Alison Mattek

Greetings from the digital musics department! This year has been marked by significant academic accomplishments, as well as cutting-edge, electro-acoustic research. Program Director Michael Casey ’92, presented his research at the Bregman Music and Audio Research Studio at ISMIR in Utrecht, the Stanford University hearing Seminar, Google Research in Mountainview CA, and Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering. He continues to develop both OMRAS2 music information tools, and his own MIR scripting language, pyMARSB. More information is available on his website, www.music.dartmouth.edu/~bmars.

Recently, Technology Director Spencer Topel was the co-curator of the Alternative Events concert at ICMC 2010, which included a performance by the Voxare Quartet. In 2011, Topel’s music will be featured by the MATA Interval Series and in Fresh Ink, a broadcast hosted by the Society for New Music. Joshua Hudelson ’11 is conducting ethnographic research on a community of Americans who use recording and transmission technologies to communicate with the spirits of the dead. He is also developing software tools for tracking, sonifying, and manipulating typing patterns as compositional material.

Alexander Wroten ’11 is developing three video games and plans on examining their intrinsic musicality.

Alexander Dupuis ’12 had his audiovisual improvisation piece “/Ramus /” performed at ICMC 2010 at Stony Brook University, and premiered “/Tree of Aeons /” at the Pixilerations festival in Providence, RI, in October.

David Kant ’12 had a solo show at The Incubator Arts Project in NY, where he also collaborated with composer Yoon Ji Lee at The Stone.

Alison Mattek ’12 recently published her paper, Revisiting Cagean Composition Methodology with a Modern Computational Implementation at NIME 2010 in Sydney, Australia.

The department’s graduate students recently started a band called Gravies and the Main Dish Sauce, and had their inaugural performance in November. Also, the bassoon quintet Dark In the Song premiered “Soon to be Replaced” in Columbia, SC.

Michael Chinen ’09 is in Berlin, working on sonification projects with a group called the Institute for Algorhythmics. The group looks at algorithms, signals, and computer architecture and tries to enunciate the similarities in musical compositions. Visit the group’s website at www.algorhythmics.com/en/ for audio samples. Chinen continues his work on Audacity and FFMpeg, and presented his work at the Google Summer of Code 2010.

Travis Garrison ’06 is pursuing a PhD in Music Composition with a cognate in Historical Musicology from the University of Florida. His compositions were recently performed in France and across the United States at both conferences and festivals including ICMC, SEAMUS, and the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival.

Bruno Ruviaro ’04 is currently working as a doctoral scholar at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. Recent compositions include a work for the Stanford Laptop Orchestra, and a trio that performed at the Darmstadt Festival in Germany.

Iroro Orife ’01 is working as a Senior Audio Engineer on Apple’s Final Cut Pro and is running his record label “de’fchild.” For more information, visit the label’s website at http://soundcloud.com/defchild.

Tae Hong Park ’00 recently received tenure at Tulane University, was elected President of ICMA, and is also an editor of SEAMUS.

Colby Leider ’98 was hired as the Director of the Music Engineering Program at the University of Miami. He is currently researching long-term acoustical/meteorological interactions in the Florida everglades.

Ko Umezaki ’93 works in the University of California Irvine’s Music Department in the Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology area. Umezaki produced Huun Huur Tu’s October release of  “Ancestors Call on World Village,” performs with the Silk Road Ensemble, works with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider, and composes with Joe Gramley. Most of his compositions feature Japanese shakuhachi flutes and mobile electronic devices.

Ray Guillette ’92 lives in Berkeley, CA, and is developing an interactive audio-biofeedback environment for the treatment of traumatic-stress conditions.

Alison Mattek

Alison Mattek

by Rebecca Fawcett

Photo: Alison Mattek, a current digital musics graduate student, works in the Bregman Music Audio Research Studio at Dartmouth.