M.W. Burns

M.W. Burns is an audio artist using sound to conceptually activate space. He received a BFA in Illustration and Graphics from the University of the Arts in 1989 and an MFA in Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1990. Many of his installations rely on tactics of public address, projecting the voice into existing urban conditions. Other projects integrate pre-recorded sound into an environment, instigating the perception of events taking place. Burns has had solo exhibitions at the TBA Exhibition Space, Chicago; Northern Illinois University Art Museum; Tough, Chicago and the Lab, San Francisco. His sound installations have been included in numerous group exhibitions, including the 2000 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Sound/Video/Film, the Donald Young Gallery; Contextual: Art and Text in Chicago, at the Chicago Cultural Center; Time Arts at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Body at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; and Takeover at the Hyde Park Art Center. Other projects include Sound Canopy, a public sound system supporting audio work created to participate in the urban environment.