douglas quin
Photo: © Dale Stokes
"The Audubon of Audio"
–The Washington Post
Douglas Quin is a music composer, sound artist and designer, wildlife recordist, public radio commentator and educator. For the past 30 years he has traveled widely documenting the natural soundscape—from Antarctic ice to Arctic tundra and from African savannah to Amazon rainforest.
His soundscape compositions, music and installations have been featured at numerous festivals and venues including Merkin Hall, The Kitchen, Roulette, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Spoleto Festival USA, National Art Gallery of Albania, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, and Venice International Performance Art Week. He is the recipient of numerous commissions, awards and grants including the Ars Acustica International prize, Meet the Composer, multiple fellowships in music composition from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation.
Quin’s extensive polar work over two decades includes a commission from West German Radio in Köln for a live satellite sound art project from Antarctica and Polar Suite, for the award-winning Kronos Quartet featuring soundscapes and interactive electronics. Other polar oriented work includes a fellowship at the National Film and Sound Archive Australia and the Liquid Architecture Sound Art Festival and Tour in Australia where he presented a series of multi-channel Antarctic soundscapes.
Among other projects, Quin created the sound design for and mixed Werner Herzog's Academy Award® nominated documentary film about Antarctica, Encounters at the End of the World and worked variously on Jurassic Park III, the game Spore, as well as documentaries for television and radio. He has also designed and consulted on exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History and the Polish Academy of Sciences, among others.
He is Professor Emeritus at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and former adjunct faculty in the School of Creative Arts and Media at the University of Tasmania.
Photo: © Fenia Kotsopoulou
"Douglas Quin is a great genius of sound."
–Werner Herzog
NEWS, MEDIA & RECENT EVENTS
Soundscapes from the Pantanal, the largest expanse of freshwater wetlands in the world. It boasts a diverse range of fauna and flora including over 450 species of birds, at least 250 species of fish, and more than 10 million crocodilians––the planet's largest concentration of this family of reptiles. Available on Bandcamp. The digital booklet for the album may be downloaded from here.
Notecards is a collection of works created as part of a decade-long conversation in music and soundscape between Doug Quin and Ed Ruchalski. Available on Bandcamp. The 28-page digital booklet for the album may be downloaded from here.
"STRATA: The Research Process in the Making of a Performance-Based Film"
by Andrea Pagnes, Verena Stenke, daz disley & Douglas Quin
In Performance Matters
Performing Practice-Based Research
Vol. 9 No. 1-2 (2023)
Soundscapes is an iOS app to reconnect with nature by exploring a collection of hundreds of immersive and high-quality soundscapes produced by passionate and renowned artists from around the world. Featuring new works by Douglas Quin. Available on iTunes.
CURRENT AND RECENT PROJECTS
STRATA. The fifth performance-based film project by the duo VestAndPage. Filmed on location in caves across the Swabian Jura in southern Germany. The project brings together artists and researchers from the humanities, social and geologic sciences to investigate the human body as a place that exists in continuity with the geological. Body artists illuminate concepts of deep time, past and modern cultures through performances for the camera in caves rich in human prehistory. In post-production. Release date, February, 2024.
Douglas Quin: Sound Design & Audio Arts
For more information: stratafilm.de
STRAT/osphere
A tapestry of audio art, still imagery and artifacts generated as part of the collaborative making of the film STRATA.
LISTENING
ABC Radio
Radio New Zealand
Antarctica
Antarctica: The Millennium
Oropendola
Ulva Island
Conversations with Aiste Ptakauske
June 5-6 2024
Los Angeles CA
RECORDINGS
The following recordings are available for download from iTunes.
Caratinga
Forests: A Book of Hours
Fathom
Des Racines au Cosmos
(Roots to the Cosmos)
with Suzie Gagnon
Before the War
with David Rothenberg
