AJAY KAPUR

Introduction
AJAY KAPUR
Ajay Kapur defines himself as a “Musical Scientist.” The “Scientist” in him organizes experiments on how computer programming, electrical engineering, and digital signal processing can be used in artistic practices.

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Dr. Ajay Kapur is a “Musical Scientist.” The “Scientist” in him organizes experiments on how computer programming, electrical engineering, and digital signal processing can be used in artistic practices. The “Musician” in him gathers all the current technology from his laboratory into modules that can be used in the concert hall, writing modern music while blending traditional techniques A large body of his work is centered around how humans and machines can interact symbiotically to create new forms of artistic expression. More specifically, Ajay’s research revolves around one question: “How do you make a computer improvise with a human?” Using the rules set forth by Indian Classical music, he has been driven to build new interfaces for musical expression by using microcomputing, sensor technology, and artificial intelligence, while designing and building programmable mechatronic musical instruments.

Ajay is currently the Associate Provost for Creative Technologies at the California Institute of the Arts, as well as the Director of the Music Technology program (MTIID). He also co-founded and advises a Ph.D. Research Group in Wellington New Zealand called Sonic Engineering Lab for Creative Technology. A risk-taker and entrepreneur at heart, he has also co-founded many successful companies in the areas of education technology, experiential art, and artificial intelligence. He received an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Victoria combining computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, music, and psychology with a focus on intelligent music systems and media technology. Ajay graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002.

Ajay’s various music projects over the past have allowed him to open for bands such as Antibalas, Seun Kuti and The Africa 80, John Scofield, and Autechre. His Machine Orchestra, comprised of humans and robotic musical instruments, traveled the world performing in Singapore, India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Portugal, Italy and more. He has presented his original music and artwork at the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum (LACMA), the Singapore Arts Festival, The Pulse Festival, the Victoria International Jazz Festival, the International Symposium for Electronic Arts, and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

Ajay has published close to 200 technical papers and presented lectures across the world on music technology, education technology, human-computer interfaces for artists, mechatronics for creativity, modern digital orchestras, and artificial Intelligence. His first book “Digitizing North Indian Music”, discusses how sensors, machine learning, and robotics are used to extend and preserve traditional techniques of Indian Classical music. His latest book “Introduction to Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists” is a textbook for artists to learn computer science.

JORDAN HOCHENBAUM

Jordan Natan Hochenbaum is Chief Creative Officer and Vice President of Engineering at Kadenze, a company he co-founded that is redefining online learning for the arts and creative technology. He also serves as faculty in the Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence, and Design (MTIID) and Digital Media programs at California Institute of the Arts, where he teaches creative coding and engineering, computational and generative graphics, music production, and live electronic music performance. Currently, his work involves leveraging machine learning in the arts, designing novel interfaces for musical performance, multimodal sensor systems, and playing and composing in a wide range of musical genres.

Since 2012 Jordan has released over 18 records on renown electronic music labels, and regularly performs and DJs internationally. As co-founder of FlipMu, Jordan has explored interactive works for large-scale multitouch surfaces (such as the recent 4-story interactive cube for RedBull and Vita Motus), real-time data sonification, generative audio-visual systems, and musical interface design with open source aesthetics. Co-founding the Noise Index together with Owen Vallis and Jasmin Ruiz Blasco, an art and research platform which explores questions emerging from increased access to information and information saturation, he has exhibited installations and public artworks in New York, London, Paris, and Los Angeles.

In March 2013, Jordan received his PhD from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His research investigated the affordances of applying multimodal analysis and machine learning to the domain of musical performance. Since then he has: worked as a research scientist at Twitter, developed large-scale multitouch technology for Nokia Research Labs, co-authored a popular book on the Arduino (Manning Publications), was awarded the Leonardo Fellowship, and has consulted on audio analysis, machine learning, and musical interactivity for high profile video games and audio technology companies. Jordan’s work has been featured online and in print, including Wired Magazine, Computer Arts Magazine, Make Magazine, XLR8R Magazine, The Creators Project, Processing.org, and Rhizome.org, to name a few. He has published dozens of technical papers in preeminent international publications, spanning the fields of music, art, human-computer interaction, cloud computing, and engineering.

