Richard Lerman is a composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 and sound artist

Sound art

Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists....

 whose, "work...centers around his custom-made contact microphone

Contact microphone

A contact microphone, otherwise known as a pickup or a piezo, is a form of microphone designed to sense audio vibrations through solid objects. Unlike normal air microphones, contact mics act as transducers which pick up vibrations and convert them into a voltage which can then be made audible...

s of unusually small size," including, "piezo disk

Piezoelectric sensor

A piezoelectric sensor is a device that uses the piezoelectric effect to measure pressure, acceleration, strain or force by converting them to an electrical charge.-Applications:...

s and other transducers

Pickup (music technology)

A pickup device is a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations, usually from suitably equipped stringed instruments such as the electric guitar, electric bass guitar, Chapman Stick, or electric violin, and converts them to an electrical signal that is amplified, recorded, or broadcast.-...

". He studied with Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier

Alvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and...

, Gordon Mumma

Gordon Mumma

Gordon Mumma is an American composer. He cofounded Ann Arbor's Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music with Robert Ashley, was a musician with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and was a member of the Sonic Arts Union with Ashley, Alvin Lucier, and David Behrman...

, and David Tudor

David Tudor

David Eugene Tudor was an American pianist and composer of experimental music.- Biography :Tudor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano with Irma Wolpe and composition with Stefan Wolpe and became known as one of the leading performers of avant garde piano music. He gave the...

.
He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 in Sound Art (Video & Audio) for 1987-88. He also works in film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, having had a show at MOMA

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, and is currently working on advanced programming in DVD creation.

Lerman's work is often site-specific

Site-specific art

Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...

. Pieces include Travelon Gamelon, for amplified bicycles; A Seasonal Mapping of the Sonoran Desert, which includes cactus needles plucked by rainfall; and the collaboration (with Mona Higuchi) Threading History, for which he recorded prison camp barbed wire. In the 80s he lived in Boston and taught at the Museum School

School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is an undergraduate and graduate college located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the visual arts. It is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in partnership with Tufts University...

 and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies

Center for Advanced Visual Studies

The Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT was founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes. Kepes, who taught at the new Bauhaus in Chicago, originally founded the Center as a way to encourage artistic collaboration on a large civic scale....

 at MIT.

External links

• "Richard Lerman's Site", West.ASU.edu.