Alex De Little is an artist and researcher based in Leeds and London, UK. His practice involves installation, performance, workshops, Deep Listening and writing, often developing through site-based work and collaboration. Listening sits at the centre of his work, mobilised in its broadest sense as a creative process that supports diverse forms of attunement, relation and understanding. Projects unfold through spending time with places and with others, working across ecological, social and institutional contexts. They often involve collective and participatory approaches, and favour longer-term processes over defined outcomes.

His practice moves across contexts and ways of working, resisting a single approach. It is less concerned with producing fixed outcomes and more with setting up conditions through which questions can be heard, sensed and worked through. Recent projects involve collaborations with ecologists, healthcare professionals, urbanists and community arts practitioners, alongside ongoing work on environmental listening and sound in healthcare settings. Alex is a Lecturer in Creative Practice in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds, and a certified practitioner with the Centre for Deep Listening.

Alex’s work and collaborations have been featured at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Tate Modern, Somerset House, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Health Museum (Houston, TX), Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art (Copenhagen), The National Science and Media Museum, London Contemporary Music Festival, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Walmer Yard, the Hepworth Wakefield, Future Architecture Platform, Goldsmiths CCA, East Java Biennale (Indonesia), Dorich House / Stanley Picker Gallery (London), Listening Biennale (Berlin), Radialsystem (Berlin), House of Press (Belgrade), and the Royal Academy of Art (London).

Selected Exhibitions

  • Spatial Listening – Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London (2023)
  • Banyu Umbul (with Bethara Lendir) – Oasis Gallery, Surabaya, Indonesia (2023)
  • Solstice ’93 (with Laura Grace Ford) – Dorich House, London (2022)
  • Driving the Human (with Sonic Acts of Noticing) – Radialsystem, Berlin (2021)
  • Sonic Boom – National Science and Media Museum, Bradford (2021)
  • Garden of Privatised Delights (with Studio Polpo)– British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2021)
  • Tomorrow is Our Permanent Address – East Street Arts, Convention House, Leeds (2019)
  • Above the Noise – National Science and Media Museum, Bradford (2019)
  • Alternate Languages: Confronting Boundaries – Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019)
  • Biorhythm – Health Museum, Houston TX, USA (2018)
  • Kosmologym – Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen (2018)
  • Supersenses – National Science and Media Museum, Bradford (2017)
  • …the etiquette to keep still is similar to playing dead… – Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds (2016)

Selected Performances

  • Spatial Drone, Walmer Yard (2019)
  • Thread, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (2018)
  • Reflection // Position [sound intervention] ODRATHEQUE Festival, London (2018)
  • Deep Sea [collaboration with dancer Tora Hed] Hull City of Culture Choreography Competition (2017)
  • Partition – India’s Children [collaborative performance commission] Opera North, PRS, South Asian Arts UK (2017)
  • Tableau Funéraire (after Henry Purcell) [collaboration with Musarc and Tongue], Palais de Tokyo (2016)
  • THREAD [performance collaboration] South Asian Arts UK and Arts Council (2016)
  • Trombones in Spaces – London Contemporary Music Festival (2013)

Curatorial Projects

  • Ways of Listening IV ‘Listening with the Clarinet’ – Woolwich Works, London (2021)
  • Ways of Listening III ‘Full Ears’ – Online (2020)
  • Ways of Listening II – Convention House, Leeds (2019)
  • Ways of Listening – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds (2019)
  • Space: On Sound and Architecture – The Calder, The Hepworth Wakefield (2016)
  • Sound; Space; Play, University of Leeds (2015)

