Dr John Levack Drever BMus, MMus, PhD, FRGS, FRSA, AMIOA

Dr John Levack Drever has been lecturing in and around the Electronic Music Studios (EMS) at Goldsmiths since 2003. He studied Music at the University of Wales, Bangor (1992-95), followed by an MMus study in Electroacoustic Music Composition at the University of East Anglia (1995-6). In 2001 he was awarded a PhD from Dartington College of Arts, for a programme of research titled 'Phonographies: Practical and Theoretical Explorations into Composing with Disembodied Sound'. Following his PhD he co-coordinated Sounding Dartmoor, a participative soundscape study of Dartmoor National Park (2000-2) for the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth). During 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’, and in 2012 he was awarded a Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control from the Institute of Acoustics, with specialist modules in Building Acoustics and Environmental Noise.

Before taking up his post at Goldsmiths, Drever was an associate lecturer for City University (London), Dartington College of Arts, Exeter University and the University of Plymouth, lecturing in Music, Media Arts, Media Lab Arts and Visual Arts. During the autumn semester of 2007 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Critical Intermedia Laboratory, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

An elected director of Sonic Arts Network since 2004, Drever became its final chair in 2008. He is also co-founder (1998) and currently chair of the UK and Ireland Soundscape Community (a regional affiliate of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology) for whom he chaired Sound Practice: the 1st UKISC Conference on sound, culture and environments in 2001 at Dartington and Sound Practice 2006 at Goldsmiths. He has also been actively involved in the Noise Futures Network (EPSRC).

Drever is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, 2009-12, and is Visiting Research Fellow at Seian University of Art and Design, Japan, 2012-13

Academic qualifications

BMus (Hons), MMus in Electroacoustic Music Composition, Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control, PhD

Professional Affiliations
Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FSRA)
Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (FRGS)
Associate Member of the Institute of Acoustics (AMIOA)

Areas of supervision

PhD students and their fields of study:

Antonis Antoniou (Composition Pathway): Aural Aura and Haunting Echoes: Sites with Complex Biographies

Janie Armour (Sonic Arts Pathway): Sonic scenography: an Exploration of Sound in the Performance Environment

Wayne Binitie (Sonic Arts Pathway): Liquid Aural Architecture

James Bulley (Sonic Arts Pathway): Sound Art Trajectories and the Archival Impulse

Lucia, Hsiang-Ying-Chung (Sonic Arts Pathway): From Centre to Circumference: Sound, itself, and its Double

Ruth Hawkins (Sonic Arts Pathway): Interpenetrations of Recordings and the Real

Marcus Leadley (Sonic Arts Pathway): Reconfiguring Acoustic Space: Soundscape and Perception

Sam Murray (Mixed Media Composition) – joint supervisor with Lisa Busby

Tommaso Perego (Sonic Arts Pathway): Sonic Choreography in 2D and 3D surround sound environments

Kathrine Sandys (Sonic Arts Pathway): I Thought I Grew An Ear in My Stomach - The Phenomenological Experience of the Art Event as a Sublime Encounter

Dawn Scarfe (AHRC) (Sonic Arts Pathway): In the Surround – Sound and Phenomenal Experience(completed 2011)

Emmanuel Spinelli (Sonic Arts Pathway): Acoustic Phenotypology: The Territory of the Disembodied Voice in Electroacoustic Music and the Perception of Acousmatic Identities

Presentations and exhibitions

Selected Performances & Exhibitions:
2004-10: Ochlophonic Study: Hong Kong – 8 channel soundscape composition

