence through the lens of ILĀ’s imagination, developed between 2017 and 2020.
2019
LIVING WARRIORS
The Living Warriors project was commissioned as part of an innovation funding initiative by NHS authorities in Kent and Medway, to explore why people had not taken their own lives, when they had thought that they would. Following its success, and the whole project winning The National Positive Practice in Mental Health Awards, Living Words was awarded further funding to make a series films launched on BBC ideas.
ILĀ, KELLY LEE OWENS & MANU DELAGO WITH LCV CHOIR LIVE AT EARTH, HACKNEY
Arts Council England funded collaboration with Kelly Lee Owens and Manu Delago at EartH Theatre Hackney with London Contemporary Voices and a double bass ensemble.
SEA FOLK SING
Commissioned by Ideas Teset to create two songs collaboratively with marginalised communities in North Kent to improve wellbeing.
Sea Folk Sing is an Ideas Test + SparkedEcho production that toured Gravesend, Gillingham and Sheerness during 2-23 November 2019. It was commissioned by Ideas Test, the Creative People and Places organisation covering Swale and Medway.
2018
ASH TO ASH
Commissioned by The Ash Project to create a composition in response to Ash to Ash by Ackroyd and Harvey. The piece begins and ends with the sound of sap rising through an ash tree recorded by Alex Metcalf. One by one, choral singers vocalise melodic fragments from ‘O Frondens Virga’ , a chant by composer, philosopher and polymath Hildegard von Bingen written in the 11th century; a time when ash trees were plentiful.