Eric Leonardson, a Chicago-based audio artist, serves as the President of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and Professor, Adjunct in the Department of Art & Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Formerly Vice-president of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (post-president 2012-23), Leonardson now serves on the advisory boards of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology and World Listening Project.
As a performer, composer, and sound designer, Leonardson created sound for the physical theater company Plasticene (1995-2012). He performs internationally with the Springboard, an electroacoustic instrument invention, made in 1994 to explore the sonic potential of amplified coil springs and other readily available materials. Leonardson often presents on acoustic ecology to new audiences through soundwalking, workshops, and live performances.
In 2016, Leonardson was one of two artists selected by the Chicago Park District and Trust for Public Land for the inaugural 606 Open AIR (Artist in Residence). His works for radio, “Coincidence and Control” (2015) and “Dancing Walls Stir the Prairie (2007) were broadcast on Kunstradio-Radiokunst on ÖRF Vienna. With sound artist, fellow SAIC professor, and Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) co-founder, Lou Mallozzi he co-wrote “Opening the Ether: Radio Art at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago” for, Listen Up! Radio Art in the USA (2025).
With the director of the program for International Media Cultural Work at Hochschule Darmstadt, Professor Sabine Breitsameter, Leonardson co-edited Ways of Listening, Figures of Thought: A Festschrift for R. Murray Schafer On the Occasion of His 80th Birthday (2013). Thanks to editors Phyllis Johnson, Aileen Dillane, Tony Langlois, Carol Ann Weaver, Hildegard Westerkamp, and Leah Barclay additional articles appear in The Journal of Radio and Audio Media, Volume 22, Number 1, The Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Volume 2, Numbers 1-2, The Conrad Grebel Review, Volume 33, Number 2, and Acoustic Ecology Review.
Leonardson earned a Master of Fine Arts (Time Arts) degree at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1983, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (Visual Art) at Northern Illinois University in 1980. He is a recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Media Arts Fellowships (2002 and 2006), and was a 2013 Copeland Fellow at Amherst College.
Further documentation:
- Art In Chicago: 1945-1990 (Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 1991)
- Transmission Arts: Artists and Airwaves ed. by Galen Joseph-Hunter and Maria Papadomanolaki (PAJ Publications 2011)
- Acoustic Ecology Review, Vol. 1 No. 1 (2023): Proceedings of the ‘Listening Pasts, Listening Futures’ 2023 World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Conference
- Beyond Listening: Agency, Art and the Environment, International Symposium on Sonic Ecologies, Summary of 2023 WFAE Conference at Atlantic Center for the Arts
Website: ericleonardson.com
