Composer and sound artist David Dunn was born in 1953 in San Diego (California, USA). From 1970 to 1974 he was assistant to the American composer Harry Partch and remained active as a performer in the Harry Partch Ensemble for over a decade. He has worked in a wide variety of audio media inclusive of traditional and experimental music, installations for public exhibitions, video and film soundtracks, radio broadcasts, and bioacoustic research. His compositions and wildlife sound recordings have appeared in hundreds of international forums, concerts, broadcasts, and exhibitions. He was director of the Electronic Music Studio at San Diego State University and has taught and lectured at numerous schools and universities. From 1984 to 1988 he was Vice-President of International Synergy Institute, a media think tank centered in Hollywood, California. In 1989 he co-founded the Independent Media Labs in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Currently he is a Professor in the College of Santa Fe's Contemporary Music Program and President of the Art and Science Laboratory in Santa Fe.
Past activities have included presentations at Ars Electronica (Austria), the Styrian Autumn Festival (Austria), Experimenta Festival (Buenos Aires), L'Immagine Elletronica Festival (Italy), the Institute for New Media (Germany), Santa Fe Institute, New Music Across America, Composer to Composer Festival (Telluride), feature radio broadcasts for Australian Broadcasting and France Musique, various guest composer residencies at American universities, and wildlife field recording expeditions in North and South America, and Southern Africa. In 1992 he was a co-conspirator and editor (with the Vasulkas) of Eigenwelt der Apparate-welt, a major retrospective exhibition (Linz, Austria) on the history of electronic art that included interactive displays of original instruments, a comprehensive catalog, video exhibitions, and interactive laserdisc displays. He also created the original music score, sound design and bioacoustic recording for The Spirit of Exploration, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning documentary on cave exploration in Carlsbad Caverns National Park. In the fall of 1993 he was a featured artist at the international sound art festival, SoundCulture, in Tokyo, Japan. In 1995 he was a guest editor of the international academic journal, Perspectives of New Music and his audio/video installation, The Lion in Which the Spirits of the Royal Ancestors Make Their Home was featured at the Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe. A 2 CD compilation of his environmental compositions was released by the American Composers Forum in 1997.
He is the author of Music, Language, and Environment (a retrospective collection of selected scores and writings on CDROM), SKYDRIFT (a book documenting a large environmental sound project), and Why Do Whales and Children Sing?: A Guide to Hearing in Nature. He is the editor of Harry Partch: An Anthology of Critical Perspectives and Eigenwelt der Apparate-welt: Pioneers of Electronic Art. His recordings and theoretical writings have been published in such journals and publications as Leonardo, Musicworks (Canada), Terra Nova, The Aerial, Perspectives of New Music, EAR, Postneo (Australia), IS Journal, Stereo Review (Italy), Kunstforum (Germany), Words and Spaces, Ars Electronica (Austria), Leonardo Music Journal, and Music Today (Japan). Three of his theoretical papers were included in the recent Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics (W.W. Norton and Co.) and Classic Essays on 20th Century Music (Schirmer).