Matt Parker, Matt Sanchez, Nick McEnally
Biography Matt Parker, Matt Sanchez, Nick McEnally
Matt Parker
is a critical sound explorer; an artist researching the resonances between things. His research engages with sound studies, media ecology, field recording and environmental humanities through a spectral art practice. He is an Assistant Professor in International Communications at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China.
His current book project, En/Counters with Wavefields: How Landscapes Become Stories of Technology, investigates how sonic, electromagnetic, and vibrational phenomena shape our cultural and ecological relationships with media infrastructures. Drawing together multimodal fieldwork, archival research, and environmental media theory, the book traces how places such as salt marshes, telegraph ruins, lakes, and mineral quarries become active participants in the histories and futures of technological systems. Through what he terms “critical wavefield exploration,” Parker reveals how landscapes and infrastructures co-produce their meanings through resonance, friction, and more-than-human encounters.
Other areas of research interest include the environmental impact of data centers, and other media infrastructures, especially the growing boom in generative AI infrastructures, multimodal scholarship, listening and the environment, immersive audio, documentary practice, storytelling, and sensory ethnography.
Matt was the Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania between 2023-2025. He was awarded the Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellowship in the History of Science, Technology and Communication at the University of Oxford in 2023 and was a Research Fellow with the Sonic Art Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University between 2019-2023. He was an AHRC Huntington Library Research Fellow in Los Angeles in 2022, has been a Kone Foundation Saari resident in Finland in 2021, a Back Apartment Resident with CEC Arts Link in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2020, a MEAD Resident with the British School at Rome in 2017, an Art and the Environment resident at Joya: arte + ecología / AiR in Spain (programmed by Lucy Orta) in 2016, and was artist in residence at The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park in 2015.
Matt was awarded the Deutsche Bank Creative Prize in Music 2014, and is winner of New Art West Midlands 2016. He was nominated for the Phonurgia Nova Awards Prix Field Recording 2018 and shortlisted for the Aesthetica International Art Prize 2015. His work has been exhibited, screened and sounded internationally, including at ABC Radio National (AU), BBC Radio 4 (UK), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (UK), Bletchley Park (UK), Brighton Digital Festival (UK), Douglas Hyde Gallery (IE), Electronic Media Arts Festival (DE), Glitch Festival (MX), Herbert Gallery (UK), Jerwood Space (UK), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (IN), Les Subsistances (FR), Melbourne Fringe Festival (AU), MAC (UK), MK Central Library (UK), MK Gallery (UK), Queen Street Studios Belfast (UK), RIXC Art and Science Festival, Riga (LV), Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts (UK), Science Gallery Dublin (IE), SXSW (US), Society for Visual Anthropology Film & Media Festival (US), Tate Britain (UK), The British Library (UK), The British School at Rome (IT), The Water Hall Gallery (UK), The LAB (IE), The Nunnery (UK), The V&A (UK), Università Iuav di Venezia (IUAV) (IT), University of Cambridge (UK), Watermans Gallery (UK), Without Words Film Festival (FR), Wolverhampton Art Gallery (UK) and ZKM Gallery (DE).
