Dr. Joel Stern

Joel Stern is a researcher, curator, and artist living in Naarm / Melbourne, Australia.  

Informed by his background in DIY and experimental music scenes, Stern’s work focusses on how social, political, and technical practices of sound and listening inform and shape our contemporary worlds.  

In 2013, Stern was appointed Artistic Director of pioneering Australian sonic art organisation Liquid Architecture, a position which he held until 2022. In this capacity Stern has produced and curated numerous festivals, exhibitions, concerts and publications in Australia and internationally, while developing artistic research investigations and programs including Eavesdropping, Machine Listening, Polyphonic Social, Why Listen?, Instrument Builders Project, and Ritual Community Music.  

In 2018, with James Parker of Melbourne Law School, Stern curated Eavesdropping, a multifaceted project staged at Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, and City Gallery, Wellington, addressing the capture and control of our sonic worlds by state and corporate interests, alongside strategies of resistance. Eavesdropping comprised a touring exhibition, public programs, research and reading groups and an edited publication, made in collaboration with artists, researchers, writers, and activists from Australia and around the world. This project also formed the basis of Stern’s PhD thesis ‘Eavesdropping: The Politics, Ethics, and Art of Listening’ completed in 2020 through the Curatorial Practice program at Monash University.  

In 2020, with James Parker, and artist and writer Sean Dockray, Stern founded Machine Listening Curriculum, a critical platform for research, sharing, and artistic experimentation, focused on new and emerging forms of listening grounded in artificial intelligence and machine learning. In March 2022, Stern stepped down as Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture to begin a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at RMIT School of Media and Communication to continue to develop his work on machine listening.

Curatorial projects

• Machine Listening: Unnatural Language Processing, Unsound Festival, Krakow, 2021
• Disorganising, Collingwood Yards, Melbourne, 2021
• Machine Listening: Improvisation and Control, NTU CCA Singapore, 2021
• Unheard Relations, McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery, Langwarrin, 2021
• Instrument Builders Project 5, MONA FOMA, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, 2021
• Machine Listening: Against the Coming World, Unsound Festival, Krakow, 2020
• Unsettling Scores: Sovereignty, Resistance, Futurity Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, 2020
• Megan Cope: Death Song, Art Gallery South Australia, Adelaide, 2020
• Polyphonic Social Festival, Abbotsford Convent, 2016-2019
• Eavesdropping, City Gallery,  Wellington, 2019
• Ventriloquy, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2019
• Contra Listening, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane,2019
• Eavesdropping,  Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne 2018
• Acoustic Justice, Federal Court of Australia, Melbourne, 2018
• Instrument Builders Project 4, Kyoto Art Centre, Kyoto, 2018
• Black Quantum Futurism, The Substation, 2018
• Michel Chion: The Voice in Cinema, or the Acousmêtre and Me,  Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney, 2017
• Michel Chion: The Audio Spectator, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2017
• Overground Festival, Arts Centre, Melbourne, 2017
• Flux Quarry, Unconformity Festival, Queenstown, 2017
• Why Listen to Animals?, West Space, Melbourne, 2016
• Autotune Everything: Sonic, Cosmic, Politic, Melbourne Art Fair, Melbourne, 2016
• Time Out of Time, Tarrawarra Museum of Art, Tawwararra, 2015
• Capitalist Surrealism, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2015
• Instrument Builders Project 3, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2014
• Liquid Architecture Singapore, Lasalle College for the Arts, Singapore, 2014
• Stutterances, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2014
• Experimental Universe: Re-Enactments and Imaginings, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2014
• Instrument Builders Project, Indonesia Contemporary Art Network, Yogyakarta, 2013
• Brilliant Journeys, Opera House, Sydney, 2010
• Australian Avant-Garde, San Francisco Cinematheque, 2010
• OtherFilm Festival, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2006-2012

• Monash University, Doctor of Philosophy (Curatorial Practice), 2020
• Queensland University of Technology, Master of Fine Arts (Music), 2012
• London College of Communication, Certificate of Sound Art and Music Technology, 2003.
• Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Bachelor of Art (Media Studies), 2000

• Liquid Architecture, Artistic Director / CEO, 2013-
• City of Yarra, Yarra Arts Community Engagement Facilitator, 2021
• Instrument Builders Project, founding co-Director, 2012-
• OtherFilm, founding co-Director, 2004-2012
• Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Associate, Melbourne Law School
• Sound Art and Auditory Cultures Lab, Associate, RMIT
• Australia Council for the Arts, Peer Assessor, 2021-24
• Australia Council for the Arts, International Engagement Assessor, 2021
• Music Victoria Awards, Assessor, 2017, 2021
• Asialink, Performing Arts Assessment Panel, 2010-2013
• Melbourne International Film Festival, Assessment Panel, 2010-2012