• Time Festival, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, 2005
• Camden People’s Theatre, 2005
• Sound Practice 2006, Goldsmiths
• EAR-plugged Festival of Electro-acoustic Music, The LAB gallery, Dublin, 2007
• ‘Music, Sound, and the Music, Sound, and the Re-configuration of Public and Private Space’ CRASSH Symposium, University of Cambridge, performance in Kettle’s Yard, 2008
• School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong
• Urban Episodes, Osage Soho, Hong Kong, 2008
• Musée de Grenoble, France, at the international colloquium, Faire une ambiance / Creating an Atmosphere, organised by the "Ambiances Architecturales et Urbaines" laboratory, a mixed research unit (UMR) affiliated to CNRS/Ministére de la Culture (Architecture)/Ecoles Nationales Supérieures d'Architecture of Grenoble and Nantes, 2008
• Launch of Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, 2008
• HK Sound Station, curated by Alvaro Rodriguez Fominaya, Parasite Gallery, Hong Kong, 7/02/09-3/04/09

2005: Close to the Literal – 8 channel text-sound composition in collaboration with Lawrence Upton

• Notation, Postgraduate Conference, Goldsmiths
• E-poetry conference, Birckbeck College
• FILE Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2006
• EXPO Manchester, Sonic Arts Network, University of Manchester, 2006
• Lawrence Upton at 60, Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, 2009

2005: Airborne Trial – sound installation of recordings made in Orford Ness in collaboration with Louise K Wilson:

• Regeneration, St Mary-At-The-Quay, WAG Visual Arts Ipswich, Ipswich

2005: Cattle Grids of Dartmoor

• Radio Clásica, Spain, 2007
• Atrium Sound Space, College of Santa Fe campus in Santa Fe, New Mexico, 18/01/08–28/02/08
• Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation, organised by PVA MediaLab, Tate Modern, 2007
• Here and Now, BBC Radio 3, 2008
• Late Junction, BBC Radio 3, 2008

2006: -scape –  a site-specific dance work based on Goodwin Sands, in collaboration with Tony Thatcher and Emma Redding:

• Kingsdown Beach, Kent
• Great Hall, Goldsmiths
• Art, Lifestyle and Globalisation, organised by PVA MediaLab, Tate Modern, 2007
• Shunt, London, 2007
• School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, 2008

2007: Verbal Iterations – in collaboration with Lawrence Upton, Artist Review Series:

• Immersivity, Art, Architecture, Sound and Ecology, live art garden initiative, Goldsmiths
• e-poetry 2007, Le Divan du Monde, Paris
• Sonic Arts Network Expo, Plymouth

2007: audience: hearing – a sound installation in collaboration with Rachel Gomme, commissioned by Arts Council England:

• Enter_Unknown Territories, Abby Taxi, Cambridge
• Colchester Arts Centre, Colchester
• 4’33”, Magazin 4 Kunstverein, Bregenz, Austria
• Art & Soundscape, Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths, 2009
• The Fire Station, Windsor, 2010

2007: NAMING for Adrian Clarke # 1 & #2, in collaboration with Lawrence Upton,

• Shunt, London

2008: –stance – in collaboration with Ina Dokmo (dancer) and Tony Thatcher (choreographer).

• Shunt, London
• Turteatern, Stockholm
• In the MOMENT, Festival of improvised dance and music TrinityLaban, Laban, Bonnie Bird Theatre, 2009 (In collaboration with David Behrman.)

2008: that the tongue is a whip, in collaboration with Lawrence Upton.

• Shunt, London
• Launch of Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths

2009: In Between and Around Liminal Places, Van – L Dance Company

• Chisenhale Dance Space
• Proart Festival, Theater Festival, Prague

2009: Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A (1965), with Martin Hargreaves and Robert Coleridge.

• In the MOMENT, Festival of improvised dance and music TrinityLaban. Trinity College of Music

2009: NAMELY for Peter Manson by John Drever / Lawrence Upton (commissioned by Birkbeck, Contemporary Poetics Research Centre)

• The Horse Hospital, London
• Lawrence Upton at 60, Sound Practice Research, Goldsmiths
• ICA, London
• BEYOND SIGNAL #8 –> PO-E-TRY FESTAL Nantes, 2010

Grants & awards

In 2012 he was awarded a Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control from the Institute of Acoustics, with specialist modules in Building Acoustics and Environmental Noise. 

