Christopher Steenson
PS² Freelands Artist programme, 2022-23
Christopher Steenson is an artist from Northern Ireland. With a
background in psychology and the sonic environment, Steenson's artistic
practice began in 2017. Since then he has exhibited his work at national
and international levels. Primarily working in the mediums of sound,
writing and photography, his artworks often take the form of sound-based
public interventions and installations, spanning across boundaries of
private and public space.
Christopher Steenson’s work
forges ways of 'listening to the future', by using field recording,
photography and writing as his materials. He is primarily concerned with
the shifting elements of our environment, such as declining wildlife
populations and the climate crisis, and the entangled role of human
activity within these changes.
Steenson's most-recent
works have focused on noise pollution and radiospace and their entwined
effects on wildlife. His artwork False Detection (2019–21) traces the
effects of electromagnetic fields on birdlife, produced by wireless
communication infrastructures. One of his most recent projects was On
Chorus (2020), a large-scale public sound artwork, made with the support
of Iarnród Éireann/Irish Rail. On Chorus highlighted the effects of
noise pollution by recording the sounds of the urban spring dawn chorus
during the first Covid-19 lockdown and broadcasting these sounds across
Ireland, using Iarnród Éireann/Irish Rail’s train station PA systems.
The artwork used the strategy of networked broadcasting to encourage
actions of collective listening, to connect individuals together during
times of social distancing.