Anastasia Clarke | aka AC Diamond
sound and media artist
I am a sound and new media artist working as both a performer-composer and artist-engineer. I engage with creative music technology, using custom-built controllers, instruments, and performance systems to transform narratives into ineffable new shapes and stories. My work is also informed by writing, archives, and tactile crafting. Across all mediums, my creative process is driven by intuitive practice and inspired by human neuroplasticity. My live performances consider the role of the musician as a community healer, activator, and sonifier of the unheard and unseen.
Whether live, installed, or played back on recording, my soundscapes are designed for the strategic application of various listening modalities. Bringing together synthesis, field recording, and sample-level sound design as artifacts of attention and intention, I invite listeners to experience shifts in their own sensations of place, scale, space and time. Underlying my performances is a steadfast trust in improvisation and a willingness to make bold, sudden decisions — actions wielded to expose the fault lines that exist in our inherited aesthetic and technological systems, perceptive faculties, and social structures.
bio
Anastasia Clarke
aka AC Diamond
b. 1987 on Munsee Lenape territory (upstate New York)
pronouns: they/them, she/her
Curriculum Vitae
AC Diamond (née Anastasia Clarke) is a sound and media artist. Their work takes place across galleries, theaters, DIY venues, and outdoor public spaces. Active since 2009, Clarke holds an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and a BA from Bennington College. In addition to their artistic practice, they work as an archivist and serve as Adjunct Faculty in Music Technology at NYU Steinhardt, where they teach computer music and interactive media.
Clarke’s work has been supported by a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Music/Sound (2022-23) and a Van Lier Fellowship at Roulette Intermedium (2020). Their projects have also been supported by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Antisocial Music’s Tiny Fund, and the Queens Arts Fund.
Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk