Mark Hosler is an American musician who is a founding member of the sound art collective Negativland.
Through his public speaking, lectures and extensive interviews, he serves as the primary spokesperson for the group. Hosler grew up in Concord, California.
In 1979, he produced the first Negativland recordings on cassette, primarily as an attempt to feel that he accomplished something before graduating high school.[1][2]
Hosler may currently reside in Asheville, North Carolina.
He was the keynote speaker at the 2004 Allied Media Conference, spoke at the Regional Conference to End Corporate Dominance in Portland, Oregon, at the Conference On The Public Domain at Duke University, as part of alternative events during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, and at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2008.
Negativland's 2008 release, Thigmotactic, was a work of more traditional song-writing, primarily written by Hosler.
He has worked on alternative copyright practices with Creative Commons and also lobbied the United States Congress for Digital Freedom.
He has lectured at the universities of Arizona, Chapel Hill, Georgia, Houston, Oregon, Rice University, Tennessee, and Virginia, as well as at MIT, Yale, New York University, Seattle University School of Law, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and in cities including Washington, D.C., New York City, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Toronto, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Melbourne, Australia.