Primor D’aion explores the concept of the creation and development of the human life cycle alongside the notion of cyclical incarnation. Primor D’aion serves as a snapshot of one moment within that cycle, from birth to death. Various sound sources undergo constant transformation as they progress through the different stages of life until death occurs. Following death, there is a suggestion of rebirth through the reintroduction of initial material, initiating the cycle anew. The video utilizes a blend of AI-generated visuals created from prompts that describe the sound sources and narrative cues based on human transformation.

Patrick Reed, a native of Dallas, Texas, is a composer and educator committed to inspiring a passion for contemporary music in audiences of all ages. Through his work, he seeks to make modern music accessible and engaging, fostering curiosity and appreciation in both seasoned listeners and newcomers alike. Reed’s works have been featured at prestigious events such as the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Electronic Music Midwest, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, SEAMUS, NSEME, and the Society of Composers, Inc. national and regional conferences. Reed recently earned a Ph.D. in Music Composition from the University of North Texas, where he studied under Jon Nelson, Andrew May, and Panayiotis Kokoras. He also holds a Master of Music in Composition from Bowling Green State University, where his mentors included Elainie Lillios, Christopher Dietz, and Mikel Kuehn. Additionally, he received a Bachelor of Music in Composition and Music Education from Texas Tech University, studying with Peter Fischer and Mei-Fang Lin

Children of the Stars from StellarScape. Children of the Stars is the computer animation section of StellarScape by Yuanyuan Kay He (Composer) and Georgios Cherouvim (Visual Artist) StellarScape is a live and immersive multimedia project synthesizing music, science, visual art, and technology. The performance and installations include live musicians, electronic music, and dance, collaborating with interactive cinematography – fusing kinesthetic and acoustic sensing with cosmic simulation, in real-time. This convergence research collaboration is catalyzed by the union of concepts at the confluence of astronomy, humanity, artistic expression through music and dance, and socio-technical experience.

Yuanyuan Kay He is a composer and multimedia artist with roots in China. Her research focuses on using innovative technologies to blur the boundaries between different fields and combine various art forms. Her works often explore and intertwine different forms of media to create unique audiovisual experiences that engage the audience. Many of her works involve collaborations with musicians, choreographers, dancers, scientists, engineers, photographers, visual artists, and stage designers. Her immersive multimedia project StellarScape is a convergence research collaboration synthesizing science, humanity, music, visual art, and technology.

As a composer, she is highly active in the music community. Kay serves as the Creative Director for Electronic Music Midwest (EMM), an annual music festival dedicated to programming a wide variety of electroacoustic music and providing high-quality electronic media performances. She is also the founder and director of the TURN UP Multimedia Festival, which promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, culture connection, and equality. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Arizona School of Music, where she teaches composition, electroacoustic music, and multimedia.

Kept Liquid By Friction. The piece suggests meanings for the necessity of conflict. Attractions are stimulations and opposites attract. Organisms need each other and interactions provide impetus to ways to do that. The beat of life facilitates interactions and the mysteries within. The music ventures into the realms of time and the integration of things. Ecology. Friction is an essential ingredient for growth and existence. The sense of conflict is laid out in animated voices as they yield to temporal beats. A forward movement finds fuel in fast flowing indecipherable communications. Without intention, turmoil is the necessary eventuality.

Larry Matthew Gaab is a native of the United States. The music is composed combining the delicate vibrance of acoustic sounds along with the impact of digital and electronic processing. His works have been selected for music festivals and concerts around the world.

Breathing is so essential in our lives; sometimes we take it for granted, and never perceive and appreciate it. It means the aliveness of our body, the pace of our mind, and even the freedom of being able to be alive and be active. The composer tries to create a meditative musical space for the audience to experience their own breathing, with the timbre varies between the original cello sounds and the synthesized sounds in the electronic music, people will perceive their own pace through intensive sounds and relaxing sounds. All the images develop to abstract phantoms following the development of the sounds.

