B. 1958, Elmhurst, IL, USA

Eric Leonardson lives and works in Chicago, IL, USA

Eric Leonardson is an audio artist, sound designer, improviser, and radio artist with a background in visual art. He is a founder of the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology and Director of the World Listening Project, founded in 2008. Leonardson performs in Chicago Phonography, a collective of field recordists and phonographers, and with Auris, a collective of new music composers and instrumentalists. In 1986 he co-founded the Experimental Sound Studio, at that time the Midwest’s only not-for-profit sonic arts organization. There, he coordinated "Sounds From Chicago," one of the city's first internationally broadcast radio art programs, from 1989–91. Leonardson is a founding member of Plasticene, an experimental physical theater company he designs sound, composes and performs music for since 1995. Much of Leonardson’s musical efforts are distinguished by the unique sounds of his self-built instrument, the “springboard.” He has toured and performed with the springboard through the US, Canada, Germany, and Japan. Leonardson works in collaboration with sound-radio artist Anna Friz, and together have performed and been broadcast in the Deep Wireless Festival, Kunstradio, and Deutschland Radio. Leonardson also is an Adjunct Associate Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Department of Sound and the First Year Program, teaching there since 1997.