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DIMITRI DIAKOPOULOS

Dimitri Diakopoulos is a researcher, artist, and technologist working at the intersection of design, music, and computing. His work is visible through software frameworks for novel artistic collaboration, multimedia installations, and new tools for creative expression. He is inspired by the large open-source community of creative coders and hardware developers while exploring the marriage of HCI, generative systems, and sensor-based interaction. He currently resides in Seattle, WA. Dimitri is now a Creative Technologist at Intel.

MEASON WILEY

Meason Wiley is a musician, multimedia artist and fabricator based out of New Mexico. He received both his BFA and MFA in Music Technology (MTIID Program) from California Institute of the Arts, mentored by Dr. Ajay Kapur, Michael Darling, and Trimpin. Meason is currently a mechanical/kinetic/sound artist and designer for the immersive art/entertainment company Meow Wolf. In the seven years prior to Meow Wolf, Meason was a Professor of Music Technology at Austin Community College (MBPT Program) where he taught visual programming, sound design, audio synthesis, and live electronic music performance courses. He was also the ACC Makerspace Coordinator, training students in electronics, computer programming, and digital fabrication. Additionally, he was the founder/creator of the ACC Digital Art + Technology Forum, a monthly lecture/performance series that brought innovative visiting artists and technologists from all over the world to share, engage, and inspire both ACC students and the greater Austin creative community.

His personal work centers around the exploration of imperceptibility in nature and natural phenomena through various creative processes, including mechanical/kinetic design, robotics, generative systems, data sonification, and physical computing. In addition to his own work, Meason has been involved with the KarmetiK collective/think tank since 2009, a group of artists and engineers seeking to explore and redefine the boundaries between music, the visual arts, and technology.

As a musician, he has toured the US extensively, and has also lectured and presented work at NIME, SXSW-Interactive, the SXSW-Music Festival, the DubSpot/Ableton Forum, Meow Wolf: House of Eternal Return, Church of the Friendly Ghost, NMASS Art Festival, Austin Film Festival, The HouseCore Horror Film Festival, Levitation Fest, Link & Pin Gallery, Radical Abacus (Santa Fe), The Vortex (Austin), The Salvage Vanguard (Austin), PehrSpace (Los Angeles), Automata Arts (Los Angeles), Temescal Art Center (Oakland), Base Experimental Arts Space (Seattle), Walt Disney REDCAT, Mesa Festival, CalArts, Louisiana State University, Carnegie Mellon University, University of San Diego, Texas State University, The University of Texas (Austin), and others. His work has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including ICMC, CMJ, NIME, Spin Magazine, Uncut Magazine, Rolling Stone, The LA Weekly, The LA Times, The Austin Chronicle, The Austin American Statesman, Create Digital Music, Synthwise, Synthtopia, Wired, and SXSW magazine.

MICHAEL DARLING

“It seems to me that the bulk of my work has been a struggle to forget what I trained to do in school and find a vocabulary that would allow me both raw expression as well as true understanding of the narrative of simple tangible objects.”

Over the last 10 years Michael Darling has been working on a series of block constructions based on the concept of the “haves” and the “have nots” with visual influences rooted in materials, architecture, bacteria, 70’s sci-fi and text. Using wood, used material and objects taken, found or cut from abandon factories in Western Massachusetts that he has collected, Michael assembles them together into semi-massive organic constructions. By using the blocks and objects like abstract brushstrokes he tries to create with the idea that he is the disavowed worker making this out of what was once his bosses office.

