Professor John Levack Drever
Staff details
Drever is Professor of Acoustic Ecology and Sound Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he leads the Unit for Sound Practice Research (SPR). 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, Drever co-ordinated ‘Sounding Dartmoor - a public soundscape study’, in collaboration with The Touring Exhibition of Sound Environments (TESE), Aune Head Arts, and the Digital Crowd, University of Plymouth. During 2003-04 he was an Arts Council of England & AHRB Arts and Science Research Fellow with Centre for Computational Creativity, City University exploring ‘electronic music performance interfaces that learn from their users’. He was awarded a Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control from the Institute of Acoustics in 2012, with specialist modules in Building Acoustics and Environmental Noise, becoming a full member of the Institute of Acoustics in 2013.
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 and in the summer of 2016 he was a Guest Professor in The Department of Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark.
An elected director of Sonic Arts Network since 2004, Drever became its final chair in 2008. He was a co-founder (1998) and 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. With Aki Pasoulas he co-chaired The Symposium on Acoustic Ecology at the University of Kent in 2013 and in 2011 he co-chaired the Phonography Colloquium at Goldsmiths with Emmanuel Spinelli for SPR. In May 2014 he co-directed, Sound Art Curating Conference: Histories, Theories and Practices of Sound Art, at Goldsmiths, and The Courtauld Institute of Art in collaboration with Operational and Curatorial Research in Contemporary Art, Design, Science and Technology (OCR). He has also been actively involved in the Noise Futures Network (EPSRC) and COST Action TD0804 Soundscapes of European Cities and Landscapes.
Drever is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College (2009-16) and is a Visiting Research Fellow at Seian University of Art and Design, Japan. In 2013 he became an Academician of The Academy of Urbanism.
Academic qualifications
- BMus (Hons), University of Wales, Bangor (1995)
- MMus, University of East Anglia (1996)
- PhD, Dartington College of Arts (2001)
- Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control (2012)
Teaching
- At Undergraduate John leads Sonic Art Practice and Phonography.
- At Postgraduate level John is the Pathway Leader for the MMus in Sonic Arts and coordinates Sound Agendas and Studio Practice course options.
Areas of supervision
Completed
Antonis Antoniou: Aural Aura and Haunting Echoes: Places with complex biographies (Completed, PhD, 2016, Goldsmiths)
Tine Blom: Nature, wilderness and ecological awareness: Exploration, experience and the creation of audiovisual artworks of a mountain (Co-supervisor Prof Janis Jeffries, completed 2019, Goldsmiths)
James Bulley: Sounding Materiality: Explorations in Resonant Practice (Co-supervisor Prof Janis Jeffries, 2018, Goldsmiths)
Tsai-Wei Chen (ORSAS): Sonic Constellations – sojourners' interconnected soundscapes – a case study of ten Taipei sojourners' listening experiences in London (Completed, PhD, 2010, Goldsmiths)
Christopher DeLaurenti: Activist Sound: Field Recording, Phonography, and Soundscapes of Protest (Co-supervisor Dr Iris Garrelfs Completed, PhD, 2020, Goldsmith)
Lucia, Hsiang-Ying-Chung: A Sound Encounter of En Creux: in-between Roni Horn, Robert Smithson and Alvin Lucier (Completed, PhD, 2014, Goldsmiths)
Gregorio Fontaine: Vacilar: The Entanglement of Self-expression and its Outside (Completed, PhD, 2019, Goldsmiths)
Su-Ann Goh: Sonic Knowledge Production in Archaeoacoustics: Echoes of elsewhere? (Lead Supervisor Prof Julian Henriques, Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, 2020)
Ruth Hawkins: Interpenetrations of Recordings and the Real (completed, PhD, 2013, Goldsmiths)
Marcus Leadley: In Situ Listening: Soundscape, Site and Transphonia (Completed, PhD, 2015, Goldsmiths)
Claudia Martinho: Aural Architecture Practice: Creative Approaches Towards an Ecology of Affect (Co-supervisor Dr Iris Garrelfs, completed, PhD, 2019)
