Wouter Jaspers (Netherlands, 1986) is an electro-acoustic sound artist, composer-performer, and instrument designer whose practice brings technological invention, social experience, and material inquiry into one field of listening.
Working with field recordings, radio signals, interference, analog noise, self-built electronics, and custom microphones, he develops performances and installations that make transmission, environment, and human presence audible. Rather than treating sound as a closed musical language, Jaspers uses it to trace infrastructures, landscapes, and the residues of public life. Active internationally since 2005, Jaspers has performed and presented installations over 650 times at festivals and venues across Europe, North America, Asia, and the SWANA region, including MUTEK Festival Montreal, Club Transmediale Berlin, Gaudeamus Festival, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, TOFM Festival at Contact in Tokyo, Disko Bay Arts Festival in Greenland and many others.
His sound work combines dense sonic textures with a strong sense of dramaturgy, transforming radio signals, electromagnetic phenomena, and environmental recordings into concert situations. Jaspers collaborates with a wide range of artists and ensembles, including Bendik Giske, Theo Nabicht, Horacio Franco, Rodrigo Ambriz, Karin Weissenbrunner, Ensemble KNM Berlin, and others working in experimental, and contemporary music contexts. Together with Frans de Waard he is Ezdanitoff and with fellow Berliner Hainbach he performs as Odd Narrative. Together with Steffan de Turck he performs and records as Preliminary Saturation.
These collaborations reflect a practice that is both deeply individual and highly relational, moving fluidly between solo performance, duo work, ensemble settings, and commissioned installation projects. A significant part of Jaspers’ artistic identity lies in instrument building and sound-tool design. He co-founded and served as chief designer of KOMA Elektronik in Berlin, where the by him developed Field Kit series became especially influential for its accessible approach to hands-on sound exploration. Since 2021, he has developed Sonic Artefacts, a project dedicated to custom radio detectors, microphones, sensors, and special instruments that support electro-acoustic and field-based practices. He also works as a music and sound director, teaches, and remains engaged with DIY culture and the broader community of experimental instrument builders.
These collaborations reflect a practice that is both deeply individual and highly relational, moving fluidly between solo performance, duo work, ensemble settings, and commissioned installation projects. A significant part of Jaspers’ artistic identity lies in instrument building and sound-tool design. He co-founded and served as chief designer of KOMA Elektronik in Berlin, where the by him developed Field Kit series became especially influential for its accessible approach to hands-on sound exploration. Since 2021, he has developed Sonic Artefacts, a project dedicated to custom microphones, sensors, and special instruments that support electro-acoustic and field-based practices. He also works as a music and sound director, teaches, and remains engaged with DIY culture and the broader community of experimental instrument builders.
In recent years, Jaspers’ work has become increasingly research-driven. Recent installation works
include Arctic Survey Music (2021–2022), Antennenfeld (2022), Indeterminate Structures (2023), Ash
Transmissions (2025), Urban Interference (2025) & Posthumous Feedback (2026). These projects extend his interest in electromagnetic transmission, chance structures, and the way technology enters public space: Arctic Survey Music and Antennenfeld turn radio phenomena and the ionosphere into
performance, Indeterminate Structures uses chess as a compositional device, Ash Transmissions turns fire, metal, and radio into a live circuit, and Urban Interference maps bodies and movement through radar and wireless signals and the border between natural and urban sonic environments. His works have been supported by grants and residencies, including the Berlin Senate’s Arbeitsstipendium für Ernste Musik und Klangkunst and funding through the German Musikfonds, Initiative Neue Musik Berlin and others.
Since 2005 Jaspers has appeared at numerous festivals around the world, including Gaudeamus Muziekweek Netherlands, CTM / Transmediale Festival Berlin; Festival of Modular at Contact Tokyo (Japan), Disko Bay Festival Oqaasut / Illulissat (Greenland), Relative (Cross) Hearings Festival in Budapest (Hungary), Sønderborg Electronic Music Festival (Denmark), ZXZW Festival later: Incubate Festival (Netherlands), Interpenetration Festival in Graz (Austria), November Music (Netherlands) and Avant Music Festival in Wroclaw (Poland). Appearances have taken him to places such as Roulette New York (USA), Les Dominicains Guebwiller (France) and Mutek Montreal (CA) as well as to RAI Radio 1 in Italy, Dutch national radio at Concertzender and Lithuanian national radio LRT Klasik for classical and new music.
Over the course of his career, Jaspers developed a fascination for modifying analog devices and was the co-founder and chief designer of the musical instrument manufacturer KOMA Elektronik in Berlin between 2011 and 2020. In this role, he designed electronic musical instruments for musicians keen to experiment, including the popular Field Kit series for electroacoustic sound experiments (exhibited in 2017 at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York City). In 2016 the company opened Common Ground in Berlin – a workshop and a shop for DIY instruments, workshops and meetings. After Jaspers left the company at the end of October 2020, he is concentrating his time on his artistic (musical) activities, gives workshops on electronic music and stimulate new ideas in dialogue with DIY culture and other musical instrument designers. He currently releases his instruments, microphones and sensors under his personal label Sonic Artefacts.
As a curator, Jaspers has directed several festivals, such as the Eurovision Noise Festival for the Incubate Festival (Netherlands) or the annual Forthwith Festival in Winnipeg (Canada, 2017-2019). In the covid-summer of 2021 he curated the When I Sleep, The Trees Get Bigger Festival in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. He gave artist workshops at STEIM, Institute for Electronic Music in Amsterdam, at Leiden University, the University of Tilburg, the multimedia center Worm in Rotterdam and at Native Instruments in Berlin. He has also been responsible for the labels Vatican Analog, Tilburg, Netherlands since 2006 and AMOK Tapes, Berlin, Germany from 2012 – 2020.
Wouter Jaspers was awarded the Arbeitsstipendium für Ernste Musik und Klangkunst 2021 by the Berlin Senat for his research project Artic Survey Music, which examines the ubiquitous transmission signals in the very low frequency range of the radio spectrum in order to address the contrast between urban environments and natural landscapes. This project culminated into his latest work for 32 radio frequencies “Antennenfeld”, which had its world premiere at (in)tangible transmissions at Floating University in Berlin at the end of July 2022.
In 2022 Wouter received funding through the German Musikfonds to work on his latest research project exploring Chess-based musical composition, formulating new compositional techniques based on John Cage’s Reunion concert, which was debuted at Sonoscopia in Porto, Portugal in the end of 2023.