Cathy van Eck

Which sound is special for you?

The sound of breathing. It is one of the few sounds that I also carry with me, but of which I am only aware in certain situations.

How do you practise listening?

I like to listen to sounds picked up by microphones. These sounds are then diffused through loudspeakers (small ones in my ears or big ones in the space). Using a different microphone, or different loudspeakers, a different placement in space, or a different distance towards the amplified sounds all result in a very different listening perspective. I like to be reminded in this way, that something like “hifi” listening does not exist. I always listen from a specific perspective, even when not using any devices.

Concert hall or outside?

I like to work with spaces and environments and both these categories are too unspecific for me. I like to work with buildings that have not been build as concert halls. Former factories, barns, and deserted houses. Working outside can also be interesting, but here again: just outside is too unspecific. I like to work with acoustical characteristics, using walls, arches, or windows to reflect the sounds. Not everything works though, and especially the work and the environment have to suit each other. So I often adapt the work to the environment.

Born 1979 in Belgium and the Netherlands. Cathy van Eck 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.