Aesthetic Research Centre

A.R.C. Publications was founded in Vancouver by John Grayson in the early 1970s and was active between 1971 and 1977. Born in Windsor, Ontario in 1943, Grayson was a Canadian instrument builder and sound sculptor also working as a lecturer at Toronto's York University, TV producer, exhibition curator and music educator – conducting workshops with children, for instance. In the Sounds of Sound Sculpture book, Grayson presented himself as "a sound sculptor, university lecturer, experimental theatre producer and farmer".

Grayson was the A.R.C.'s chief editor with a board of advisors including Grayson's wife Joan Costello, Stuart Calder – an educator working with disabled children at University of British Columbia, as well as American writers and composers Michael Byron (b. 1953) and David Rosenboom (b. 1947). The latter was professor at Toronto's York University Department of Music in the 1970s, and, with Byron, was the editor of the Journal of Experimental Aesthetics (J.E.A.) they founded in Vancouver in 1974 and subsequently published by A.R.C. from 1976.