“Current Sound Art Installations of Shawn Decker”
In this seminar, Shawn Decker will present an overview of his sculptural and public-art sound installation work. His recent work approaches sound as a “material” and features kinetic and physical immersive sound environments, often in very large scales, as well as public-art collaborations and architectural sound installations.

Shawn Decker is a composer, artist, and Professor in the Art and Technology and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He creates sound and electronic media installations and writes music for live performance, film, and video. His work is positioned at the intersection of music composition, the visual arts, and performance, using physical and electronic media to investigate, simulate and praise the natural (and unnatural) worlds. His work spans multiple disciplines, making use of technology and technological processes on the one hand and incorporating traditional elements such as Irish and American folk fiddle-traditions on the other. He also explores the merging of physical elements and techniques from sculpture with environmental sound and music performance and views art and art-making within a very broad context. As a senior faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, education is another element within his broad-based practice, with teaching supporting artistic production, and vice-versa.

This event is sponsored by SoundStudies@UW, a Borghesi-Mellon Interdisciplinary Workshop in the Humanities, with support from the Center for the Humanities. The keynote lecture is hosted by the Communication Arts Media and Cultural Studies Colloquium.