Dan Senn (Prague-Watertown) is an intermedia artist working in music composition and production, kinetic sound sculpture, experimental and documentary film. He has been a professor of music and art in the United States and Australia and travels internationally as a lecturer, performer and installation artist. He lives in Prague where he directs the Echofluxx festivals, and Watertown, Wisconsin, the USA, with his partner-collaborator, Caroline Senn. Dan's work moves freely between expressive extremes and languages depending upon the aesthetic joust at hand. He studied music (composition, French Horn, conducting) and art (ceramics) at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse with Truman Daniel Hayes, Leonard Stach and William Estes, and at the University of Illinois, Urbana (composition), with Salvatore Martirano, Ben Johnston, Herbert Brün and Otto Laske. His music is published by Smith Publications of Baltimore. His work for "Any Three Treble Instruments In the Same Key," called "Rivus," was released in 2015 by Ravello Records, along with works by Scotto and Cage as performed by the McCormick Percussion Group. In 2017 his work "Four Psams Modal" was premiered by the Kuhn Choir of Prague, again in 2019 by the 52 member University of Texas Choir in San Marcos. His "Seven for Piano" was premiered in February 2017 by Caroline Senn in Wisconsin and a new film, "Voices of Theresa" was shown at the Indie Wisconsin Film Festival in 2019. Dan founded Newsense-Intermedium of Tacoma, Washington, cofounded Roulette Intermedium of New York City and Cascadia Composers of Portland, Oregon. He is the artistic director of the Czech media festival Echofluxx that he cofounded in 2011.

Dan trained as a French horn player and vocalist at the University of Wisconsin at LaCrosse before attending the University of Illinois, Urbana, on scholarship in 1975. In the fall of 1971, he studied raku pottery, an ancient ceramic method shifting his aesthetic outlook at its core. In 1977 he built his first mobile sculptural instrument, a "Scrapercussion", and soon after began development of software emulating the raku ceramic process where musical composition might  exhibit parallel properties of highly considerate, non-linear systems which consciously restrain the will of the artist as a means to discovery. Since 1971 he has kept personal journals, now over 80,000 pages, a practice he initiated to assist individuation but one that has impacted all aspects of his art. (Photo of Dan Senn, Sal Martirano and Ken Pohlman, 1975, touring at SUNY-Stony Brook: click to enlarge.)

Dan Senn's sculptural instruments are often controlled using sub-audio frequencies—his pendulum-based instruments, for example, are energized using algorithmically generated subaudio "scores" and vary in size from 18"x18"x18" to outdoor versions covering 600sf. Sub-audio pitches, 0-19 herz, have also been used to inflate objects, to move percussion mallets, the wings of sculptural birds, etc.

In 2011, Dan co-founded the Prague-based Echofluxx festivals with Anja Kaufmann. In 2008, he co-founded Cascadia Composers, with David Bernstein, in Portland, Oregon. In 2002, his documentary film, The Exquisite Risk of Civil War Brass, won at the da Vinci Film Festival in Corvallis, Oregon. His scored music is published by Smith Publications, Sonic Arts Editions, and AM Percussion Publications. In 1998 he won the prestigeous sculpture prize at the Papier Bienale at the Leopold Hoesch Museum, Düren, Germany. In 1997 he was awarded the Artist Trust 10th Anniversary President's Award (Seattle) for his influence on the arts throughout the Pacific Northwest, and in 1998 became the first Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington at Tacoma. From 1995 to 1999, Dan produced the highly original Six Exquisite International Sound Art Festival in collaboration with organizations throughout the Pacific Northwest. In 1995 he was awarded the McKnight Composer-in-Residence Award for the State of Minnesota where, among other projects, he produced the Catacombs of Yucatan Sound and Video Installation within a remote limestone cave located in the southeastern corner of that state.   His recorded music is available from the artist direct, Experimental Musical Instruments, Sounds We Are Now and Periplum Records. He lives in Prague, The Czech Republic, where he founded and directs Efemera of Prague (Echofluxx festivals), and in Beaverton, Oregon, where he cofounded Cascadia Composers. Dan also founded Newsense-Intermedium of Tacoma, WA and cofounded Roulette Intermedium of New York City.

Event documentation is an important part of Dan's work harkening back to his student days producing extravagant events at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. The Fmera organization was initiated by Dan as an umbrella for his documentation and production interests which include his International Space Band work, the Condon Collection of Australia, Cascadia Composers events, Echofluxx festival documentation, Newsense Intermedium events, and even those productions from his years as a Professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. While attendance to his edgy Echofluxx festivals in Prague, compared to well-financed festivals of a similar sort, may be only in the hundreds, the quality documentation, reaches many thousands world-wide ongoing online.

Dan Senn has a doctorate in Music Compositon and Ceramic Sculpture (minor) from the University of Illinois where his principal instructors were Salvatore Martirano, Ben Johnston, and Herbert Brün. At the UW-LaCrosse he studied art with Leonard Stach and music composition with Dr. Truman Daniel Hayes. He has been a Lecturer in Electronic Music at the Canberra School of Music in Australia, an Associate Professor of Composition at Ball State University in Indiana, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

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