David Chapman was born on the South Coast of England in and now lives in London. He worked as a professional musician, performing and recording with The Blue Aeroplanes amongst others. He then studied Film at the Polytechnic of North London and University of Westminster before completing doctoral studies on sound art and perception at the University of East London.
He currently creates video and digital sound pieces for both gallery and site-specific exhibition. His previous work investigates the sonic mediation of the natural world and the durational exploration of place and environment through audio-visual installation. Examples of this practice includes: Watermark (2012) at York Guildhall, Octo: Sotto Voce (2009) at York Minster and Re-sounding Falkland (2010), a series of works produced in collaboration with Louise K Wilson on the Falkland Estate in Fife, Scotland. His most recent work has been involved in the exploration of historical and cultural issues, such as in the collaborative installation project Meanings of Failed Action: Insurrection 1946 (2017) (with Vivan Sundaram, Ashish Rajadhyaksha and Valentina Vitali) shown in Mumbai and New Delhi and the video triptych and documentary film Art as Problematic Waste (2019), co-directed with Aimo Hyvärinen.
Previous sound work has included a series of projects based around Gunpowder Park, a reclaimed munitions test site, in the Lee Valley, near London. The projects, based on the collection of bio-acoustic and environmental field recordings include Revelation (2004), an on-line art project which maps the site through sound, image and text, and Hark (2005) and Hark 2 (2007), audio-visual installations made in collaboration with photographer David Cottridge.
Recent live performances has included a series of experiments with playable sound sculptures and music theatre work with visual artist Janette Parris.
He has produced and directed a number of documentary films, including The Hum (1997), which explored inexplicable occurrences of low frequency noise in the West of England and Steel-Cello / Bow-Chime (2005), which examines the performance history of the sound sculptures developed by artist Bob Rutman in the 1960s.
He is also a senior lecturer in Film at the University of East London, UK.