Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jul 25, 2026

Brian House

Brian House is a new media artist known for projects that utilize sound and data sonification to explore the relationship between nature and technology. His early work also includes key examples of locative media art and the combination of new media with social practice. House has appeared in numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Ars Electronica and ZKM Center for Art and Media.

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Brian House
Brian House speaking at Columbia University in 2019
Born
Brian House

1979 (age 46–47)
Denver, Colorado
Education
Known forNew media art, sound art
Awards
Websitebrianhouse.net

Brian House (born Denver, Colorado) is a new media artist known for projects that utilize sound and data sonification to explore the relationship between nature and technology.2 His early work also includes key examples of locative media art and the combination of new media with social practice.34 House has appeared in numerous exhibitions around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Ars Electronica and ZKM Center for Art and Media.

Biography

House graduated with a degree in computer science from Columbia University, where he studied at the Computer Music Center. He subsequently received a master's degree from Chalmers tekniska högskola 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 on returning to New York City.

Knifeandfork received a 2007 Rhizome 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 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 magazine.5

House earned a PhD at Brown University in 2018, where he studied with Wendy Hui Kyong Chun. As of 2026 he is an assistant professor of art at Amherst College,6 and is represented by Gallery Nosco in London.7

Selected works

Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World (2025)

Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World is an album that House released on the German label Gruenrekorder on 7 November 2025.8 It comprises recordings of atmospheric infrasound, low-frequency sound below about 20 hertz that the human ear cannot detect.9 House captured the recordings over a 24-hour period near Amherst, Massachusetts, using devices he built and named "macrophones," whose design is based on the infrasound sensor arrays that the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization uses to monitor for distant nuclear tests.1011 He then sped the audio up by a factor of 60, compressing a full day into roughly 24 minutes and raising its pitch by about six octaves to bring it within the range of human hearing, and divided the result into a daytime track and a nighttime track.912 House has connected the work to climate change, noting that infrasound travels long distances from sources such as storms, ocean currents, wildfires, and receding glaciers.1314 The recording is part of his larger project Macrophones, which received a Creative Capital award in 2023.15 It was named among Bandcamp Daily's best field recordings of 2025 and was reviewed and profiled in The Wire, Spin, MIT Technology Review, and The Washington Post.111210913 Reviewing it in The Wire, Julian Cowley described the album as "a notable document in terms of its conceptual and technological ingenuity."12

Animas (2016)

Animas is a reaction to the 2015 Gold King Mine waste water spill, 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.16

Conversnitch (2013)

House and Kyle McDonald converted light bulbs in public spaces into microphones that automatically tweeted overheard conversations.17

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.18

Joyride (2011)

In 2011, House used OpenPaths and Google Street View to track the location of a stolen iPhone and create a re-enactment of the thief's journey.19

Trying the Hand of God (2009)

In 2009, House and Huang (as Knifeandfork) were social practice 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's famous "Hand of God" goal from the 1986 World Cup. Members of the audience played the role of Maradona.4

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 locative media use and mobile phone art and draws concepts from psychogeography.20

Yellow Arrow was included in the Design and the Elastic Mind show at MoMA curated by Paola Antonelli.21

References

References

  1. "MacDowell Awards 134 Spring Summer 2026 Fellowships to Artists Working Across Disciplines". MacDowell. 27 February 2026. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  2. Greg J. Smith (7 December 2013). "Sonification and the (re-)performance of data – an interview with Brian House". CreativeApplications. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - Ehrenfeld, Dan (15 August 2016). "The Cloud and the Mine: A Conversation with Media Artist Brian House about Big Data and the Circulation of Digital Writing". Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. 21.
    - Kirn, Peter (12 August 2012). "In Percussive Harmonies, A Record of a Year of Travel – Literally, on a Record". Create Digital Music. Archived from the original on 10 September 2016.
  3. Raley, Rita (8 March 2010). "Walk This Way: Mobile Narrative as Composed Experience". In Schäfer, Jörgen; Gendolla, Peter (eds.). Beyond the Screen: Transformations of Literary Structures, Interfaces and Genres. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag. pp. 299–317. ISBN 9783837612585.
    - McCullough, Malcolm (21 August 2015). Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information (Reprint ed.). The MIT Press. pp. 126–130. ISBN 9780262528399.
    - Thompson, Jessica (2018). "Beyond Beyond Locative Media: Art, Data and the Politics of Place". Drain. 5. ISSN 2469-3022.
  4. Kester, Grant; Bluhm, Erik; González, Rita; Stang, Aandrea (31 January 2013). Hamilton, Elizabeth (ed.). Engagement Party: Social Practice at MOCA, 2008-2012. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. ISBN 9781933751238.
  5. Carbone, Nick. "Through the Looking Glass: A Tour of the Mirror That's One of Time's Favorite Inventions". Time. ISSN 0040-781X. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
  6. https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/bhouse
  7. "Brian House". Gallery Nosco. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
  8. "Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World | Brian House". Gruenrekorder. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  9. Brouillette, Monique (25 February 2026). "Listen to Earth's rumbling, secret soundtrack". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  10. Amorosi, A. D. (Spring 2026). "Macrophone Fiend". Spin. p. 26. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  11. Blackwell, Matthew (11 December 2025). "The Best Field Recordings of 2025". Bandcamp Daily. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  12. Cowley, Julian (2025). "Everyday Infrasound in an Uncertain World". The Wire. No. 502. pp. 64–65.
  13. Milbank, Dana (13 March 2026). "These sounds are all around us—Hear them for the first time". The Washington Post. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  14. "Exploring the world of sound beyond human hearing". GBH. 8 April 2026. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  15. "Macrophones". Creative Capital. Retrieved 15 June 2026.
  16. "This art installation creates sounds based on real-time data from a polluted river". The Verge. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - Froyd, Susan (11 April 2017). "Myhren Gallery's Storm Warning Heats Up the Debate Over Climate Change". Westword. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
  17. Power, Mike (16 May 2014). "Conversnitch turns covert surveillance into an art form". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - "An Eavesdropping Lamp That Livetweets Private Conversations". Wired. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
  18. VanHemert, Kyle. "Artist Turns a Year's Worth of Tracking Data Into a Haunting Record". Wired. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - "Soundtrack Of Your Life: Get Into The Groove Of Tracking Your Every Move In Vinyl". Co.Design. 8 July 2013. Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - "Quotidian Record". Neural (46). Autumn 2013.
  19. Mat Honan (19 July 2011). "Following A Stolen iPhone's Path in Google's Getaway Car". Gizmodo. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  20. Todras-Whitehill, Ethan (25 January 2006). "Making Connections, Here and Now". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
    - Shepard, Mark, ed. (18 February 2011). Sentient City: Ubiquitous Computing, Architecture, and the Future of Urban Space. New York: The MIT Press. ISBN 9780262515863.
  21. Aldersey-Williams, Hugh; Hall, Peter; Sargent, Ted; Antonelli, Paola (1 March 2008). Design and the Elastic Mind. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. ISBN 9780870707322.
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