A collaborative project helmed by interdisciplinary artist Stuart Hyatt, Field Works makes music out of recordings of natural phenomena and soundscapes captured at a particular time and location. Participants have included dozens of notable experimental, electronic, and indie musicians, including Mary Lattimore, Dan Deacon, Juana Molina, Matmos, and Eluvium. The project has produced books, installations, and site-specific performances, as well as album releases such as 2021's Cedars, a song cycle about the earth's forests that combined Arabic poetry with cosmic Americana. 2022's Stations featured human voices singing along with sound recordings of the Earth.

Stuart Hyatt is based in Indianapolis. He first received acclaim for his 2005 album The Clouds, a set of gospel songs he composed that were performed by local choirs and amateur singers in Sumter County, Alabama. The release featured handmade corrugated cardboard packaging, and was nominated for Best Recording Package at the 2005 Grammy Awards. Hyatt's 2007 album Shrimp Attack was composed with members of Creative Clay, a nonprofit cultural arts center for artists with developmental disabilities in St. Petersburg, Florida. Like The Clouds, this release contained innovative packaging, encasing the CD with ninja tree seeds and a spiral-bound illustrated notebook in a U.S. Army canteen pouch. Both albums were issued by Hyatt's own Team Records, then re-released by Innova Recordings.

Hyatt is a member of M12, an artist collective and nonprofit organization based in Colorado that creates artwork, research projects, and education programs exploring rural cultures and landscapes. He has contributed to several M12 exhibitions, summits, and works since the early 2010s. In 2014, the first Field Works album, The National Road, was released. Featuring musicians such as Lali Puna, B. Fleischmann, and Nick Zammuto, the album was based on field recordings made by Hyatt along a single street in Indianapolis, using Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities as a narrative framework. Hyatt continued working with musicians from around the world for Field Works recordings and performances. Pogue's Run appeared in 2015, based on recordings of an Indianapolis waterway; the album's collaborators included William Tyler, Rafael Anton Irisarri, and Benoît Pioulard. Produced in conjunction with the Lancaster Sound Map exhibition, Born in the Ear arrived in 2016, featuring the voices of citizens and choirs from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as well as musicians including Juana Molina, the Album Leaf, Eluvium, and Loscil.

The Fair State was also released in 2016, reflecting on the 200th birthday of the state of Indiana, and featuring recordings taken from the Indiana State Fair. The album was composed by Hyatt and Julien Marchal, and featured harpist Mary Lattimore. 2018's Glen Rose Formation was inspired by the geology of south central Texas, and its music was based on resonant frequencies measured in the Cave Without a Name. The album included narration by 89-year-old Mary McGrath Curry, as well as remixes by electronic artists such as Dntel, Lusine, and Matmos. The two-part Initial Sounds appeared later in the year, containing sounds from within the earth, such as glaciers and volcanoes, as well as the gravitational waves of outer space. Collaborators included Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Dan Deacon, the Field, and Pantha du Prince.

In September 2018, Temporary Residence released Metaphonics: The Complete Field Works Recordings, a seven-LP box set packaged with a hardbound book. The label also issued all of the albums digitally. The eighth Field Works album, Ultrasonic, appeared in 2020. Based on recordings of bats, the set included music by Noveller, Kelly Moran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chihei Hatakeyama, and many others. Cedars, featuring narration by Youmna Saba and H.C. McEntire as well as musicians including Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, and Nathan Bowles, was released in 2021, followed by Maple, Ash, and Oaks: Cedars Instrumentals. In 2022, Field Works released Stations, an album related to the EarthScope project, utilizing ground recording devices to capture natural sounds of the planet. These were combined with vocals and instrumentation by Laraaji, Masayoshi Fujita, Qasim Naqvi, and others. ~ Paul Simpson, Rovi