Xingyu Li

Xingyu Li is a sound artist, composer, and field recordist whose practice explores environmental acoustics, spatial listening, and sound as an expanded artistic medium beyond traditional musical frameworks.

As the artistic director of the experimental music project Whale Circus, he has released more than fifteen albums spanning ambient composition, contemporary sound practices, and interdisciplinary performance.

In 2016, Li initiated the Amazon Rainforest Sound Expedition, conducting extensive field recordings across South America to document rare and endangered acoustic environments. This experience later led to the establishment of 52Hz Sound Cabinet, an artistic platform dedicated to investigating listening as a cultural, ecological, and spatial practice.

In 2018, he launched Sound Journey to the West, a long-term field recording project documenting vernacular musical traditions and acoustic cultures across Xinjiang, China, while exploring improvisational approaches that challenge conventional compositional structures.

In 2024, Li initiated The Sonic Expedition, an ongoing sailing-based artistic and scientific research project dedicated to exploring the acoustic relationships between humans, marine ecosystems, and planetary environments. Through ocean voyages, underwater recordings, scientific collaboration, and artistic practice, the project aims to construct future-oriented archives of the world’s disappearing soundscapes.

The Elegy of the Ocean, the first chapter of The Sonic Expedition, documents the expedition’s initial journey through the South China Sea and the Beibu Gulf, combining field recording, marine bioacoustics research, documentary filmmaking, and contemporary musical composition.

In Li’s practice, sound is treated both as a measurable physical phenomenon and as an abstract sensory language. By integrating artistic inquiry with scientific methodologies, he approaches listening as a means of investigating ecological relationships, spatial perception, and collective memory.