Douglas Kahn

Australian historian and theorist of sound in the arts, born in 1951, whose scholarship has been foundational in establishing sound studies as an academic discipline. His book Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (1999) charts sound's role across modernism and the avant-garde, from Futurism through John Cage to Yoko Ono and William S. Burroughs. He also co-edited Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde and authored Earth Sound Earth Signal. He has held professorial positions at the University of New South Wales, where he was based at the National Institute for Experimental Arts in Sydney.