Michael Terren is an electronic musician active on Whadjuk Noongar country (Perth, Australia). His work arises from an experimental studio-based practice, and encompasses a technical vocabulary of “in the box” synthesis, manipulation, and sequencing. Terren is motivated by an idea of music as a symbolic microcosm of activity in the world, articulating its material and discursive structures. Fidelity, intentionality, surface, and compositional/productional labour are strong conceptual thematics in his music, grounded in the rituals of acousmatic listening. Terren maintains a research practice that brings these ideas into orbit with studies of the technological and mediatic environment that pervades contemporary life and work, towards recounting the cultural origins and practices of digital sound media.
Terren has released recorded work on Fallow Media, Flaming Pines, and Twice Removed. He has been artist-in-residence at Listhús í Fjallabyggð in Iceland, Bogong Centre for Sound Culture in Victoria, and attended Mills College as a Schenberg Fellow. He has been a supporting act for artists such as Félicia Atkinson, Bee Mask, Mark McGuire (Emeralds), Will Guthrie, and Robin Hayward. He also teaches at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where he is a PhD candidate.