International Steering Committee

SoundCulture is directed by an International Steering Committee that oversees the direction of the festival, selects future sites for it, and works with local organizers. The Committee is comprised of representatives from Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.

Paul DeMarinis (United States) has been working as a multimedia electronic artist since 1971 and has created numerous performance works, sound and computer installations and interactive electronic inventions. He has performed internationally, at The Kitchen, Festival d'Automne a Paris, Het Apollohuis in Holland and at Ars Electronica in Linz and created music for Merce Cunningham Dance Co. His interactive audio artworks have been shown at the I.C.C. in Tokyo, Bravin Post Lee Gallery in New York and The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at The Exploratorium and at Xerox PARC and has received major awards and fellowships in both Visual Arts and Music from The National Endowment for the Arts, N.Y.F.A., N.Y.S.C.A. and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Much of his work involves speech processed and synthesized by computers, available on the Lovely Music Ltd. compact disc "Music as a Second Language", and the Apollohuis CD "A Listener's Companion" Installation works include "The Edison Effect" which uses optics and computers to make new sounds by scanning ancient phonograph records with lasers, "Gray Matter" which uses the interaction of body and electricity to make music, and "The Messenger" that examines the myths of electricity in communication. Recent public artworks include large scale interactive installations at Park Tower Hall in Tokyo, at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and Expo 1998 in Lisbon.

Frances Dyson (Australia) is a practicing media artist and theorist with specialities in sound and new media. Her audio artwork has been aired internationally, and she has exhibited installation works in North America, Australia and Japan. She has also published and lectured widely in Australia and overseas in the field of media arts criticism, and is currently researching issues related to arts practice and new media technologies. In 1994 she was a guest speaker at The Fifth International Symposium on Electronic Arts in Helsinki, Finland and presenter at the Art and Virtual Environments Symposium, the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada.

Nigel Helyer (Australia) is an Australian Sculptor and Sound-Artist who received a BA Hons in Sculpture from the Liverpool College of Art, UK. 1974, an MARCA in Environmental Media from The Royal College of Art, London, UK. 1979 and his Doctorate from the University of Technology, Sydney 1997. As a co-founder of SoundCulture International he has been instrumental in establishing the SoundCulture concept to promote and develop the work of Artists of the Pacific Zone who work with non-musical forms of sound production. He has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions, has been the recipient of various awards and fellowships and has undertaken many international Artist Residencies, which include : The Exploratorium Museum, San Francisco 1988; San Jose State University 1988; PICA 1989; Kohler Industries, USA 1990; Cite Des Arts, Paris 1990; Chiang Mai University, Thailand 1991/2 and 1993/4 He received a Major Australia Council fellowship in 1992; was Visiting Artist to the Hanoi Institute of Fine Arts 1994 and the inaugural Visiting Fellow in Fine Arts to Auckland University 1994. During 1996 he was Visiting Fellow to The Centre for Advanced Inquiry into Interactive Arts, University of Wales and in 1997 the Visiting Fellow to The University of Western Sydney and a Visiting Artist to the University of Lapland 1997. Over the past decade his practice has undergone a transformation in which discreet conceptual and methodological practices have converged to form a pluri-discipline - a cultural practice which synthesises, sculpture with architectural or environmental sites and combines performed soundscapes (textual, musical or electronic) with public radio broadcast and new-media formats, operating under the generic title Sonic Objects; Sonic Architecture.

Douglas Kahn (United States) is a noted author and critic in the area of the sonic arts. He is widely published in journals such as Parachute (Montreal), October (New York), Musicworks (Toronto), and New Music Quarterly. He is a co-editor of "Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant Garde" (MIT Press, 1992) and recently authored "Noise, Water, Meat" (MIT Press, 1999), a detailed examination of the history of sound in art in the 20th century. He directs the Center for Technocultural Studies at UC Davis.

Dan Lander (Canada) is a sound artist, curator, and writer based in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the co-editor of "Sound by Artists" (Art Metropole / Walter Phillips Gallery (Toronto / Banff, 1990) and "Radio Rethink" (Walter Phillips Gallery, 1994), has released audio works on the Empreintes Digitales label, and currently works in the Media Arts section of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Richard Lerman (United States) works in Music, Film, Installations, Performance, and Video. He often constructs functional microphones from diverse materials, and then composes using these transducers to amplify and pick-up sounds from the environment . This allows the sonic flavor of each material to be heard. Most recently in his performance piece BORDER FENCES, he used these devices to amplify and record several fences on the border between Arizona and Mexico. Earlier pieces include TRAVELON GAMELON for amplified bicycles, and CHANGING STATES for metal microphones played using a jeweler's butane torch. As his work crosses the border between the sonic and visual arts, he has used the techniques he has developed to record at many other politically charged sites and has collaborated with artist Mona Higuchi on many installations including LOS DESAPARECIDOS for Amnesty International, THREADING HISTORY: THE JAPANESE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, and KRISTALLNACHT. Since 1994, he has taught Digital Media and related courses at Arizona State University West where he is Associate Professor of Media Arts. Prior to that he taught Film, Performance Art and Computer Music at the Boston Museum School for 22 years. He has received grants from the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Asian Cultural Council, the NEA, and many others; and has performed & presented his work widely in Asia, Australia, Europe, New Zealand and North America. A CD, A MATTER of SCALE AND OTHER PIECES will be released soon on the Anomalous Label.

Ed Osborn (United States) served as the Director of SoundCulture 96 and is a sound artist, composer, educator, and sound designer who has performed, exhibited, lectured, and held residencies worldwide. His pieces use sound as a primary material and take many forms including installation, sculpture, radio, video, performance, and public works. He has performed and exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Sonambiente Festival (Berlin), the Museum of Applied Arts, (Helsinki, Finland), Lincoln Center (New York), LACE (Los Angeles), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (North Adams, MA), the Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane, Australia), the Auckland Art Gallery (Auckland, New Zealand), Artspace (Sydney, Australia), and New Langton Arts (San Francisco, CA). Osborn has received grants from the J.S. Guggenheim Foundation, Haas Family Funds, Arts International and been awarded residencies from the the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (Berlin, Germany), Banff Centre for the Arts (Banff, Canada), and the Center for Research and Computing in the Arts at UC San Diego. He is currently Assistant Professor in Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Nobuhisa Shimoda (Japan) is a writer and curator based in Kobe. He edited the journal "Sound Arts" (Kobe) and for ten years was the artistic dierctor for the Xebec center in Kobe.

Keiko Torigoe (Japan) is a sound artist and writer based in Tokyo. Her work is concerned with modalities of natural sound and silence has been presented in Japan and Europe.