Ernst Karel works with sound, including electroacoustic music and experimental nonfiction sound, with an emphasis on performance and observational cinema. His recent solo projects are edited/composed using unprocessed location recordings; in performance he sometimes combines these with analog electronics to create pieces which move between the abstract and the documentary. Recent sound projections have been presented at Sonic Acts, Amsterdam; Oboro, Montreal; EMPAC, Troy NY; Arsenal, Berlin; and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, New York. His sound installations in collaboration with Helen Mirra have been exhibited at the Gardner Museum, Boston; Culturgest, Lisbon; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Audiorama, Stockholm; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; and in the 2012 Sao Paulo Bienal. His audio-video collaborations include Expedition Content (2020, with Veronika Kusumaryati), Ah humanity! (2015, with Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel) and Single Stream (2014, with Toby Lee and Pawel Wojtasik). From 2006 until 2017 he managed the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University, doing postproduction sound for films including The Iron Ministry, Manakamana, and Leviathan. He developed and has taught a practice-based course in sonic/audio ethnography both at Harvard and through the Center for Experimental Ethnography, University of Pennsylvania.