Orestis Zafeiriou

Orestis Zafeiriou is an Athens-based electronic music composer and sound designer. His practice is centered on the relationship between sound and the human brain's ability to generate mental images during listening. His work extends to composing for theatre, dance, and cinema.

He explores the concept of the "sonic image" as a dynamic entity, dissecting its mood (emotional color, tension, atmosphere), temporal behaviour, and texture. By breaking down these parameters, he translates subjective listening experiences into compositional blueprints, treating each sonic event as a narrative fragment that carries its own dramatic arc, energy trajectory, and affective weight. He transforms these insights musically through field recordings, modular synthesisers, and computer, while also drawing on film theory to expand his compositional tools.

He bridges cinematic techniques with sound: just as cinema unfolds through the temporal flow of edited shots, sound unfolds through rhythmic pacing, acceleration, deceleration, and the interplay of sonic events over time. Spatial manipulation further shapes the image, as he distributes sounds across multi-speaker setups to define depth, distance, and direction. By surrounding the audience with these layered sonic sources, he creates an immersive listening environment, inviting listeners to form their own personal narratives from the spatial and temporal unfolding of his pieces.

Orestis holds a Master's degree in electronic music composition and research from the Sonology Institute at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where he focused on the relationship between sound, image and cinema. He also holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Technical University of Crete, with a thesis on acoustics ("Active noise control with FEM").

He is also a founding member of the electronic-heavy rock band Playgrounded, with several albums and performances in Greece and abroad (their fourth album is expected in September 2026).