my research connects scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, particularly with respect to sound and physical space. I have been interested in the way objects and spaces can function as repositories of ‘frozen sound’, and in elucidating these, I am interested in creating what systems theorist Jack Burnham (1968) refers to as “art (that) does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment”.
What constitutes this exploration is varied, and I have been invested in projects involving bodies and stethoscopes, nanotechnology, site-specific sound installations, collective (multi-media) improvisations, physical computing, environmental sensing, and spatial sound devices. I am most recently interested in the creative use of environmental databases to create aesthetic, mediated, experiences of natural phenomenon, stemming from a long interest in the history and poetics of Aeolian devices. As well as creating aesthetic experiences, i am also working on projects that explore the way memory, nostalgia, intimacy and distance can be narrated through physical and digital/networked geographies.
I am also invested in the broader scope of Art-Science collaborations and am engaged constantly in the discourses and processes that facilitate viewing these two polemical disciplines on similar ground. My graduate interdisciplinary work in nanotechnology and sound was conducted at SymbioticA, the Center of Excellence for Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia and supervised by BioArt pioneers and TCA (The Tissue Culture and Art Project) artists Dr Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts.
During my Doctoral studies at DXARTS in the University of Washington, i was supervised by artists Juan Pampin, James Coupe and Richard Karpen. I was also mentored by Dr Edward Shanken, author of the canonical “Art and Electronic Media” published by Phaidon Press in 2009, and was his Research Assistant in the “Systems” publication in the Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series. I am also a visiting artist at the UCLA ArtSci Center and worked on a large interdisciplinary project on bird communication, where we explore the poetics of interspecies communication and interaction through site-specific installation and spatial sound with ultrasonic and ambisonic technologies.
My individual and collaboratory artistic works have been shown at festivals and galleries internationally such as the Currents New Media Festival, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Ars Electronica, ISEA, the Seattle Art Museum, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, the Penny Stamps Gallery and the Ontario Science Centre. i was a recipient of the Petro-Canada Young Innovators Award in 2020 for a collaborative project in environmental monitoring technologies in the atmosphere as a locus for affect, disruption and climate awareness. I have benefited immensely from artistic / research-creation residencies out of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Jack Straw New Media Centre, the Coalesce Centre for Bioart and my current role as artist in Residence with Biofrictions.
Since Fall2016, i have been part of the Department of Computational Arts at York University’s School of Arts, Media, Performance and Design(AMPD) as Assistant Professor. Currently I am the Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology.
I am also a free-lance sound-designer and co-founded the Loft Collective, the sound-design arm of the audio production house Beep Studios based in Singapore. I have worked as an audio engineer, an videographer, executive producer (MTVAsia), a musician and several other unrelated side-jobs that are at the corner of exciting and embarrassing.
Please contact me for my CV
More information on SENSORIUM can be found HERE
My York University faculty profile can be found HERE
My DXARTS profile(including research profile) can be found HERE
My soundcloud profile can be found HERE
My SymbioticA profile can be found HERE
a condensed portfolio of my artistic works can be found HERE