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 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. My current work in the atmospheric microbiome and modes of alternative biotechnological experimentations builds on many inspiring conversations, classes and discussions that happened with the SymbioticA family.
During my doctoral research 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 a visiting artist at the UCLA ArtSci Center and worked on a large interdisciplinary project on bird communication from 2015-18, where we explored the poetics of interspecies communication and interaction through site-specific installation and spatial sound with ultrasonic and ambisonic technologies. I have also been a resident artist at the Atmospheres of Sound project there, as well as with the Biofrictions project hosted by Marta De Menezes at Cultivamos Cultura in Portugal. With my long time collaborator Mick Lorusso, i have also been a resident artist at the Coalesce Centre for Biological Arts hosted by Paul Vanouse and Solon Morse.
I am currently Associate Professor in Computational Arts at the School of the Arts, Media Performance and Design at York University in Toronto, Canada, and from 2019-2023 i was Director of Sensorium:The Centre for Digital Art and Technology. From 2023-25, i was the Helen Carswell Chair in Community Engaged Research in the Arts.
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 or condensed artistic portfolio
Faculty profile at York HERE
Helen Carswell Chair HERE
DXARTS research profile HERE
Sensorium profile HERE
Soundcloud profile HERE
SymbioticA profile HERE