Current environmentally concerned sound art and science is in a similar situation that was resolved within the field of visual arts in the beginning of the 1990s. Since then the work of environmentally oriented artists was more or less recognised as a distinct movement in its own right. This open list is an attempt to bring together some names of people, initiatives and institutions approaching and thinking about sound in such a way that it resonates within the general critical environmental agenda of today. Not necessary it collides with musicians using field recordings as a material for their music composition, sound work, sound installations, radiophony etc. As well, the profession of artist or scientist is necessarily not conditional.
David Rothenberg (born 1962) is a composer and environmental philosopher, best known for his musical collaboration with birds, whales and bugs, particularly. Beside that he has performed and recorded on clarinet with Jan Bang, Scanner, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Markus Reuter, Pauline Oliveros, and the Karnataka College of Percussion.
Philip Samartzis (born 1963, Melbourne) is a sound artist, scholar and curator with a specific interest in the social and environmental conditions informing remote wilderness regions and their communities. His art practice is based on deep fieldwork where he deploys complex sound recording technology to capture natural, anthropogenic and geophysical forces. The recordings are used within various exhibition, performance and publication outcomes to demonstrate the transformative effects of sound within a fine art context.
R. Murray Schafer (1933 - 2021) was a Canadian composer and founder of acoustic ecology. He was born in Sarnia, Ontario, but was raised in Toronto. Schafer entered the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in 1952 to study with John Weinzweig. His casual contact with Marshall McLuhan on campus in that period could arguably be singled out as the most lasting influence on his development. He went to Vienna in 1956. After two years he went to England, studying informally with composer Peter Racine Fricker. While in Britain Schafer supported himself by writing (resulting in a book, British Composers in Interview) and by the preparation of a performing edition of Ezra Pound's opera Le Testament (1920-1) broadcast by the BBC in 1961.
Hillel Schwartz is a cultural historian, poet, and translator currently writing on notions and experiences of “emergency” since 1760. As an historian, he is best known for Making Noise: From Babel to the Big Bang, and Beyond (Zone, 2011, 2016) and The Culture of the Copy: Striking Likenesses, Unreasonable Facsimiles (Zone, 1996, 2014). Across two decades he has collaborated in translating six books by the Korean poets Ko Un and Kim Nam-jo, and has worked with artists and museums in Europe and North America. Most recently he has designed and led workshops on soundmapping.
Tony Schwartz (1923-2008) was an American sound ingineer, radio and televisiton director and educator. He created more than 20,000 radio and television spots for products, political candidates and non-profit public interest groups. Schwartz wa called a “media guru,” a “media genius” and a “media muscleman.” Schwartz’s produced the first anti-smoking ad to ever appear.
Carsten Seiffarth (Born 1963 in Berlin) is a curator and producer in the field of music and sound art. Between 1986-1988 he studied Orchestral Music at the Franz Liszt School of Music in Weimar ; 1988-1989 visiting student at the Humboldt University Berlin Art History, Asthetics and Philosophy, 1990 Sociology/Musicology Studies at the TU Berlin. From 1991 on, independent project work as: curator, producer, project manager in the field of Sound Art and Contemporary Music. Since 1996 curator + artistic director singuhr – sound gallery in Berlin.
Tim Shaw is an artist and musician interested in the relationships between site, sound and technology. His practice is concerned with the many ways people listen, specifically how listening environments can be constructed or explored using a diverse range of techniques and technologies. His work is anchored in the creative use of field recordings and he often appropriates recording and communication technology to consider how these devices change the way we experience the world.
Paul Howe Shepard, Jr. (1925 - 1996) was an American environmentalist and author best known for introducing the "Pleistocene paradigm" to deep ecology. He lectured and taught biology at Knox College, Smith College, Dartmouth College, and Claremont College in a career that spanned more than 40 years. From 1973 until his retirement in 1994 he taught at Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University.
Denise Ferreira da Silva (born in 1963 in Brazil) is a philosopher and academic based in Vancouver. Her writing and artistic practice addresses the ethical questions of the global present and targets the metaphysical and onto-epistemological dimensions of modern thought. She is a Professor and Director of The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ) at the University of British Columbia, Adjunct Professor of Fine Arts, at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), and Visiting Professor of Law, at Birkbeck University of London.
Peter Sinclair is a sound artist and researcher in audio art. He began his career as an artist building musical machines that he presented in exhibitions and on stage, either solo or in collaboration with other musicians. In the early 1990s he adopted computer programming as an artistic tool while maintaining a strong attachment to “physical” space in his projects. He quickly developed shared networking practices, notably with the New York artist G.H.