Sam Murray: Facilitating Heterarchic Collaboration: Practice-led Research and the Promotion of Egalitarian Compositional Creativity (Competed, PhD, 2020, Goldsmiths)
Mari Ohno: Composing with Matter: Interdisciplinary Explorations Between the Natural and the Artificial (Co-supervisor Dr Patricia Alessandrini, Completed, PhD, 2020, Goldsmiths)
Tommaso Perego: Towards a Sonic Choreosophia: An investigation on the Movement of Sound Sources for creating musical works (Completed, PhD, 2016, Goldsmiths)
Kathrine Sandys: I Thought I Grew an Ear in My Stomach - The Phenomenological Experience of the Art Event as a Sublime Encounter (Co-supervisor Prof Janis Jeffries, Completed, PhD 2013, Goldsmiths)
Dawn Scarfe (AHRC): In the surround – sound and phenomenal experience (Co-supervisor Prof Janis Jeffries, Completed, PhD, 2011, Goldsmiths)
Emmanuel Spinelli: Acoustic Phenotypology – The territory of the disembodied voice in electro-acoustic music and the perception of Acousmatic Identities (Completed, PhD, 2016, Goldsmiths)
Carter Weleminsky: Sonic Diaspora: Exploring Migration Through Interdisciplinary Soundscape Composition (Completed, PhD, 2020, Goldsmiths)
John Wynne: Hearing Voices – Sound art practice in a cross-cultural context (Completed, PhD, 2007, Goldsmiths)
Current
Shelley Calhoun-scullion: Immigrant Noise, and the Infrapolitical Space of Michigan (Co-supervisor Dr Holly Rogers)
Mattia Cobianchi (CHASE, CDA with Noise Abatement Society) Liveable listenable Cities (Co-supervisors: Lisa Lavia & Prof Jonny Freeman)
Chris Cook: (CHASE) Soundscape co-composition and the interpretive listening of people with dementia.
Deborah Kent (CHASE): Re-sounding Silvertown: sonic reverberations of radical urban change in London Docklands (Co-supervisor Dr Louis Moreno)
I-Chin Li: Composing with Improvisation - Music Theatre with Electronics, Body Movements and Moving Images
Sophia Loizou: (CHASE) Irregular territories: sonic fiction as a mode of ecologicalsound arts practice (Co-supervisor Dr Ayesha Hameed)
Aysegul Yildirim: Criminology of Noise Pollution: An Ethnographic Approach (Co-supervisor Prof Daniel Neyland)
Research Interests
Operating at the intersection of sonic arts, sound design, soundscape studies, experimental music and acoustics, Drever’s research represents an ongoing inquiry into the affect, perception, design and practice of everyday environmental sound and human utterance. Projects are often derived from extensive fieldwork, such as the exploration of the crowding and the crowded soundscape of Hong Kong in 'Ochlophonics Hong Kong' (2001-2010) and 'Sounding Dartmoor', a participative soundscape study of Dartmoor National Park (2000-2) for the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth) in collaboration with Aune Head Arts. His current project is concerned with the noise effects of ultra-fast hand dryers on users with sensitive hearing and special auditory needs, such as children and hyperacusis sufferers.
In addition to Drever’s independent practice, collaboration and cross-art form dialogue have been crucial. Collaborators have included performance artist Rachel Gomme, poets Alice Oswald and Alaric Sumner, choreographer Tony Thatcher, ornithologist Tony Whitehead, visual artist Louise K. Wilson, painter Suiji Okada and comedian Mark Kelly. He regularly collaborates and performs with pioneering sound poet Lawrence Upton. Drever is a member of art collective Blind Ditch and the Morpheme Theatre Company. Commissions range from the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Paris (1999), Arts Council England (2002, 2007, 2013), WDR Studio Akustische Kunst (2011) to the RSPB (2002). His work has twice been awarded a prize in the annual Musica Nova competition, Prague (1997 & 1998).
Publications
Composition
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Book Section
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Conference or Workshop Item
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Digital
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Edited Journal
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Thesis
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