Cathy van Eck (1979 Belgium/Netherlands) is a composer, sound artist, and researcher in the arts. She focuses on composing relationships between everyday objects, human performers, and sound. Her artistic work includes performances with live-electronics and installations with everyday objects. She is interested in setting her movements, actions and gestures into relationships with a rich palette of different sounds, exploring peculiar sonic sceneries. The result could be called “performative sound art”, since it combines elements from performance art, electronic music, and visual arts. She regularly performs her own works such as Empty Chairs, In Paradisum, Cheering for Others Makes You a Leader, and Song No 3. Her work transcends genres and is presented at occasions as diverse as experimental or electronic music concerts, open air festivals, sound art gallery venues, digital art events, or performance art festivals. She is a board member of iii (instrument inventors initiative), an artist run organisation supporting new interdisciplinary practices linking performance, technology and the human senses.

Cathy is a professor at the Academy of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland, teaching at the Sound Arts Bachelor, and at the Masters Contemporary Arts Practice and Composition Creative Practice. She was a Konrad Boehmer Visiting Professor at the Institute for Sonology in The Hague, Netherlands from 2020 till 2023. She is a regular guest lecturer at other art and music universities. In her PhD-research Between Air and Electricity (supervised by Richard Barrett, Marcel Cobussen and Frans de Ruiter), she investigated the use of microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments. Her book Between Air and Electricity – Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments has been published in 2017 and she writes regularly on www.microphonesandloudspeakers.com. Her current research is on the possibilities of connections between gestures, sensors and sounds.

Performances and Festivals see my agenda for up to date information.

Works see my list of all works for information on my recent works, both perfomance-based and installations, and on commissions.

Teaching

• 2020-23: Konrad Boehmer Visiting Professor at the Institute for Sonology.
• Since 2009: Permanent teaching position (professor) at the Sound Arts Department of the Academy of the Arts in Bern, Switzerland. She teaches at the Sound Arts Bachelor, the Master of Arts in Contemporary Arts Practice (MA CAP) and the Master of Composition Creative Practice.
• 2007–2009 Department of Sound Arts, Academy of the Arts Bern, Switzerland: Lecturer.
• Teaching Workshops on themes such as “Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments” and “Gestures in Electronic Music”, for example at the Young Composers Meeting 2015 in Apeldoorn, University of the Arts Berlin, Institute for Sonology The Hague, University of Film Konrad Wolf in Potsdam, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Leeds University, and SARMA in Brussels.
• Many guest lectures at for example School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Manhattan School of Music, Cologne Music Academy, New York University, Zurich University of the Arts, Brooklyn College CUNY, Institute for Sonology The Hague, Amsterdam Music Academy, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology Zurich, and Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

Research

• 2023-2024 Research project Academy of the Arts Bern on The Origins of Sounds on gestures used in electronic music together with Tobias Ruetschi.
• 2022-2026 Team member of the SNF Research Project Triple Instruments. Through truth wind blows.
• 2015-2017 Team member of the SNF Research Project Mit Kopfhörern unterwegs – Wahrnehmung, Aneignung und diskursive Konstitution von öffentlichem Raum. Künstlerische und ethnografische Verfahren im Dialog at the University of Zurich.
• 2014 Team member of the PEAK Research Project TransCoding–from ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture.
• 2013 Dissertation Defense Between Air and Electricity—Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments.
• 2013 Team member of the Urbane Künste Ruhr Project Sonozones—Labor Mülheim ZHdK.
• Lectures and posters at conferences and symposia such as SAR Meeting at the Stockholm University of the Arts (2013), Digital Art Week (2007, ETH Zurich, Switzerland), The Musician as Listener Conference (2008, ORCiM, Ghent, Belgium) or Theatre Noise Conference (2009, University of London, London, United Kingdom).
• Articles (selection):
• sonozones, together with Jan Schacher, Kirsten Reese and Trond Lossius, JAR No. 6 ((Journal for Artisic Research) (2014)
• Song No 3 – Singing through Gestures, JAR No. 0 (Journal for Artisic Research) (2011)
• Where music starts, RTRSRCH No. 2 (2010)
• A good servant dismissed for becoming a bad master – Zur Geschichte der gleichstufigen Temperatur, Dissonance No. 110 (2010)
• Lautenlaute – Humor in Musik über Musik, Zeitgenössische Komische Oper, edited by Titus Engel und Viktor Schoner (2010)