Music & Sound Art
I love making ambient/experimental music, soundscapes, and sound art! Check out my work (under “Jenn Howd”) on bandcamp, Welsh label Amgueddfa Llwch, and my collaborative work on various AEMC Records albums. You can also follow me on Instagram (@JennHowd).
Installations & Comissions:
Summer 2025 – 2027 / “Resonant Matter” / Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park, Hamilton, OH – Resonant Matter is a site-specific sound installation that explores the sonic life of sculpture, myth, and material decay. Centered on three sculpted figures from Pyramid Hill’s collection—Persephone, Athena, and an unidentified Muse—the installation transforms these ancient artifacts into immersive soundscapes that reflect their enduring presence, mythic resonance, and inevitable physical erosion. Installed inside Pyramid Hill’s iconic Pyramid House, Resonant Matter invites visitors to engage with these figures not just as visual objects, but as resonant bodies within which myth, material, and time converge.
Using my iPhone’s Lidar scanner, I captured the surface data of each figure, mapping their contours and spatial dimensions. This data was then processed through bespoke sonification tools to create ambient textures interwoven with field recordings, processed vocals, and instrumental elements inspired by the figures’ material, geographic, and symbolic histories.
The resulting soundscapes play on continuous loops through analog tape players placed beside each piece. As the tapes and players gradually lose fidelity over time, they introduce distortions—added noise, reduced clarity, and altered tones—all of which mirror the slow erosion of the artifacts themselves.
Resonant Matter invites a quiet contemplation of impermanence—not as an end, but as a continual dance between endurance and dissolution. Whether fleeting like sound or seemingly fixed like form, all things remain in motion—shifting, transforming. In this gentle unfolding, I invite listeners to reflect on—and connect—with the sacred continuity of change itself.
Spring/Summer 2023 / “Neighborhood Songlines” / Cincinnati, OH – an interactive digital sound map installation featuring favorite sounds collected from individual households and businesses in Cincinnati neighborhoods, Pleasant Ridge and Camp Washington (and beyond).
I had the incredible opportunity to be commissioned by local arts & wellness org, The Well, to create a community sound art/music project that launched in Cincinnati, Ohio—and in 300+ schools across the nation.
The Well and I hosted sound-collecting events in two Cincy neighborhoods (at Community Happens Here in Pleasant Ridge and at The Well’s headquarters in Camp Washington), asking local households and businesses what their favorite sounds are — the clanking of bottles in Pleasant Ridge’s The Gaslight Cafe, the coos of mourning doves by Camp Washington’s Wavepool Art Gallery, the twinkling of wind chimes on a front porch, children laughing, ocean waves, and much more.
I then utilized these sounds to create two tracks of new music for The Well’s national Mindful Music Moments program, bringing daily mindfulness and music into schools nationwide.
I also created an interactive SonicMap, which uses cellphones’ GPS to play the favorite sounds, and we organized a community soundwalk through the neighborhood, exploring our neighbors’ favorite sounds while enjoying a collective mindful listening experience.
Neighborhood Songlines was generously supported by the Ohio Arts Council and the Arts Midwest GIG Fund.
More info about the project here. (And if you’re not local, you can also access and interact with the SonicMap from home!)
April 2022 & 2023 / “Plas Bodfa Continuum” / Wales, U.K. – an immersive audio soundscape map installation (GPS-based), featuring a collage of native Welsh instruments and field samples collected at Plas Bodfa.
In 2021, Ben Sloan and I collaborated on another commission from The Well for their Mindful Music Moments in-schools program. We recorded and worked with field recordings from the incredible Cincinnati Zoo. Listen to the EP for free by clicking the album art below.
My sound art and music has been generously supported by the Ohio Arts Council and the Arts Midwest GIG Fund, among others.
Residencies:
June 2025 / Campbient (Producer)
June 2024 / Campbient (Producer)
August 2023 / Campbient (Producer)
September 2022 / Campbient (Producer)
September 2021 / Campbient (Resident)
Campbient is an annual sound art residency program sponsored by REALMOREREAL, bringing together participants for 44 hours to produce two, 22-minute live ambient sound recordings.
Radio:
April 19, 2024 / BBC Radio 3’s “Late Junction” – Journeys in music, ancient to future. The home for adventurous listeners.
March 16, 2023 / The Parish News is a weekly, online radio program and podcast created in 2016 to showcase experimental music and artists and is heard weekly on Resonance EXTRA, Harrogate Community Radio, Soundart Radio & KBOG.
May 20, 2022 / “Ryoanji Presents” from Ryonji Records on CAMP Radio in the French Pyrenees. “Ryoanji Presents” showcases and explores the best in classic and new experimental, electroacoustic and acousmatic music and sound art.
December 6, 2021 / “Gwaith Sŵn’s Sonic Darts – Parallel Worlds” Resonance 104.4 FM Radio, London