Peter Cusack

Research Fellow in Sound Arts

CRiSAP Emeritus Member (2021 - present)

CRiSAP Member (2005 - 2021)

 

Peter Cusack is a field recordist, musician and researcher with a long interest in the sound environment. Projects include community arts, researches into sound and our sense of place and documentary recordings in areas of special sonic interest (Lake Baikal, Siberia). His project Sounds From Dangerous Places explores soundscapes at sites of major environmental damage - Chernobyl exclusion zone; Caspian oil fields; UK nuclear sites. This project continues and is currently researching the regeneration of the North Aral Sea, Kazakhstan. He describes the use of sound to investigate documentary issues as sonic journalism.

He initiated the Favourite Sound Project in London 1998. It aims to discover what people find positive about their everyday sound environment and has since been carried out in Beijing, Berlin, Manchester, Southend-on-Sea, Prague, Birmingham and Taranto. He co-produced the environmental sound program Vermilion Sounds for ResonanceFM, London and was a research fellow on the multidisciplinary ‘Positive Soundscapes Project’ 2006/9.

During 2011/12 he was a DAAD artist in residence in Berlin, where he worked on the collaborative project Berlin Sonic Spaces that explored the relationship between soundscape and city development.

He has had a long-term interest in improvised music, usually on guitar. CDs include Where is the Green Parrot? (ReR PC1); Your Favourite London Sounds (Resonance); A Host of Golden Daffodils (Platelunch) with Nic Collins; Operet (Rere121) with Viv Corringham; Day For Night (Paradigm) with Max Eastley; Baikal Ice (ReR PC2); Favourite Beijing Sounds (KwanYin 022); Sound from Dangerous Places (ReR PC3&4); Favourite Berlin Sounds (ReR PC5).