Michael Darling graduated from the Pacific Northwest College of Art with a degree in sculpture and printmaking. Professionally he has spent the last 16 years working in theater and themed entertainment as a Fabricator, Technical Director and Scene Designer with such theater artists and groups as Richard Foremen (The Ontological Theater), The Foundry Theater, And How… and The Target Margin. He has worked on productions in New York, Los Angeles and theater festivals world wide including The Barbican Festival, The Vienna Festival, Zürich Theater Spektakel, The Singapore Theater Festival, The Holland Festival, The Spoleto Festival and most recently The Sydney Theater Festival. Michael Darling has been a Faculty member and Head of Technical Direction at The California Institute of the Arts School of Theater since 2003 and teach classes ranging from CAD drafting and Technical Design to teaching Digital Fabrication.

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OWEN VALLIS

Owen Vallis is a musician and artist interested in performance, sound, and technology. As a co-founder of Flipmu, Owen explores a diverse range of projects including producing other musicians, composing his own music, building audio processors, and designing new hardware interfaces for musical performance. Having lived in Toronto, Canada, Wellington, New Zealand, San Francisco, Nashville, and Los Angeles, Owen has been able to develop a broad and interesting cross section of musical ideologies and aesthetics.

In 2008, Owen graduated from the MTIID program at California Institute of the Arts, and is currently completing his Ph.D. in Sonic Arts at the New Zealand School of Music, Victoria University of Wellington. Over the past 10 years, Owen has worked as an engineer in studios around Nashville Tennessee and Los Angeles, built a recording facility from the ground up, produced and mixed records for other artists, had production work featured in major motion films, worked for leading ribbon microphone manufacturer Royer Labs, and developed multitouch interfaces for Nokia Research Labs. Owen’s work has been featured in Wired, Future Music, Pitchfork, XLR8R, Processing.org, computer arts magazine, and shown at events such as NASA’s Yuri’s Night, and Google I/O.

MANJINDER BENNING

From raising the the roof at a dance club to raising the collective unconscious, Manjinder envisions the harmonious, sustainable, marriage of technology, art, nature and music.

Manjinder received his Masters of Applied Science from the University of Victoria in 2007 in Electrical Engineering with a focus on computer music and interactive technology. Manjinder has collaborated with dancers, musicians, engineers and visual artists to realize performances in interactive art and music. Under his arsenal are technologies such as voice recognition, computer vision/audition, machine learning, data mining, and wearable sensors.

Currently Manjinder is the director of Limbic Media, a Canadian company that specializes in large scale interactive art and technology. He has also performed as a musician at a variety of festivals including the infamous Shambhala Music Festival with his live electro-brazilian dance project, Microbongo Sound System.

JESSE BROWN

Interweaving sonic landscapes with organic melodic tapestries, this BC born artist is on a quest to find his electronic voice. Co-founder of the World Symphonic Groove Orchestra (WSGO), a key member of the KarmetiK Underground, and co-founder of Bhutan, Jesse has traveled all around BC and the West Coast of North America performing for audiences.

Jesse “Astroboy” Brown metamorphizes folk music with a 21st century tinge. Inventing a novel sound coined by the name of “AstroPhonics” he continues to see into the future and compose new music.

SATNAM MINHAS

Satnam is on a quest to find his own voice in a world where melody can take infinite forms. Quietly working on his own project, Satnam hopes to one day touch the souls of all music lovers with a sound that will speak to all walks of life.

Satnam Minhas spent most of his early adolescence learning the tabla from his cousin and Uncle in order to accompany his father at local temples. From there he broke away from traditional sikhi kirtan and took to rock. After many years of teaching himself to play guitar, he played and performed with the World Symphonic Groove Orchestra and later with Karmetik Underground.

PERRY R. COOK

Perry Cook is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, jointly in Music, at Princeton University, where he founded the Princeton Sound Lab. A recognized expert in computer audio, Perry co-developed ChucK with Ge Wang (and others) at Princeton. He is also the co-founder of PLOrk (the Princeton Laptop Orchestra). Perry received his PhD and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, a BS in Electrical Engineering and a BA in Music from the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He is also a founding advisor, consultant, and Intellectual Property Strategist, for the musical App company SMule. Perry is a lead advisor to KarmetiK and participates in the companies artistic pursuits as well as technical developments.