Mark Peter Wright

Reader in Critical Sound Practice

CRiSAP Member (2019 – present)

 

Mark Peter Wright is an artist, researcher and writer. His monograph "Listening After Nature: Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice" was published by Bloomsbury in 2022 (hardback) 2023 (paperback).

His practice combines installation, sound, writing, performance and collaboration, generating questions that include: how does environmental sound convey complex geopolitical meaning? How can technology and media be practiced with an eco-critical sensitivity and how might listening operate beyond the human? Underpinning these questions and forms is a commitment to environmental relations and affects: sounds, traces and phenomena, near and far; how media artefacts matter; how technology becomes critical; how practice can be infused with play. He is interested in the documentary form and the ways technology, self and space perform agency, power and poetics. Fieldwork, its ethics and aesthetics, is therefore a site of research. In addition to environmental encounters, his work investigates the pedagogical scene of playback as a commons for sensing and sense-making.

An Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), he has significant teaching experience that includes designing and leading lectures, workshops and seminars. He has delivered extensive public events for organisations and institutes in the UK and abroad. Conference papers, keynotes and invited talks have been presented at Harvard University (USA), University of Copenhagen (DK), Critical Media Lab (CH), Oslo School of Environmental Humanities (NO), University of Stavanger (NO), Wellcome Collection (UK) and many more. His writing has been published in anthologies (Palgrave Macmillan, DPR Barcelona, Uniform Books), peer reviewed articles have been published with Interference Journal, Leonardo Music Journal, Evental Aesthetics Journal, Seismograf Journal, Sensate Journal and the Journal of Sonic Studies.

As a practitioner, Mark has exhibited and performed widely in solo and group exhibitions at IMT Gallery, Platform A, MIMA, New York Public Library, The Showroom, Museum of Contemporary Art Rome, Café Oto, Catalyst Arts, GV Art, Royal Academy of the Arts, TATE and Trinity House Square Dublin. In addition to his own practice-based research, Mark collaborates extensively. With Helena Hunter he works under the name Matterlurgy. With Prof. Angus Carlyle he works on projects and performances that explore the relations of listening and recording, nature and aesthetics, site and studio. Between 2014-2021 he co-convened Points of Listening with Prof. Salomé Voegelin, a series of public events exploring listening and sound-making.

His practice has been recognised across various awards including being named the British Composer of the Year in Sonic Arts. For his teaching, he received the Outstanding Postgraduate Supervisor Award, UAL in 2021. As a member of CRiSAP, he supervises doctoral research candidates. He is also the Screen School Research Coordinator and sits on the College Research Committee and Research Funding Scrutiny Panel (LCC).