Joel Stern is an artist, curator, and researcher based in Naarm/Melbourne. His work explores sound and listening as cultural, political, and technical practices shaping contemporary life. He is a Research Fellow at RMIT’s School of Media and Communication, an Associate Investigator at ADM+S, and was Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture from 2013 to 2022.
James Parker is an Associate Professor at Melbourne Law School, who works across legal scholarship, art criticism, curation, and production. He is an Associate Investigator with ADM+S, a former ARC DECRA fellow, former visiting fellow at the Program for Science, Technology and Society at the Harvard Kennedy School for Government, and sits on the advisory board of Earshot, an NGO specialising in audio forensics.
Sean Dockray is an artist and writer whose work explores the politics of technology, with a particular emphasis on artificial intelligences and the algorithmic web. He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Monash University, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of knowledge-sharing platforms, The Public School and AAAARG.ORG.
Friends of the project
Design: Stuart Geddes Website: Exhibitionist Comms: Audrey Pfister Graphic identity: Debris Facility Pty Ltd Event support: Alisa Blakeney Software support: Robert Ochshorn Research Assistance: Zoë de Luca, James Cafferky, Audrey Pfister Videography: Emile Zile, Keelan O’Herir
Partners
Machine Listening has been developed in partnership with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), Melbourne Law School, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Monash University, ANU School of Art & Design, Unsound, Liquid Architecture, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore.
In addition to these partners, the project has been supported with funds from the Australia Research Council, Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, and the City of Melbourne.
Contact
For information about any of our projects or for installation inquiries, email us at machinelistening2020@gmail.com
Recent Events
- 28 June 2026, How to Play a Dataset, Govett Brewster
- 8 May 2026, Salon, HAIR Gallery Melbourne
- 9 April 2026, Models: How vision machines see the world, presentation and in conversation with Andrew Brooks, Chris O’Neill, Elizabeth Stephens, and Nick Croggon, at Vision Machines, MCA x The Power Institute, Sydney.
- 4 April - 11 October 2026, Environments 12 plays daily in the Len Lye Cinema at 1:30pm on 4 April – 3 June, 25 June – 26 August, 10 September – 11 October, at Direct Bodily Empathy — Sound, Signal, Feedback, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand.
- 7 March 2026, Konvolute (hate speech), performance at Absorb(ed) V, Miscellania, Melbourne.
- 14 December 2025, How to read a dataset workshop, at FOPA, Melbourne.
- 13 November 2025, Environments 12 at *Mono55,* Room 40 at Institute of Modern Art (IMA), Brisbane.
- 19 October 2025, After-Care panel: Sean Dockray on 55 Falls, un Projects for Same Page Art Book Fair, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne.
- 24 July 2025, 55 Falls / Ambient Assisted Living opening at The Mourning After, RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne.
- 10 July 2025, What did wake words do?, AUSSTS: Signals and Noises, Deakin University, Melbourne.
- 9 July 2025, Voyce Walker workshop, AUSSTS: Signals and Noises, National Communication Museum, Melbourne.
- 19 June 2025, What wake words do: on the jurisprudence of machine listening, lecture at Le Son et Le Droit, Science Po, Paris.
- 19 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch for La Générale, Paris.
- 18 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch for Earthly Futures Studio, Montreuil, Paris.
- 17 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch at After 8 Books, Paris.
- 16 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch at Q-O2, presented by Futura Resistenza, Brussels.
- 14 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch for Ephemera Festival at Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.
- 12 June 2025, Environments 12 LP launch for Deep Assignments at Apiary Studios, London.
- 25 May 2025, Joel Stern performance at Hear the Machine, Melbourne.
- 10 May 2025, Joel Stern and Frances Barrett, performance at Cantos 5, Melbourne.
- 12 April - 11 September 2025, Signal to Noise, National Communication Museum, Melbourne.
