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.
Annea Lockwood (born 1939) is a New Zealand / American composer. She brings vibrant energy, ceaseless curiosity, and a profound sense of openness to her music. Lockwood’s lifelong fascination with the visceral effects of sound in our environments and through our bodies—the way sounds unfold and their myriad “life spans”—serves as the focal point for works ranging from concert music to performance art to multimedia installations.
Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art. It is organized as a post graduate lab by the Art Schools of Aix en Provence (ESAA) and Bourges (ENSA) in France, and is associated with CNRS, Marseille.
Locus Sonus' pioneering work with live audio streaming includes making and producing the Locus Streambox, LocusCast apps, numerous installations, presentations and research activities, and hosting a live soundmap since 2007 as a platform for an open microphone network.
Francisco López (born 1964 in Madrid, Spain) is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. For almost forty years he has developed a personal and iconoclastic sonic universe, based on a profound listening of the world, neglecting boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments.
Jay-Dea Lopez is an Australian sound artist and field recordist whose work reflects the social and environmental anxieties of the early 21st century. His work reflects the social and environmental anxieties of the early 21st century. Initially trained in classical performance he now uses field recordings as a way to question our natural and social environments. Lopez' field recordings and compositions have been used in film, radio, theatre, festivals and gallery installations.
Rob Mackay is a composer, sound artist and performer. He is currently a Senior Lecturer in Composition at Newcastle University. Recent projects have moved towards a cross-disciplinary approach, soundscape ecology, audiovisual installation work, and human-computer interaction. His work has been performed in 18 countries (including broadcasts on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 1 and Radio France), and a number of his pieces have received international awards (Bourges, Hungarian Radio, La Muse en Circuit).
Marcus Maeder is an artist, researcher and composer of electronic music. As an author, Maeder has written on a number of topics in the fields of sound art, acoustic ecology, artistic research and digital media. Maeder studied Fine Arts at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, Philosophy at the Fernuniversität in Hagen and currently pursues his PhD in Environmental Systems Science at ETH Zürich. He runs the music label domizil together with Tobias Gerber, Ken Gubler, Claudio Landolt, Mélia Roger and Vivian Wang.
Carla J. Maier (b. Müller-Schulzke 1976) is an independent researcher based in Berlin/ Germany working at the intersection of sound studies, postcolonial and cultural studies, music and cultural anthropology. She recently completed a Marie Curie Research Fellowship at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies (IKK) at the University of Copenhagen/Denmark, with a project on Travelling Sounds: A Cultural Analysis of Sonic Artefacts in Postcolonial Europe (2018-2020).
Gilles Malatray aka Desartsonnants is a listening walker, sound landscape specialist, teacher, researcher, living in Lyon, France. Throughout the years, Gilles has built interesting information sources about sound arts: DESARTSONNANTS. Gilles organizes PAS - Sensitive Audio Course, opens Hearing Points and intervenes in many workshops and seminars. His training are in landscape and music, he graduated in literature and artistic projects management at the University Lyon 2.
Lynn Margulis was an eminent American evolutionary biologist. Her serial endosymbiotic theory (SET) of eukaryotic cell development overturned the modern concept of how life originated on earth. She argued that different types of bacteria, through “symbiogenesis”, formed more complicated single organisms. Born in Chicago, Illinois on 5 March in 1938, Lynn Margulis earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1957. After a few months, she married the famous astronomer Carl Sagan. They divorced in 1964.
Danny McCarthy (b. 1950) has pioneered both sound art and performance art in Ireland and he continues to be a leading exponent exhibiting and performing both in Ireland and abroad regularly. In 2006 he founded The Quiet Club (with Mick O Shea) a floating membership sound (art and electronics) performance group and have presented works all over Ireland and internationally. They have a CD out on Farpoint Recordings entitled “No Meat No Bone” recorded at the Rauschenberg Foundation Capiva, Florida. He has a solo CD “The Rauschenberg Scores” also on Farpoint.