MILES SCHARFF

 

 

Born 1999

Physics and Music Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, 

Pittsburgh, PA, (BSA), 2022

Sound Art, Columbia University, New York, NY, (MFA), 2025

Lives and Works in New York, NY

 

 

MILES SCHARFF (b. 1999) is a sound artist and improvisor working with radio electronics, sound sculpture, video, spatial audio, and performance. His current research investigates the ways in which objects can become unintentional sites of reception and transmission for electromagnetic and acoustic signals. These sites, which exist as a byproduct of telecommunications and other industrial systems, sometimes allow for unexpected listening experiences. Scharff sees these sites as case studies one a larger spectrum between the prescribed logic systems of western science and the re-appropriation of these logic systems in conspiracy and fringe spiritualist communities. Scharff’s work seeks to document or fabricate these interactions between physical object and invisible signal through the creation of devices and systems to be able to witness them through listening and recontextualization. This witnessing allows for invisible systems and phenomena, that would not otherwise be investigated, to be confronted and considered in relation to our bodies and environment. These investigations are not about distilling some form of truth, but to physicalize our experience such that it can be placed in a critical lens. Miles has exhibited work at New Uncanny, Fridman Gallery, Wallach Gallery, SK Gallery, Alice Holt Forest, The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden’s, and The Rube Goldberg Foundation. He is a recipient of the 2024 Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship.