Joel Stern is a researcher, curator, and artist living in Naarm/ Melbourne. He is a VC Postdoctoral Fellow at School of Media and Communication RMIT, and an Associate Investigator at ADM+S. His work investigates the politics and aesthetics of emerging technologies with a special emphasis on how practices of sound and listening shape our contemporary worlds. Between 2013 and 2022 Stern was Director of Australian organisation Liquid Architecture, helping establish it as a leading forum for sonic art. In this capacity he curated and produced numerous festivals, exhibitions, concerts and publications in Australia and internationally, while developing artistic research investigations including disorganising, Polyphonic Social, Why Listen?, Instrument Builders Project, and Ritual Community Music.