Ryan and Hays Holladay

The Holladay brothers grew up near Washington, D.C., often cited as Arlington, Virginia, where they began making music as self-taught musicians.^[1][6] As teenagers and young adults they played together in bands including Sirhan Sirhan and The Epochs, an alternative rock group based in Brooklyn, New York, fronted by the brothers alongside other members.^[6]

Ryan Holladay later studied at New York University (NYU), graduating before continuing a career that blended sound art, curation and new media projects.^[7][8] Hays Holladay has been described in public profiles primarily as a composer, producer and sound artist, often in collaboration with his brother.^[1][3]

Beginning in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Ryan and Hays Holladay developed a series of multimedia installations and interactive sound works that placed listeners inside evolving sonic environments.^[1][2][3] Their projects have included multichannel audio installations, sound and video works and performances that blur the line between performer and participant, frequently inviting audience movement and interaction as part of the compositional structure.^[1][2][3][4]

Ryan has also worked as a new media curator at Artisphere, an arts center in the Washington, D.C. area, where he helped present and develop experimental media projects while continuing his own artistic practice alongside Hays.^[8] Through these roles the brothers became known in contemporary art and technology circles as early adopters of mobile and digital tools in sound art.^[1][2][3][8]

The Holladay brothers are widely recognized as pioneers of "location-aware" music—compositions mapped to physical environments via GPS-enabled mobile applications.^[2][4][8] In these projects they digitally tag hundreds of overlapping zones across a landscape, assigning musical segments to each area so that a listener walking through the space experiences a unique, continuously shifting arrangement of sound.^[2][4][8]

Among their noted works is a project on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., released as a mobile app that used the device's GPS to sonically map the entire park, allowing users to "compose" their own version of the piece by choosing a path through the site.^[2][4][8] They have created similar site-specific soundscapes for institutions and companies including Dolby, Bose and the U.S. Embassy in London, where their work has entered the permanent art collection.^[3][4][7]

Beyond their installation and app-based work, Ryan and Hays Holladay have composed scores for film, television and audio series.^[2][5][7] They frequently collaborate with director Zach Cregger, with whom they have worked since meeting in the Washington, D.C. area and later playing together in bands.^[7]

Their credits include the score for Weapons, a thriller written and directed by Cregger, for which the brothers have discussed a process rooted in instinct, textural exploration and the use of experimental instruments such as SPECTRES and LANDFORMS.^[5][7] They have also contributed music and sound design to other screen and audio projects, including the documentary series Class Action Park and the horror film Barbarian, as well as scoring work referenced in Spanish-language sources such as the film Roommates.^[2][5][7][9]

Across installations, mobile projects and scores, the Holladay brothers’ work often emphasizes exploration, discovery and non-linear storytelling.^[1][2][3][4] They have experimented with synchronizing everyday objects and antique lamps to musical events in live performance, creating audiovisual environments that respond to movement, place and time.^[2][5]

Their music commonly blends electronic textures, ambient soundscapes and more traditional harmonic writing, using layered patterns and spatialization to give each listener a personalized perspective within the same work.^[1][2][7] Critics and collaborators have described them as sound pioneers and multidimensional storytellers whose work challenges conventional boundaries between recorded media, performance and interactive art.^[2][3][5]

Ryan Holladay has been named a Senior TED Fellow, and previously a TED Fellow and Aspen Ideas Scholar, reflecting his role as a public speaker and advocate for innovative approaches to music and technology.^[1][2][7][8] He has appeared at TED and TEDx events discussing location-based composition and the potential of mobile devices as creative tools, including a TEDxJacksonHole talk titled "Lost in sound".^[1][2][8]

Together, the Holladay brothers have received attention from arts institutions, technology companies and media outlets for their experimental work, with commissions and partnerships spanning cultural diplomacy projects, commercial collaborations and festival performances.^[2][3][4][7] Their inclusion in the U.S. Department of State's art programs highlights the role of their site-specific soundscapes in representing contemporary American multimedia art abroad.^[4]

The brothers were raised outside Washington, D.C., and have lived and worked in cities including New York, Los Angeles and the greater D.C. area while pursuing musical and artistic projects.^[6][7][8] Their long-term collaboration with Zach Cregger extended from their early band activities into film scoring and other media work.^[5][7]