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.
For 25 years, while listening to the environment, Eric la Casa has been questioning the perception of reality and has tried to expand the notion of infra-ordinary, this space-time at low intensity, from background noise to the inaudible passing by the wait. As a result of my in-situ listening processes, I listen to reality to reveal its phenomenological power.
Raquel Castro (born in Viseu, 1976) is sound artist, curator and filmmaker, currently lives and works in Lisbon. In 2003, a video project about oral memory made her travel around Portugal and live in several regions of the country, collecting voices, images, sounds and children's drawings. She started to think about the way sound relates to the identity of a place, so she decided to start a research on sound studies.
Christophe Charles (born Marseille, 1964), is a composer, lives in Japan. He works with found sounds, and makes compositions with computer programs, insisting on the autonomy of each sound and the absence of hierarchical structure. Graduated from Tsukuba University (Phd., 1996) and Paris INALCO (Phd., 1997). Currently Professor (kyouju) at Musashino Art University (Tokyo). C.C.
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (born in Birbhum, India) is a media artist, researcher, and writer. He studied Cinema specializing in Audiography at national film-school SRFTI in Calcutta (2003-2006), and later received Master of Arts in New Media with an emphasis in Sound Art from Aarhus University, Denmark (2007-2009).
David Chesworth works across sound art, experimental music, video and installation practice, examining the diverse ways we sense the world and how our understandings align through art, philosophy and the non-human. Chesworth's parents moved the family from Britain to Melbourne, Australia in the late 1960s. Chesworth studied at Latrobe University, including time with tutor and composer Jeff Pressing.
Caroline Claus is a Brussels-based urban (sound) researcher. Her work concentrates on the position of (sonic) vibrations in a context of urban development. The ontological turn in sound studies, feminist theory and the avantgarde output of independent electronic record labels provide a conceptual and methodological basis for an a-disciplinary research on sonic urbanism as speculative practice. Caroline has contributed to the planning and design of transitory urban railway spaces.
Marcus Coates (1968 in London) devises processes to explore the pragmatism and insight that empathetic perspectives and imagined realities can offer. He explicitly addresses a need to create functional and inclusive languages where conventional strategies of understanding and rationalisation prove inadequate. The form and purpose of his work continues to develop in consideration to society’s needs which he responds to by working with individuals, communities, institutions, organisations and the general public.
Marcel Cobussen studied jazz piano at the Conservatory of Rotterdam and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands). He currently teaches Music Philosophy and Auditory Culture at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent (Belgium). Cobussen is author of the book Thresholds. Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Ashgate, 2008), editor of Resonanties. Verkenningen tussen kunsten en wetenschappen (LUP, 2011) and co-author of Music and Ethics (Ashgate, 2012) and Dionysos danst weer.
Beatriz Colomina is an architectural historian and theorist who has written extensively on questions of architecture, art, technology, sexuality and media. She is Founding Director of the interdisciplinary Media and Modernity Program at Princeton University and Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Architecture. Her work has been published in more than 25 languages and her books include: Are We Human?
Alain Corbin (1936) is a French historian and a specialist of the 19th century in France and in microhistory. Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités. His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.