Qi Mengjie (Maggie) is an assistant professor at the China Conservatory of Music and a postdoctoral researcher at the Central Conservatory of Music. An award-winning composer and interdisciplinary sound artist, her innovative works span concert music, electroacoustic composition, and technology-driven installations. Her creations have been featured internationally at prestigious venues and festivals, including the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), New York International Electronic Music Festival (NYCEMF), ISCM World Music Days, SEAMUS, SPLICE Festival, Cube Fest, Beijing Modern Music Festival, and MUSICACOUSTICA-Beijing, among others. Dr. Qi holds a PhD and an MA in Electronic Music from the Central Conservatory of Music, complemented by graduate studies in Sonic Arts at the City University of New York. Beyond her artistic practice, she actively bridges global creative communities as a curator and cultural advocate. Since 2012, she has served as International Coordinator for MUSICACOUSTICA-Beijing, spearheading cross-cultural dialogues through curated concerts, multimedia exhibitions, and technology-art symposia. Her scholarly rigor extends to peer review roles for ICMC and IEEE conferences, where she evaluates cutting-edge research in music technology. Dr. Qi founded Ensemble Phoenix Beijing in 2020—a dynamic collective redefining contemporary music through the synthesis of diverse cultural elements, computer techniques, and transmedia storytelling. Her career embodies a dual commitment to advancing sonic innovation in academia and fostering interdisciplinary synergies across global stages.

KatharsisGPT – World of Stone. The AI chatbot that I was nicely ‘allowed to ask anything’ was not only very polite, but also surprisingly positive about electronic music; he did not know electroacoustic music. He gave a whole range of reasons for listening to electronic music, including the fact that it is “particularly innovative and experimental” and can create “a unique atmosphere”. The question of why I should compose electronic music was also answered very positively. Here, apart from some well-known good arguments e.g. that I can completely control the output and address my audience directly, without performers as an intermediate station, I was particularly struck by a small passage at the very end of the answer, namely that composing electronic music can also be “a very personal and cathartic experience”. Of course, I immediately asked him to explain what he meant by karthasis and thereupon decided to base my new piece on a choreography of personal feelings. After that, however, there were lots of phases where I couldn’t really get on with my many and very different questions. I asked about a musical vision, which he had referred to before, or about the way certain sounds evoke certain feelings and what they are or can be. Each time my chatbot was at a loss for an answer, he wrote: “Something went wrong.” (in English, although the rest of conversation was in German) When, at the end of a long and increasingly less purposeful sequence of conversations, I asked him directly if he was capable of composing, he even wrote to me explicitly: “[…] It is important to note, however, that my abilities in this area are limited and I do not have the creative intuition and emotional understanding of a human composer. Human creativity and interpretation remain unique and irreplaceable.” Thank you! I said, but he answered “Something went wrong.” So I composed my new piece based on an abstract dramaturgy of personal feelings, accustomed to my own responsibility—and as a reference and homage to our sounding environment only from the most diverse stone sounds from nature including, among others, the sounds of a volcanic eruption, flowing lava, a stone avalanche, a deep cave and a desert landscape. This attempt to directly involve artificial intelligence in the composition of a new electroacoustic work was a very interesting experience for me (thank you for the DEGEM call), but it also clearly showed the limits. I think AI can become really very dangerous when fraudsters use it to create and place fake news and manipulate images and sound recordings. But the fear that AI will put artists out of work is probably unfounded, because it cannot do what is most important for the creation of serious art – to make aesthetic decisions. This piece is published on DegeM-CD 23 “Listening Machines – Ecological Perspectives” 2023

Thomas Gerwin, composer and sound artist, began improvising very early, later receiving classical education (guitar with Cosi Alberta, Kassel; Magister artium in musicology with Georg von Dadelsen University of Tübingen; masterclass studies in composition with Erhard Karkoschka and Ulrich Süße, Music Academy Stuttgart). He got into Musique concrète at a very early age; since 1990 he has also been working intensively in the field of soundscape composition and radio art. Important personal influences by John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and R. Murray Schafer. Thomas Gerwin was on the founding board of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology in 1998, founder and artistic director of the annual International Sound Art Festival Berlin (2004–2018), several ensembles as well as the concert series KlangWelten ad hoc. Since 2017 he has been chairman of the Brandenburg New Music Association BVNM e.V. and artistic director of the festival intersonanzen. He has been awarded with various national and international prizes and scholarships, many of his more than 250 works have been performed and broadcasted worldwide. His sheet music is published by Ricordi and Verlag Neue Musik.

