John Levack Drever

ohn Levack Drever’s tentacular practice probes into: the minutiae of everyday soundscapes; residual noise; human utterance; the genealogy of phonographic atmos and SFX; (un)natural histories; the gap between documentary artifice and the field; the built environment, prevailing ambiance and deportment; intuitions of silence and noise; overhearings, mishearings, forensic listening and acoustic perturbations. Projects are often derived from extensive fieldwork through a range of field recording methods and most importantly through soundwalking, exemplified in the triptych, Ochlophonic Studies: Hong Kong (1998-2009). Fundamentally, much of his work is collaborative including projects with Geoff Cox, Rachel Gomme, Alice Oswald , Alaric Sumner, Tony Thatcher, Lawrence Upton and Louise K. Wilson. He is a member of Blind Ditch.

Drever was an elected director of Sonic Arts Network (2004-8) and a co-founder and chair of the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (a regional affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology). In 2001 he was awarded a PhD from Dartington College of Arts, titled ‘Phonographies: Practical and Theoretical Explorations into Composing with Disembodied Sound’. During 2001-2 he was a Research Assistant for the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth) co-ordinating Sounding Dartmoor, a soundscape study of Dartmoor. From 2003-04 he was an ACE/AHRB Arts and Science Research Fellow with Centre for Computational Creativity, City University exploring electronic music performance interfaces that learn from their users. During the autumn semester 2007, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Critical Intermedia Laboratory, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (1999), Arts Council England (2002 & 2007), to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (2002). His work has twice been awarded a prize in the annual Musica Nova competition, Prague (1997 & 1998). He is a Senior Lecturer in Composition and is the head of the Unit for Sound Practice Research at Goldsmiths, University of London.

For Musarc, John was one of the three tutors on Field Studies.

For more info visit:
http://www.gold.ac.uk/music/staff/drever/
http://www.last.fm/music/John+Levack+Drever
http://www.myspace.com/johnlevackdrever

Photo: John Drever working with students during Field Studies