Alba Residency 2024

We are pleased to announce Elizabeth Flood as the 2024 Alba Sonic Arts Artist-in-Residence at Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. The Alba Residency makes all of ESS's resources and platforms available to a graduating MFA student from the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute, with the goal of creating an immediate outlet for the skills and ideas the student has developed at SAIC, and helping to launch them into the next phase of their artistic career. It is the only post-graduate sonic arts residency of its kind in the US.  

The Alba Residency is a three-month residency at Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) in which all of the organization’s resources and platforms are made available to a graduating MFA student from the Sound Department of the School of the Art Institute (SAIC). It is the only post-graduate sonic arts residency of its kind in the US. The goal of the residency is to create an immediate outlet for the skills and ideas the student has developed at SAIC, helping to launch them into the next phase of their artistic career. The selected graduate will receive a $1,000 cash stipend and access to services and resources (overall value of over $7,500) that include the ESS recording studios, sonic arts archives, gallery, garden, and off-site performance and exhibition sites, as well as professional development assistance with grant-writing, project planning, and sustainability. The Alba Sonic Arts Residency is named after ESS co-founder Dawn (Alba) Mallozzi (1949-1999) and builds upon her longtime vision of ESS as a creative and developmental space for younger and emerging artists. The residency is purposefully open and flexible, allowing artists to work with ESS staff on an approach that best serves their artistic goals.

About Elizabeth Flood

Elizabeth Flood is a sound artist working with radio as both an instrument and a medium to communicate from a distance. They are interested in playing in the blurry space between transmission and reception, signal and noise, dreams and waking, here and there. She is curious about what radio would sound like if we didn’t listen ‘to know’? How can we, the listeners, interact with radio if we understand transmission to be an asking act, an event of curiosity? Can we walk not just amongst, but inside radio waves? Flood is a collage artist who works with sonic, textual and visual materials and listens for what is revealed from the act of juxtaposition. She tends to find work (and play) most interesting when creating a system and being curious about the outcome, rather than seeking a particular end result.

About ESS

Founded in 1986, Experimental Sound Studio (ESS) was one of the first non-profit cultural institutions in the U.S. dedicated entirely to the sonic arts and remains the only one in the Midwest. ESS’s overarching goal is to provide responsive platforms for sonic arts and experimental music where the unanticipated is allowed to happen. ESS facilitates the creation, presentation, documentation, and exploration of innovative work related to the sonic arts.

More information on current and upcoming activities here: https://ess.org/