Bio
Olivia Block is a composer and media artist based in Chicago.
Her recorded compositions combine field recordings, chamber instruments, electronic textures, and others. Block creates multimedia installations and performances utilizing field recordings, found sounds from micro cassette tapes, video, and curated 35mm slides. Block’s current work reflects her interests in site specificity, ethnographic sound, architecture, and found/archival materials from the 1950's-1990s.
Block often performs her own solo pieces utilizing electronically processed amplified objects, found recordings on tapes, and various techniques inside grand pianos. Her studio based compositions are published on And/Oar, Cut, Erstwhile, Glistening Examples, NNA, and Sedimental, among other labels. She has created site specific multi-speaker installations for The Sanitorium in Sokolowsko, Poland, The Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Chicago, and the Olympics in Turin Italy, among others.
The Sound Department Colloquium Series is a weekly series of presentations by the department's visiting artists and scholars, faculty, graduate students and invited guests.
