October 2008

 

My research interests encompass electronic music composition, digital audio signal processing, and related areas. My initial attraction to computer music was prompted by a fascination with algorithmic composition processes tightly coupled with digital sound synthesis. In this same period, I began experiments in granular synthesis of sound, which is of continuing interest. This expanded into the broader field of microsound, i.e., the analysis, synthesis, and transformation of sound on a micro time scale (less than 100 ms). An encounter with Xenakis’s original UPIC system in 1986 led to an interest in graphical visualizations and notations and their counterpart in sound synthesis by graphical means. I have collaborated with a number of artists and engineers of visualizations of my music, including Brian O’Reilly, Woon Seung Yeo, James Ingram, and Garry Kling. The related issue of data sonification remains of great interest, and we are exploring this prospect in the UCSB Allosphere. I am also involved in three-dimensional spatialization of sound and have supervised two theses on wave field synthesis. My scholarly interest in the history of electronic music is long-standing and I have collected many artifacts. Finally, I am convinced that reflection on aesthetic philosophy is essential to artistic practice, so questions of aesthetics are always in the foreground of my thinking.

I am currently Co-principal investigator of a research group focusing on dictionary-based methods of analyzing audio signals: the analytical counterpart of granular synthesis. This research is sponsored by the National Science Foundation.