Brian House (born

Denver, Colorado Denver ( ) is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Consolidated city and county, consolidated city and county, the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous city of the U.S. state of ...

) is a new media and

sound artist Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary time-based medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, ...

. His early projects were formative examples of

locative media Locative media or location-based media (LBM) is a virtual medium of communication functionally bound to a location. The physical implementation of locative media, however, is not bound to the same location to which the content refers. Location-b ...

art and digital media in

social practice Social practice is a theory within psychology that seeks to determine the link between practice and context within social situations. Emphasized as a commitment to change, social practice occurs in two forms: activity and inquiry. Most often appl ...

. His subsequent projects have focused on sound and data

sonification Sonification is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Auditory perception has advantages in temporal, spatial, amplitude, and frequency resolution that open possibilities as an alternative or complement to vis ...

in relation to nature and technology. His work has appeared in numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, the

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

Ars Electronica Ars Electronica Linz GmbH is an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute active in the field of new media art, founded in Linz in 1979. It is based at the Ars Electronica Center (AEC), which houses the Museum of the Future, in t ...

and ZKM Center for Art and Media.

Biography

House graduated with a degree in computer science from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, where he studied at the

Computer Music Center The Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University is the oldest center for electronic and computer music research in the United States. It was founded in the 1950s as the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. Location The CMC is h ...

. He subsequently received a master's degree from

Chalmers tekniska högskola Chalmers University of Technology (, commonly referred to as Chalmers) is a private university, private research university located in Gothenburg, Sweden. Chalmers focuses on engineering and science, but more broadly it also conducts research ...

in Gothenburg, Sweden, and was active in the local experimental music scene. House formed the Knifeandfork media art collective in 2004 with classmate Sue Huang and became a member of the psychogeography collective

Glowlab Glowlab was an artist-run space, artist-run initiative that produced and presented experimental work related to city, cities and psychogeography, including interactive artworks and projects, events, exhibitions, and artists' gatherings. Brooklyn a ...

on returning to New York City. Knifeandfork received a 2007

Rhizome In botany and dendrology, a rhizome ( ) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and Shoot (botany), shoots from its Node (botany), nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from ...

commission and were artists-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2009. House was a resident of

Eyebeam Art and Technology Center Eyebeam is a not-for-profit art and technology center in New York City, founded by John Seward Johnson III with co-founders David S. Johnson and Roderic R. Richardson. Originally conceived as a digital effects and coding atelier and center for ...

in 2012 and was concurrently a member of the Research and Development Lab at ''The New York Times''. His work at the ''Times'' with personal data was featured in ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' magazine. House earned a PhD at Brown University in 2018, where he studied with

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (born 1969) is the Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. She is the founding Director of the Digital Democracies Institute at Simon Fraser University, established i ...

. He is currently a professor of art at

Lewis and Clark College Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1867 and is situated on the historic M. Lloyd Frank Estate in South Portland's Collins View neighborhood. It is composed of three distinct but adja ...

in Portland, Oregon, and is represented by Gallery Nosco in London.

Selected works

Animas (2016)

''Animas'' is a reaction to the

2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill The 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill was an environmental disaster that began at the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado, when Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) personnel, along with workers for Environmental Restoration LLC (a Mis ...

, where three million gallons of contaminated wastewater was released into the Animas River. House made an installation which transforms real-time data from water quality sensors into vibrations that activate metal panels and create an immersive sound environment.

Conversnitch (2013)

House and Kyle McDonald converted light bulbs in public spaces into microphones that automatically tweeted overheard conversations.

Quotidian Record (2012)

''Quotidian Record'' is a vinyl record of one year of House's location data translated into music. One rotation of the record is one day. It comments on the physicality of data and the inherent rhythms of everyday life.

Joyride (2011)

In 2011, House used OpenPaths and ''

Google Street View Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expa ...

'' to track the location of a stolen iPhone and create a re-enactment of the thief's journey.

Trying the Hand of God (2009)

In 2009, House and Huang (as Knifeandfork) were

artists-in-residence at MOCA in Los Angeles where they produced several projects. In ''Trying the Hand of God'', they converted the sculpture plaza into a stadium with astroturf, goalposts and bleachers, and filmed 64 versions of

Diego Maradona Diego Armando Maradona Franco (30 October 196025 November 2020) was an Argentine professional association football, football player and manager. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, he was one of the two ...

's famous "Hand of God" goal from the 1986 World Cup. Members of the audience played the role of Maradona.

Yellow Arrow (2004)

''Yellow Arrow'' was a street art project using stickers and text-messaging that took place simultaneously in 35 countries. It is an important early example of

and mobile phone art and draws concepts from

psychogeography Psychogeography is the exploration of urban environments that emphasizes interpersonal connections to places and arbitrary routes. It was developed by members of the Letterist International and Situationist International, which were revolutionar ...

. Yellow Arrow was included in the Design and the Elastic Mind show at MoMA curated by

Paola Antonelli Paola Antonelli (born 1963) is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, where she also serves as the founding Director o ...

References

External links

Brian House's personal website

Interview with Creative Applications
{{DEFAULTSORT:House, Brian Modern artists American digital artists American sound artists Living people Artists from Denver Columbia University alumni Brown University alumni 1979 births