Keynote lectures

Invited Presentations and Keynotes:
2004:

• ‘Audio-Vision: Cause and Effect?’, The State of Affairs II: Listening to Vision - Looking at Sound, organized by Sonic Arts Department, Middlesex University, Conway Hall, London.
• ‘Topophonophilia: the relationship between sound, sentiment and place’, paper at Ecologia Acústica. Etica y Estética en la idea de Paisaje Sonoro, during Zeppelin2004, festival of sound art, organized by Caos->Sonoscop, CaixaFòrum, Barcelona.

2005:

• 'Topophonique, Ochlophonique, Nostophonique et Pataphonique: trois études de cas', presentation at Technologie imaginaire; approche pataphysique de la musique, study day at the Sorbonne, Paris.

2006:

• ‘Field Work: From Arm-chair to Open-air Research in Sonic Arts’, keynote at the Doctoral Research Conference, Digital Music Research Network.
• 'Architect-Sonics: Heritage of Sound, Music and Architecture', 4x4 Making Places Leeds: Building Sounds (Architecture and Music), Leeds College of Music, Architecture Week Yorkshire 06.

2007:

• 'Soundscapes and acoustic ecology - origins and prospects' at Sounder Spaces, organised by the Mayor of London (GLA) and Noise Futures (EPSRC), Julian Huxley Lecture Theatre, London Zoo.
• 'Soundwalking: methods of listening in situ to the city', keynote speaker and soundwalk leader for SeneScapes, an ESRC Research Seminar Series on Rethinking the urban experience: the sensory production of place, University of Salford.
• ‘Topophonophilia: the rapport between place, space, sentiment and sound’, School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong; The Department of Geography & Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

2008:

• ‘Topophonophilia and Topophonophobia’, at ‘Cartografías de la Escucha’. Sonido y lugar, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea. Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
• ‘Ochlophonics Hong Kong: everyday sound practices within the crowd’ in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) as part of Music, Sound, and the Music, Sound, and the Re-configuration of Public and Private Space, University of Cambridge.
• ‘The sound of cattle grids’ at So Far… arts, spatialisation and memory, Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Bath.

2009:

• Plenary Speaker, ‘Sound, soundscapes and sonic environments’, Department of Geography, The Open University.
• Round Table Discussion, Cornelius Cardew: Play for Today: A Symposium, co-organised by The Drawing Room and the ICA, London.
• Round Table Discussion on ‘Sonification’, Theatre Noise, Central School of Speech and Drama.

2010:

• Round Table Discussion, on Lost Sound by John Smith in collaboration with Graeme Miller (1998-2001), organised By Royal College of Art, Curating Contemporary Art Ma Programme, Cafe Oto, London.

Recorded works

2002: Sounding Dartmoor, SpaceX & Liquid Press, i-dat.
2003: Phonographies: Glasgow, Frankfurt, Exeter, Sound-Marked (SM03-01CD).
2006: Cattle Grids of Dartmoor, Pataphonic (SM06-05CD).

Research interests

Operating at the intersections between sonic arts, sound art, experimental music, sound poetry, architecture, anthropology, cultural geography, documentary film, live-art and soundscape studies, Drever’s theoretical and practice-based research demonstrates an ongoing inquiry into the affect, perception and practice of everyday environmental sound and human utterance. Projects are often derived from extensive fieldwork in particular soundwalking and field recording, the most recent of which explores the crowd sounds of Hong Kong, Ochlophonics Hong Kong (2001-2010).

Fundamentally, much of Drever’s work is collaborative, including projects with Rachel Gomme, Alice Oswald, Alaric Sumner, Tony Thatcher, Tony Whitehead (RSPB) and Louise K. Wilson. He is a member of Blind Ditch and has worked on many projects with poet, Lawrence Upton. 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 has discussed his research on BBC Radio 3’s Here and Now and BBC World Service’s Discovery.

For more info see:
myspace
last.fm

Selected publications