Joel Stern

Dr Joel Stern is a researcher, curator, and artist based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. Informed by a background in experimental music and sonic art, his work explores how practices of sound and listening shape contemporary social, technological, and political realities. From 2022 to 2025, he was Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.

In 2020, together with Sean Dockray and James Parker, Stern co-founded Machine Listening, a platform for collaborative research and artistic experimentation. The collective works across writing, installation, performance, software, curation, pedagogy, and radio. Their work has been presented at major institutions including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Cricoteka Tadeusz Kantor Museum (Kraków), Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Galerie Nord (Berlin), the National Communication Museum, RMIT Design Hub, and MUMA. They have performed at Unsound Festival, Soft Centre, and Melbourne Recital Centre, among others. Machine Listening’s projects frequently focus on the politics of datasets and algorithmic systems.

Machine Listening evolved from Stern’s earlier collaboration with Parker on Eavesdropping, a major curatorial and research project presented at the Ian Potter Museum of Art (University of Melbourne) and City Gallery Wellington. Addressing the capture and control of sonic life, Eavesdropping comprised exhibitions, public programs, and publications, forming the basis of Stern’s PhD thesis, Eavesdropping: The Politics, Ethics, and Art of Listening (Monash University, 2020).

In 2024, with Dockray, Stern curated This Hideous Replica, an exhibition and public program exploring replication and duplication in the context of emerging technologies. From 2013 to 2022, he was Artistic Director of Liquid Architecture, establishing it as a leading platform for sonic art and experimental listening practices.

Artworks/Performances (selection)

• 55 Falls / Ambient Assisted Living, RMIT Design Hub, 2025
• #C, Monash University Museum of Art, 2025
• Voyce Walkr, National Communication Museum, 2025
• MESS commissioned artist, Melbourne Recital Centre, 2024
• Machine Listening Songbook 5-x, Soft Centre festival, State Library of Victoria, 2024
• Machine Listening Songbook, Unsound Festival, 2023
• Environments 12, RMIT Design Hub, 2023
• After Words, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, 2022
• Music and sound art performances in Australia, Europe, Asia and North America, solo and with various collaborators since 2000. 

Curatorial (selection)

• Signal to Noise, National Communication Museum, 2025
• This Hideous Replica, RMIT Gallery/First Site/Now or Never Festival, 2024
• Art+Race+AI, Victorian College of Art / Art+Australia, 2023
• Data Relations Summer School, ACCA and RMIT, 2023
• Liquid Architecture x Light, ACMI, Melbourne, 2022
• AUDITION series, Composite and various venues, Melbourne, 2022
• Logical Conclusions/Automation Effects, ADM+S Symposium, Miscenllania, 2022
• Tomoko Momiyama, Contemporary Art Tasmania, Hobart, 2022
• Jenny Hickinbotham: Songs so Far, Blindside Gallery, Melbourne, 2022
• Machine Listening: Unnatural Language Processing, Unsound Festival, Krakow, 2022
• 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
• Polyphonic Social Festival, Abbotsford Convent, 2016-2019
• Eavesdropping, City Gallery, Wellington, 2019
• Ventriloquy, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, 2019
• Eavesdropping,  Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne 2018Acoustic Justice, Federal Court of Australia, Melbourne, 2018
• Instrument Builders Project 4, Kyoto Art Centre, Kyoto, 2018
• OtherFilm Festival, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, 2006-2012
  
  Industry
  
  
• 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