Olivia Block

Olivia Block is a musician and sound artist based in Brooklyn, NY. Since 1998, she has created experimental works combining field recordings, electronic textures, and acoustic instruments, often sourcing sound from natural environments like caves and oyster beds.

Olivia Block has been a pioneer of experimental music since the release of her 1998 album Pure Gaze, which blends field recordings, electronic textures, and chamber music. Based in Chicago, she works across live performances, recordings, audio-visual installations, sound design, and scores for orchestra and chamber music. Her installation work incorporates sound from sources as varied as human breath, oyster beds, and limestone caves, reflecting her sustained interests in site specificity, scales of time, archival materials, found sounds, and field recordings. She is the recipient of the 2026 Alvin Lucier Award for music/sound from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Block often thinks of her multichannel work as groups of sounds moving through space like weather patterns, loves the sound of wind, and is interested in the way wind moves other objects and activates materials, giving her a sense of location.