Hearboy is the public face for the visual, audio and academic work of Media Artist Dann Downes.
I am a Media Artist and Communications Professor at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John and the Assistant Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies for the School of Graduate Studies at UNB. I teach media theory, DIY Media, popular music and Intellectual Property. I am also a Saint John musician whose latest popular music project is the Morticia Project (2017, new recording coming late 2022).
I have published on intellectual property and the role of media in the construction of community and personal identity. My work places mediation in its social, political and historic contexts by exploring the practical and theoretical relationships between amateur, professional and academic participants in the DIY/DIT communities and the ways that home-made musical devices lead (and don’t lead) to cultural and commercial ends.
My “Ambiguous Devices” make music from hand -made electronic devices – old toys and simple circuits to make amplifiers, noise generators and a devices that make a joyful racket. I started building ambiguous devices as experiments and therapy following a catastrophic hearing loss in 2009 and now share projects through academic courses, public workshops and sound installations.