| I started out as a painter, drawn to the medium’s inherent plasticity, but eventually I began seeking more resistance and brittleness, so I started making installations of cheap everyday materials gleaned from my Brooklyn surroundings. Then, by turning to the medium of sound, I returned to fluidity. While visual art investigates the space between artist and viewer, I’ve realized that sound has an exponentially greater dimension. It pervades and creeps into everything, and its perception constantly changes depending on where you are. Sight is direct and forms a line, while sound bends around corners and can come from multiple directions. At first I took a very literal approach to sound by presenting it through sculpture. | 
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John Parker
Courtesy of the artist.I started out as a painter, drawn to the medium’s inherent plasticity, but eventually I began seeking more resistance and brittleness, so I started making installations of cheap everyday materials gleaned from my Brooklyn surroundings. Then, by turning to the medium of sound, I returned to fluidity.
While visual art investigates the space between artist and viewer, I’ve realized that sound has an exponentially greater dimension. It pervades and creeps into everything, and its perception constantly changes depending on where you are. Sight is direct and forms a line, while sound bends around corners and can come from multiple directions.
At first I took a very literal approach to sound by presenting it through sculpture. I made headphones that turned into opaque sunglasses and conveyed the sound of someone walking blindly, as well as another contraption in the form of a jail that trapped both participants and what they said. Two of my other sculptures comprised numerous radios tuned to different stations—these created a schizophrenic state of not being able to block out any stimuli. The artwork provided a medium between sound and participant. The sounds for the sculptures were all from found sources, like the material of the installations that preceded them.
Since those first sound installations, I’ve taught myself to create and manipulate sound with all the tools available through modern computer software. Since I’m self-taught, I often make mistakes, leading to computer crashes that I use to my advantage by incorporating these surprises into my pieces. I have composed several albums completely out of digital musical mistakes by pushing the limits of digital sound production. While in the past I’ve confined myself embedding these glitches within a simple pop song structure, I am currently working on tracks that capture the actual act of messing up sound on the computer without the conventional structure.
I have also begun working back in the visual realm with computer gifs. These bring up familiar issues of color, form, and the tension between these elements, but add a new dimension of rhythm that can only be found in our digital age.
