About

Wouter Jaspers is a Dutch sound artist and instrument builder who mostly works with field recordings and the electromagnetic spectrum. He builds microphones, receivers, antennas and sensors, and uses them to make the signals that surround us audible: in concerts, installations, radio works and workshops.

Born in the Netherlands in 1986, Jaspers started out in the European noise and DIY scene of the mid-2000s, touring with his own projects and running the label Vatican Analog from Tilburg. Since 2005 he has performed and exhibited more than 650 times across Europe, the Americas, Asia, North Africa, the Swana region and Greenland, at places such as MUTEK in Montreal and Mexico City, CTM Festival in Berlin, Unsound in Warsaw, Gaudeamus, the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and Contact in Tokyo.

His material is what usually stays out of earshot: very low frequency transmitters, the crackle of the ionosphere, WiFi and Bluetooth traffic, radar and inner-city radio, alongside field recordings, analog noise and custom microphones. He treats these signals less as information than as sound with a place and a history, and arranges them with a strong sense of dramaturgy, so that infrastructure, landscape and the people in the room become part of the piece. There is a story everywhere, you just need to capture it.

Over the last ten years the work has become more research-driven. Antennenfeld (2022) is a concert for 32 radio frequencies. Indeterminate Structures (2023) uses chess as a score, building on John Cage’s Reunion. Ash Transmissions (2025) turns fire, metal and radio into a live circuit. Urban Interference (2025) uses six radar arrays to make visitors’ movements part of the sound, and Posthumous Feedback (2026) listened to the electrical activity of the soil at the grave of his good friend and collaborator Tom Smith on what would have been his 70th birthday.

Alongside his solo career he works with contrabass clarinet player Theo Nabicht, Mexican voice artist Rodrigo Ambriz and Ensemble KNM Berlin, and in long-running duos: Ezdanitoff with Frans de Waard, Odd Narrative with Hainbach and Preliminary Saturation with Steffan de Turck. He also works as a sound director for the live shows of saxophonist Bendik Giske, where he is responsible for the sounddesign and plays live effects and bass.

Building instruments is part of the same practice. Jaspers co-founded KOMA Elektronik in Berlin and was its CEO and designer from 2011 to 2020; his Field Kit series for hands-on electro-acoustic experiments was shown at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2017. Since 2021 he makes radio detectors, microphones and sensors for artists and field recordists under his own label, Sonic Artefacts.

He teaches workshops on radio, electronics and listening, from STEIM and Leiden University to Sonoscopia in Porto, and has curated festivals and exhibitions in the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and Portugal. In 2026 he published Tune In! An Artist’s Guide to Radio Art and the Electromagnetic Spectrum (Korm Plastics). He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Short biography

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Wouter Jaspers (NL, 1986) is a sound artist, composer and instrument designer working mostly with electroacoustic instruments, field recordings and the electromagnetic spectrum. With self-built receivers, antennas and sensors he turns radio signals, interference and environmental recordings into concerts and installations. Since 2005 he has performed and exhibited more than 650 times, including at MUTEK Montreal, CTM Festival, Gaudeamus Festival, Contact Tokyo, Concertgebouw Amsterdam and many others. His instrument designs were exhibited at Museum of Arts and Design in New York in 2017. He co-founded electronic music instrument manufacturer KOMA Elektronik, now runs Sonic Artefacts, and wrote a book about working artistically with radio waves called: Tune In! An Artist’s Guide to Radio Art and the Electromagnetic Spectrum (Korm Plastics, 2026). He lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

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