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.
Hannah Kemp-Welch is a sound artist with a socially-engaged practice. She produces audio installations and radio broadcasts with community groups, using voices, field recordings and found sounds. She also delivers workshops, makes zines and builds basic radios, aiming to open out sonic practices and technologies for all. Hannah is a member of feminist radio art group Shortwave Collective and the arts cooperative Soundcamp.
Suk-Jun Kim studied theology (BA) at Yonsei University (South Korea), and moved to Canada to earn a diploma (honor) in Recording Engineering at the Ontario Institute of Audio and Recording Technology (OIART), London, Ontario (Canada). During his study at OIART, he was first introduced to the world of electroacoustic music, mainly works by Denis Smalley and Jonty Harrison, which became a tutorial for him during his self-taught period.
Jacob Kirkegaard (born 1975 in Denmark) is a sound artist. He graduated at the Academy of Arts and the Media in Cologne. Jacob is exploring sound in art with a scientific approach and his sound works focus on investigations into the potential musicality in hidden sound layers in the environment. In this context he has been capturing and exploring sounds from, for example, volcanic earth, ice, atmospheric phenomena, nuclear power plants and deserted places. His piece "Labyrinthitis" was created from sounds recorded inside his inner ear.
Ludwig Paul Koch (1881, Frankfurt am Main -1974, Harrow, London) was a broadcaster and sound recordist. An expert on recording animal sounds, he played a significant part in increasing the British public's appreciation of wildlife.
Simona Gabriela Kossak (1943 in Krakow, died 2007 in Bialystok) was a Polish biologist, ecologist, and professor of forest sciences. Kossak is known primarily for her efforts to preserve the remnants of natural ecosystems in Poland. Her work dealt with, among other things, the behavioral ecology of mammals. She sometimes referred to herself as a "zoo-psychologist.
Karl David Kryter (Born 1911 in Indianapolis, USA, died 2013) was a world-renowned scientist of Psycho-Acoustics and Audition and Engineering Psychology. Karl received his bachelor's degree from Butler University in Indiana in 1939, and his doctorate from the University of Rochester in New York in 1943. He was a Research Fellow in Harvard University's Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts. (Founded in 1940 as part of an initiative to reduce noise problems experienced by bomber pilots during the War.
Brandon LaBelle (born 1969 in Memphis, Tennessee, United States) is an artist, writer and theorist working with questions of social life and cultural agency, using sound, performance, text and sited constructions. He develops and presents artistic projects and performances within a range of international contexts, often working collaboratively and in public. This leads to interventions and performative installations, voice work, and micro-actions aimed at the sphere of the (un)common and the unlikely.
Alan Lamb (1944 in Edinburgh) is Perth-based composer and biomedical research scientist. Living is Fremantle. He has created a body of innovative composition based on the resonance of 'singing wires'.
Cathy Lane is a British sound artist and composer, She is interested in sound and how it relates to the past, our histories, our environment and our collective and individual memories. This informs her current work as a composer, sound artist, lecturer and researcher. Aspects of her creative practice has developed out of these interests and concern composition with spoken word, field recordings and archive material and writing and lectures on these and related subjects. Much of her compositional work can be described as 'docu-music'.
Tom Lawrence (died 2011) was a wildlife sound recordist, musician and educator. His work in acoustic ecology regularly appears in natural history documentaries. Tom also produced documentaries for radio broadcast, installations and his work has featured in UK, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Canada and Ireland. Tom was the staff of the School of Communications, Dublin City University where he was a lecturer in film music, recording practice and sonic art. His research interests are in the areas of film music and acoustic ecology.