For the 108th Annual College Art Association conference, I am honored to announce the participation of an esteemed group of creative artists and designers on a panel session titled, Advances In Eco-Sensing and the Soundscape. I will chair the session on Friday, February 14, 2020: 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM, Hilton Chicago, 8th Floor Lake Erie Room.

Panelists: Alex Braidwood, Leah Barclay, Lindsey French, Eric Leonardson, Christophe Preissing.
Discussant: Linda Keane
Panel Organizer: Eric Leonardson

This panel discusses several ongoing projects that originated with “Eco-Sensing and the Soundscape,” a course taught in the fall of 2015 by Eric Leonardson and Lindsey French, at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This studio course connected concepts and applied practices of acoustic ecology with the DIY hacking aesthetic of art and technology to open up possibilities for transdisciplinary collaborations offering new understandings of our environments and our boundaries, locations, and roles within them. Subsequently, numerous collaborations and opportunities have flowed in new contexts and localities. These intersecting interests have grown and gained support beyond academia to reach new levels of public engagement in the ecologies of sound, listening, and environment, while demonstrating the importance of students and teachers who engage each other as partners in play and learning together, mentoring and activating local communities in the core value of listening. Recognition of this is shifting though it remains if this will be a lasting change with the dynamic and complex circumstances operative now. The panelists joining Leonardson and French are sound and media artists Leah Barclay, Alex Braidwood, and composer Christophe Preissing. Landscape architect and SAIC Professor Linda Keane will serve as discussant. Their individual and combined efforts engage and activate students and public communities in design of urban soundscapes using virtual reality, social codes of immigrant communities, river listening, aural architecture, urban soundwalking, plant communication, art-science collaborations, and human-computer interaction.

CAA offers $100 day passes and single-session passes for $20 on-site. Please visit the College Art Association website to register, view the full CAA schedule and  search or browse events.