Public Lectures and Presentations

  • Gair Wood Sound [research presentation] – An Unremarkable Wood, York St John University (2025)
  • Deep Listening in A&E [research presentation] – RCEM Annual Conference, Newcastle (2024)
  • Listening with the Museum [talk and workshop] – Lincoln Museum, UK (2024)
  • Listening With [talk and workshop] – Quiet Urgency: Disturbing Sonic Ecologies, Central Saint Martins, London (Sonorities Research Project) (2024)
  • Listening in the Chthulucene, Sound Practices for Survival, ‘Auraldiversities: Expanded Listening’ [workshop] – Goldsmiths (2021)
  • Listening in the Chthulucene, Sound Practices for Survival, ‘Vibrant Practices’ conference [workshop] – University of Leeds (2021)
  • Sonic Acts of Noticing: Listening with the High Street, ‘Art, Architecture and Design Research Sessions: Exploring the Potential of Listening’ [research presentation] – London Metropolitan University (2021)
  • Sonic Acts of Noticing: Listening with the High Street, ‘Transdisciplinary Session’ [round table] – Future Architecture Platform Creative Exchange, Ljubljana (2021)
  • Sonic Futures, ‘Sound Instruments and Sonic Cultures’ conference [round table] – National Science and Media Museum (2020)
  • Sonic Futures, ‘Museums and Digital Culture after the Pandemic’ [research presentation] University of Nottingham (2020)
  • Eastside [research presentation] – Same Skies Think Tank, Leeds (2020)
  • Spatial Listening – UK and Ireland Soundscape Community Symposium, University of Sussex (2020)
  • Spatial Listening [research presentation] – School of Music, University of Leeds – Colloquium (2020)
  • Spatial Listening [workshop] – Imprint, Building Centre, London (2019)
  • Spatial Listening [research presentation] – London College of Communication Sonic Arts Visiting Practitioners Series (2019)
  • Spatial Listening [research presentation] – Leeds School of Architecture (2019)
  • Listening Beyond the Ear [workshop-performance] – Science Gallery London (2019)
  • Spatial Listening, [workshop] – Royal Academy of Arts (as part of Alternate Languages) (2019)
  • Spatial Listening [workshops and presentation] – British Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (for Royal Academy of Arts) (2018)
  • Listening Games [presentation] – Arts Council Digital Cultures Symposium (2017)
  • Workshop leader- Field Studies – Listening After Pauline Oliveros
  • How Nice It Is [audio-visual installation] – Somerset House, London (collaboration with Tongue)
  • Spatial Listening [workshop] – DŹWIĘKO DZIAŁKA festival (Poland)
  • Listening Devices [workshop with Trevor Cox] – Tate Modern
  • Listening Games [workshop] – Shoreditch Church (for Points of Listening: London College of Communication)

Selected Artist and Research Residencies

  • Sound Art Lab, Struer, Denmark (2026)
  • Biennale Jatim X, East Java, Indonesia (2023)
  • Belgrade International Architecture Week (2021)
  • East Street Arts’ Convention House, Leeds (2019)
  • LEGROOM, Manchester (2017)
  • Leeds Creative Labs: Hepworth Wakefield (2014)

Lecturing

  • Lecturer in Creative Practice, University of Leeds
  • Visiting lectures at Goldsmiths, London College of Communication, Bartlett School of Architecture, Royal College of Art, Sheffield Hallam University School of Architecture, Architecture Association, Central Saint Martins

Research Appointments

  • Honorary Fellow – Goldsmiths Sound Practice Research Centre (2019-2022)
  • Associate Fellow – University of Nottingham (2020-2021)
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow – School of Music, University of Leeds (2019-2021)

Academic Qualifications

  • PhD, Sound Studies / Sonic Arts, University of Leeds (2019)
  • MMus, Composition – University of Leeds (2014)

Publications

  • Yue Mao, Naomi van Dijck, Radha Smith, eds., ‘Sonic Acts of Noticing’ (with Julia Udall and Jon Orlek), in Forest, Body, City, Flow. Landscapes of Care, DPR Barcelona (Barcelona, 2021)
  • George Kafka, ed., ‘Listening With’ (series of text scores), in Sonic Urbanism: Listening to Nonhuman Life, Theatrum Mundi, &beyond(London; Paris, 2021)
  • Spatial Listening, Wild Pansy Press (2019)
  • ‘Georgia Rogers Line of Parts, hcmf//’, TEMPO (2020)
  • ‘Spatial Listening’, RA Alternate Languages Venice Architecture Biennale Catalogue (2019)