Rajivan Ayyappan is a sound artist, composer, musician and visual artist from India.
He works independently as a sound designer for film, video, choreography and installation.
He has performed, exhibited, lectured, and held residencies internationally. Some of his recent works include: Project—o, 40 min performance for children, Sound mapping Mithi River at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; soundscapes of Venice (field recordings/design schemes); sound design for the 2006 Cannes Festival award winning animation film The Printed Rainbow by Gitanjali Rao; Revenir au Luxembourg, opening of Dance Festival Luxembourg 2008; Telescapes for FIFA World Cup 2006 at the Koln Museum.
His sound work draws resources from Indian music  and  sound culture. Born in Kerala in an artistic family, at the age 5 he began studying south Indian music (vocals and percussions) under the guidance of Sri. Kuttappan Bhagavadar, Itthitthanam (1970-1986). In 1975, with a self-carpentered acoustic guitar he started studying  and exploring other systems of music along with his brother. After six years  of design studies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, he began his extended musical exploration with an added knowledge of performance art and visual art history. He’s been moving  through different fields of sound work, playing prepared guitar for electro-acoustic live improvisations, designing his own sound installations as well as working professionally as a sound designer for film (field recordings and post production).
He lives in Luxembourg where he performs with PRBH jazz quartet and Luma-luma sound laboratory, exploring his own sound world through diverse musical gestures in a performance based improvised music.