I’m Panos Couros, a sound designer, composer, and emerging ceramicist passionate about crafting immersive, multidimensional experiences that evoke emotion and provoke thought. My work explores the intersection of sound, art, and design, blending these disciplines to create sensory-rich environments that resonate both visually and acoustically. With a background in sound design spanning theatre, film, installations, and interactive works, I’ve collaborated with artists and institutions to bring complex, creative visions to life. My projects often include multi-channel soundscapes, site-specific installations, and experimental compositions, inviting audiences to engage deeply with the spaces and stories they inhabit.

I was born in Adelaide in 1960 to Greek migrant parents, and from an early age, I was immersed in a cultural duality—between tradition and modernity, ritual and experimentation. This layered heritage continues to inform my work, both conceptually and materially. I began my professional journey in sound at SAE Adelaide in 1983, learning analogue techniques that emphasised careful listening and precision. Over the years, my practice evolved into an expansive field of sound design that includes immersive theatre, experimental film, museum installations, and performance. Whether composing ambient landscapes or engineering complex multi-speaker systems, I see sound as a sculptural medium—one that shapes space, memory, and emotion.

In recent years, I’ve returned to the physical through ceramics. My practice incorporates slab construction and Nerikomi techniques to produce minimalist, stained porcelain and terracotta forms, often inspired by modernist design and sustainable making. My Greek background, with its deep relationship to object, place, and ritual, underpins this work. Increasingly, I’ve begun to integrate my two disciplines, embedding transducers into ceramic vessels to create sound-emitting sculptures that merge tactile and auditory experience. These works invite audiences to not only see and touch but also feel sound as it vibrates through form.

Alongside my creative work, I have decades of experience as an arts manager, producer, and director. I’ve led and supported innovative collaborations, curated festivals, and nurtured interdisciplinary teams. From 2016 to 2020, I worked at the University of Sydney on the Warburton Arts and Knowledge Project, a collaborative initiative with Aboriginal people in remote Western Australia. Together, we developed a digital Indigenous Knowledges portal—an online, university-wide teaching resource that preserves and honours language, Country, and cultural knowledge. This project remains one of the most meaningful of my career, exemplifying how technology and art can serve community, sovereignty, and deep listening.

My work includes sound installations such as AmphiSonic, presented at the World Science Festival in Brisbane, and A Noise of Worms, a compost-inspired multi-channel piece commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Another ongoing project, Omphalos, explores the navel as a resonant site of myth, memory, and origin through sculptural sound. These works—and many others—reveal a continuing interest in embodiment, vibration, and transformation.

Now in my sixties, I’m not concerned with boundaries between disciplines. I’m interested in what resonates—emotionally, sonically, and spatially. Whether I’m composing sound, shaping clay, or producing collaborative work, I see art as a way of listening and responding. Collaboration lies at the heart of what I do: I believe shared ideas and diverse perspectives are essential to pushing creative boundaries and reimagining what art can be. My practice sits at the intersection of cultures, materials, technologies, and time—inviting audiences to enter spaces that hum with memory, presence, and possibility.