- 19 February 2025, Egocentric Perception Workshop, Monash University Museum of Art as part of the public program Recompositions, Melbourne.
- 23 October 2024, Eryk Salvaggio: Gaussian Pop, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne.
- 15 October 2024, tracks from Songbook: 5-X, as part of Futile Futures at Civic Art Bureau, Canberra.
- 31 August 2024 - Songbook: 5-X, presented by Soft Centre as part of Now or Never Festival, Trades Hall, Melbourne.
- 30 August 2024 - The Search for the Perfect Language, presented by Soft Centre as part of Now or Never Festival, Trades Hall, Melbourne.
- Jenny and Tomomi events
- 23 August - 16 November 2024, This Hideous Replica, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne..
- 17 March 2024 - Radio as Social Sculpture, Cashmere Radio, Melbourne/Berlin.
- 12 December 2023 - Why Listen to Datasets? (a workshop) at Khoj Studios, New Delhi, India.
- 5 December 2023 - Why Listen to Datasets? (a workshop) | Environments 12 (listening session), at Soho Poly Arts Club, hosted by the Legal Otologies | Hear Law Sound residency at the Westminster Law & Theory Lab.
- 30 November 2023 - Clone Metamorphosis workshop as part of Inventing the Human conference, University of Melbourne & Online.
- 29 November 2023 - Lecture on the planetisation of machine listening, presented by the Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent.
- 27 November 2023 - Lecture on the planetisation of machine listening co-presented by the Faculty of Music and SONCITIES, University of Oxford.
- 21 November 2023 - Bodies, Data, Models, Worlds panel as part of Critical AI in the Art Museum: Practices & Politics, Australian National University & online.
- 17 November 2023 - Machine Listening Songbook #1: Clone Ursonate plays on BBC Late Junction .
- 16 November 2023 - Presentation on the planetisation of machine listening, at the Centre for Research Architecture Roundtable, Goldsmiths, London.
- 9 Nov 2023 - After Words opens at Galerie Nord | Kunstverein Tiergarten in Berlin as part of the exhibition v01ces – The Human Voice in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
- 1-8 October 2023 - Unsound Residency (Machine Listening Songbook; Dataset Audit workshop).
- 1-8 October 2023 - After Words staged at Unsound Festival in Krakow, Poland.
- 2 September 2023 - Planetary Auditions public program at RMIT Design Hub as part of the exhibition Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons.
- 25 August 2023 - After Words broadcast at Radiophrenia, Glasgow.
- 15 August 2023 - Environments 12 opens at RMIT Design Hub as part of the exhibition Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons.
- 23 May 2023 - Machine Listener Ep 4, an audio documentary by Aimée Theriot we were interviewed for, airs
- 11 May 2023 - After Words shown at Articulating Data, with introduction and discussion
- 27 April 2023 - Presentation on machine listening at earth magnitude at Automated Space, run by ADM+S
- 16 – 20 February 2023 - Data relations summer school
- 12 December 2022 - Ego Trip presented as part of You and I Are Water Earth Fire Air of Life and Death
- 10 Dec 2022 – 19 Mar 2023 - After Words shows at Data Relations, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art
- 21 July 2022 - Presentation of ‘Listening to everything, everywhere, all of the time, forever’ at ADM+S Symposium
- 18 Jan 2022 - Listening to Misrecognition, live on zoom and other platforms with Liquid Architecture and UQ Art Museum
- 4 August 2021 - Presentation on the Word Processor at ‘Score Event’, Darmstadt
- 13 March 2021 - Improvisation and Control, live on zoom and other platforms with Liquid Architecture, NTU Singapore and Unsound
- 4 October 2020 - Listening with the pandemic, live on zoom and other platforms at Unsound
- 3 October 2020 - Lessons in how (not) to be heard, live on zoom and other platforms at Unsound
- 2 October 2020 - (Against) the coming world of listening machines, live on zoom and other platforms at Unsound