Budhaditya Chattopadhyay - Dhvāni

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is a sound artist and researcher. For Hear Here 2025 he will make a new version of his sound installation Dhvāni, a collection of ceremonial Indian bells that react to the presence of passersby via AI. It will turn the courtyard into a place to listen and meet others.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is a contemporary artist, researcher, writer and theorist. Working across diverse media, such as sound, text, and moving image, and incorporating various technologies such as sensors, AI, and Machine Learning, Chattopadhyay produces large-scale installations and live performances addressing urgent issues such as the climate crisis, human intervention in the environment and ecology, migration, race, and decoloniality. Conceptually, Chattopadhyay’s work inquires into the materiality, objecthood, site, and technological mediation of lived experiences and considers the aspects of subjectivity, contemplation, mindfulness, and transcendence inherent in listening. His artistic practice is deeply committed to social and environmental activism and intends to shift the emphasis from object to situation and from immersion to discourse in the realm of sound and media arts as a necessary actant. As an artist, Chattopadhyay is an attentive and (com)passionate listener of the world around him, endeavoring to connect the disparate resonances across the borders and cultures, past and present, tradition and hyper-modernity, through an activating practice advocating for reciprocity and equality in the contemporary societies. His works have been published by Gruenrekorder (Germany) and Touch (UK). Chattopadhyay is a Charles Wallace scholar, Prince Claus grantee, and Falling Walls fellow, and has received several residencies and international awards, notably a First Prize in the Computer and Electronic Music category of Computer Space Festival, Sofia, and an Honorary Mention at PRIX Ars Electronica, Linz. Appearing in numerous exhibitions, concerts, conferences, and festivals, Chattopadhyay’s media artworks have been exhibited, performed, or presented, among others, in Transmediale, Berlin; Experimenta Biennale, Grenoble; Screen City Biennale, Norway; ZKM Karlsruhe; TodaysArt Festival, The Hague; Donau Festival, Krems; Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín; IEM, Kunstuniversität Graz; Beast Festival Birmingham; Sonorities Festival, Belfast; RE-NEW Digital Arts Festival, Copenhagen; RRS Museo Reina Sofía Radio, Madrid; Q-O2, Brussels; Sluice Screens, London; Akusmata, Helsinki; Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; CTM, Berlin; Errant Bodies, Berlin; CPH PIX, Copenhagen; Hochschule Darmstadt; SoundFjord, London; Deutschlandradio, Berlin; Institut für Neue Medien, Frankfurt; Quartair Contemporary Art Initiatives, The Hague; and Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen. Chattopadhyay has an expansive body of scholarly publications in the areas of media aesthetics, sound art, contemporary media, cinema and sound studies in leading peer-reviewed journals, most notably in Organised Sound, Journal of Sonic Studies, The New Soundtrack, SoundEffects, Ear │ Wave │ Event, VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, [in]Transition, Ruukku: Studies in Artistic Research, Leonardo Music Journal, Music, Sound, and the Moving Image (MSMI), Journal for Artistic Research (JAR), and Leonardo Electronic Almanac. He has authored five books: The Nomadic Listener (2020), Between the Headphones (2021), The Auditory Setting (2021), Sound Practices in the Global South (2022), and Sound in Indian Film and Audiovisual Media (2023).

Chattopadhyay has graduated from SRFTI, India’s national film school, completed a Master of Arts degree in New Media at Aarhus University, Denmark, and received a Ph.D. in Artistic Research and Sound Studies from Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Chattopadhyay is a visiting professor at Critical Media Lab, Basel, Switzerland.