Coastal Portrait: Cycles and Thresholds is a work for orchestra and electronics featuring spatialized electronic sounds derived from environmental data gathered by scientists in the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research (GCE-LTER) Project. The piece presents a dialogue between intuitively composed orchestral music and data-driven electronics: synthesized translations of tens of thousands of data points measuring temperature, salinity, marsh vegetation, and (recorded and projected) sea level rise on the Georgia coast. Conceived in collaboration between composer Peter Van Zandt Lane and marine scientist Dr. Amanda Spivak, the work explores the GCE Project’s central focus: long-term patterns of ecological change in Georgia’s coastal estuaries and wetlands. By mapping decades of scientific data to electronic sounds, the piece offers a portrait of coastal environments—their natural cycles, their response to global change, and insight into their future. In this interplay, electronics act as the objective observer, while the orchestra serves as the human interpreter. We hear cycles in the strings reflecting the data’s repeating patterns, alongside moments where thresholds are crossed—where cyclical change gives way to irreversible shifts, such as the alarming trends in sea level rise.

The use of eight speakers surrounding the audience corresponds to eight GCE research sites. Many sounds feature synchronized data from distinct geographic locations. Though hearing all eight streams at once can be chaotic, the aggregate reveals patterns of freshwater and saltwater exchange and local temperature shifts, with outliers standing out. Gliding sounds represent average plant height each year, forming chords passed between electronics and orchestra, leading into a final section of rotating peak temperature data and sounds from the opening section filtered through a low-pass filter driven by sea level data. The work concludes by immersing listeners in the environments themselves through soundfield recordings made by the composer near GCE-LTER research sites.

This composition, along with the associated audio installation Coastal Cycles II, was supported by a Sea Grant Artists, Writers, and Scholars award from NOAA under the U.S. Department of Commerce. Special thanks to GCE scientists Amanda Spivak, Daniela Di Iorio, Merryl Alber, and Steven Pennings, and their graduate students and research teams, funded by the National Science Foundation. Sonification was enabled by data instrument programming from Jared Tubbs. Coastal Portrait: Cycles and Thresholds exists in versions for full symphony orchestra and for string orchestra, and was premiered in November 2024 in Atlanta, by the Georgia Tech Symphony Orchestra.

Peter Van Zandt Lane’s music has been described as “refreshingly relevant” (New York Times) and “incisive… beautifully and confidently made… as inviting as it is sophisticated” (American Academy of Arts and Letters). He composes acoustic and electroacoustic concert music that draws from an eclectic musical background, chipping away at boundaries between his classical training and experiences in rock, hip-hop, and EDM, creating pieces that often reflect critically on the subject of technology in society. A recipient of the 2020 MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year Award and a 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship, Peter has received fellowships from Copland House, Composers Now, Yaddo, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and MacDowell Colony, among others. Recent works include Radix Tyrannis, a concerto for Joseph Alessi commissioned by American Chamber Winds, Piano Quartet: The Longitude Problem commissioned by the Atlanta Chamber Players, and Chamber Symphony commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for EQ Ensemble (Boston). His catalog of works for wind ensemble –namely Hivemind, Astrarium, and Echo Chambers– are widely performed by professional and collegiate bands alike. His electroacoustic ballet, HackPolitik (one of two award-winning collaborations with choreographer Kate Ladenheim) was a New York Times Critic’s Pick, receiving international press attention for exploring cyber-activism through music and dance. Peter holds degrees from Brandeis University and the University of Miami, and is currently Professor of Music Composition at the University of Georgia and director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music.

