Ariana van Gelder is a Cuban American composer and immersive sound artist specializing in deeply visceral sonic experiences. Her creations explore the tenuous intimacy between artist, audience, and medium with an eye toward rapturous multi-sensory engagement and hypnotic meditation.

From 2006 to today, van Gelder’s career has centered on multimedia installations, collaborations, commissioned works, semi-improvised performances, elaborate stage shows, and recordings. These include custom sound environments and scores for interactive virtual experiences, video, sculpture, live acts, and all manner of physical spaces — both inside and out.

As a composer with background in theoretical physics, van Gelder holds keen interest in creating, defining, and formulating space for bodies through sound. Revolving around ever-building vocal loops created in real time, her voice builds ten-octave sound environments that ride on rich, rumbling waves of bass and skin-tingling sub-bass. Engineered to block external sound, van Gelder’s sound environments and compositions anchor the listener in an embrace from within, providing escape and respite into a world of their choosing, far away from outside impositions.

Along with voice, van Gelder has also composed for and performed with multichannel systems, piano, prepared violin, bowed glockenspiel, field recordings, pressure-driven Mylar sculpture, and just about anything else that makes sound.

An active artist, van Gelder has contributed to exhibitions in and performed across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia and at institutions spanning from museums, galleries, universities, and international biennales to traditional stages, private events, and surprise DIY/guerilla spaces.

While having called home to both Taiwan and Singapore, van Gelder currently resides in New York City.