bio & cv
Joshua Dumas is a composer, new media, and sound artist in Brooklyn. He scores dance, theatre and film; creates algorithmic compositions; makes glitch art and digital video; and creates installation and sound work; often at the intersection of technology with social and ecological justice.
He has released over 30 albums ranging from drone soundscape to glitch dance music to work for chamber orchestra. He has received commissions from the Chicago Parks District, Experimental Sound Studio, and the Human Impacts Institute. With a grant from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs he created a generative smartphone app that responds to listeners’ GPS location to unfold patterns of music and sound.
He composes and performs with Mending, Tired Circuits, and AM Higgins. He has scored three feature films and more than 15 shorts. He facilitates the charity music organization Quick Covers For A Cause.
He has presented work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Brooklyn Public Library, Triskelion Arts, Tribeca Film Festival, Knockdown Center, Gene Siskel Center, The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, Španski Borci Cultural Centre in Ljubljana Slovenia, and Tabakalera in San Sebastián Spain. He has collaborated with Sarah Cameron Sunde in residence at the Watermill Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and 3LD Art & Technology Center, as well as scoring the video presentation of Sunde’s 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea.
His pronouns are he/they. He is an abolitionist and pacifist.
Please download his cv here (66KB PDF).
Artist Statement
I believe that information and knowledge, when delivered via awe, quietude, pleasure and surprise can be a potent tool for dismantling the systems that harm our earth and all its beings. My practice begins with information gathering — collating new data or highlighting others’ research — and then uses music, sound, video, text, code, glitch, broadcast and performance to try to repackage and deliver that information in poetical, uncanny, truthful ways.
I think of my work as a kind of “ambient agitprop” that explores social and ecological justice via constructive (i.e generative music) and destructive (i.e. glitch, databending) art-making strategies.