In my small night, I mourn,
The wind has a pact with the tree’s leaves,
In my small night, there’s a trembling of ruin,
Listen,
Can you hear the rush of darkness?
I gaze at this fleeting happiness, lonely,
I am addicted to my own despair.
Listen,
Can you hear the rush of darkness?
In the night, something passes now,
The moon is red, disturbed,
And on this roof, where fear of collapse lingers,
The clouds, like mourners in a crowd,
Seem to await the moment to pour,
For one moment,
And then—nothing.
Behind this window, the night quivers,
And the earth stands still,
Unable to turn,
Behind this window, something unknown,
Worries both you and me.
O, all your being is green,
Place your hands, like a burning memory, in my lover’s embrace,
And entrust your lips, like a warm feeling of life,
To the caress of my lover’s kiss.
The wind will carry us away,
The wind will carry us away.

– Forugh Farrokhzad

Ali Balighi, a composer, sound designer, and sound engineer, was born in Tehran, Iran. He graduated from The University of Art in 2011 with a Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance. A passion for composition led him to pursue a Master’s degree in Composition at Texas Tech University, where he is currently a student for a Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) in Composition.

Balighi’s compositions have been showcased internationally at festivals and conferences, including Sonic Matter, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, Hot Air Music Festival, Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, NoiseFloor UK Contemporary Music, Research On Contemporary Composition Conference, ClarinetFest, Cortona Sessions For New Music, Audiovisual Frontiers Festival, ICSC 2022 6th International Csound Conference, and Tehran International Electronic Music Festival. His works, such as Daramad for Three Sopranos and Fixed Media, Khane Haftom for Santur, and Too Loud A Solitude for Cello and Live Electronics, have been featured in these platforms.

As a composer, Balighi has released contemporary music albums, including Whispers of Papers, Noise vs. Silence vol. 1, and Intolerance. His compositions have been performed by musicians and ensembles such as Sputter Box ensemble, Front Porch ensemble, Zenith Saxophone Quartet, Twenty Fingers Duo, SynthBeats, The ____ Experiment, Michael Bridge, Parker Fritz, Anoush Moazzeni, Kathryn Vetter, Hamed Shaded, Golnaz Khalili, Puneh Zare’i Sefid Dashti, Neda Asadinejad, Shaghayegh Bagheri, Behnoush Sabetghadam, Negin Goodarzi, Zeinab Hajihasani, and Ulrike Brand.

EV6 is the latest in a series of collaborative works in which non-musicians can meaningfully participate in real-time music making. It is our first to involve a live professional ensemble, and to utilize no fixed media or other types of safety nets. It is in fact a completely scored concerto grosso, with A Far Cry in the role of solo strings, while the audience – divided by the four quadrants of the hall – trigger their phones on cue to perform the wind, brass, percussion, and ensemble string parts. 

EV6 is written for the Tutti platform – a framework for tightly synchronized large-scale audience performances using mobile phones. Tutti was first used in Egozy and Ziporyn’s Engineered Engineers, a 3-minute rhythmically driving arrangement of MIT’s Engineers’ Drinking Song, and has been performed dozens of times since. 

The title is an homage to Evan’s electric car, which in so many ways large and small is so different in design and functionality than gas-powered vehicles, but which, when all is said and done, is still a car is a car is a car. And so it is with this piece.

Evan Ziporyn is Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Music at MIT, as well as Faculty Director of the Institute’s Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST). As a composer/clarinetist/conductor, he has written for and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Ethel, Anna Sofie Von Otter, the American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Iva Bittova, Terry Riley, Don Byron, Wu Man, and Bang on a Can. In 2017, his arrangements were featured on Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, and on Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home.

Last month in MIT’s Tull Hall,, Ziporyn and his ensemble, Gamelan Galak Tika, revived his 1994 rock gamelan epic Tire Fire, incorporating new real-time visual elements developed by Harmonix co-founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy. In 2025 he also had new works premiered by Kinetic Ensemble and Gamelan Yowana Sari. His Earth Studies, for the Los Angeles-based PARTCH Ensemble, will be premiered at REDCAT on June 13, just hours after tonight’s performance. Later this year, he’ll release two recordings: the world premiere of Terry Riley’s Xi for multitrack clarinets, and Art Decade, a collaboration with the Toronto-based ContaQt Ensemble.

Other recent works include the drum set concerto Impulse Control, Air=Water for gamelan and strings, Poppy 88, a 64-location real-time telematic performance in celebration of Terry Riley’s 88th birthday; and Arachnodrone, an immersive installation with Ian Hattwick, Christine Southworth, & Isabelle Su, which premiered at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo in November 2018. His cross-disciplinary collaborations include works with visual artist Matthew Ritchie, choreographer Hope Mohr, filmmaker/podcast Caveh Zahedi, and the DesignEarth team of Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy.

His 2017 orchestral reimagining of David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar, with Maya Beiser as cello soloist, has been performed at ISGM Calderwood, Barcelona Symphonyi, New York Central Park Summerstage, Australia’s Adelaide Fringe Festival, Stanford Lively Arts, Strathmore Hall, and numerous other national and international venues.

Ziporyn studied at Eastman School of Music, Yale, and UC Berkeley with Joseph Schwantner, Martin Bresnick, and Gerard Grisey. He received a Fulbright in 1987, founded Gamelan Galak Tika in 1993, and composed a series of groundbreaking compositions for gamelan and western instruments, as well as evening-length works such as 2001’s ShadowBang, 2004’s Oedipus Rex (Robert Woodruff, director), and 2009’s A House in Bali, which was featured at BAM Next Wave in October 2010. He released two albums of his orchestral works with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, featuring tabla master Sandeep Das as soloist.

From 1992-2012 he served as music director, producer, and composer/arranger for the Bang on a Can Allstars, winning Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year award in 2005. He has also recorded and toured with Paul Simon (You’re the One) and the Steve Reich Ensemble, sharing in the latter’s 1998 Grammy for Best Chamber Music Performance. In 2012 he formed the Eviyan Trio with Iva Bittova and Gyan Riley, with whom he recorded two albums. He has also released numerous albums on Cantaloupe Music, New World, CRI, Islandia, Orange Mountain and other labels. Honors include a USA Artist Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Prize from the American Academy, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and commissions from Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program, and Meet the Composer.

Eran Egozy, Professor of the Practice in Music Technology at MIT, is an entrepreneur, musician and technologist. He was the co-founder and chief technical officer of Harmonix Music Systems which developed the video game franchises Guitar Hero and Rock Band, selling over 35 million units worldwide and generating over $1 billion in annual sales. Eran and his business partner Alex Rigopulos were named in Time Magazine’s Time 100, Fortune Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40, and USA Network’s Character Approved awards.

Eran is also an accomplished clarinetist. Hailed as “sensitive and energetic” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), he has appeared as soloist with the MIT Symphony Orchestra and as guest artist on the radio show From the Top. Eran is the clarinetist for Radius Ensemble (named Boston’s Best Classical Ensemble in 2016 by the Improper Bostonian), and has appeared with Boston area ensembles such as Emmanuel Music and A Far Cry. His teachers include Jonathan Cohler, William Wrzesien, and Tom Martin.

Eran serves on the Boards of several Boston-area non-profit organizations and mentors and invests in a number of startups in the Boston area. Prior to co-founding Harmonix, Eran earned degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music from MIT, where he conducted research in music technology at the MIT Media Lab.

Now back at MIT, he is the founding director of the Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program. His current research and teaching interests are interactive music systems, music information retrieval, and multimodal musical expression and engagement. His recent projects include *12*, an audience-participation work for chamber music where audience members use their mobile to musically interact with the stage musicians, and Tutti, a massively multiplayer mobile-audience performance piece where the entire audience becomes the orchestra. Eran is currently developing ConcertCue, a program-note streaming mobile app for live classical music concerts. ConcertCue has been featured in concerts of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Baroque, Opera Birmingham, and the New World Symphony, and was awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation.

She looked in the mirror; the other one wasn’t there. She found a blank page to start from scratch and build the universe again.

A Blank Page is a composition for N performers, a live coder, and a virtual acoustic environment. This piece integrates technology, performers, the composer, and the venue itself in ways that remain nearly imperceptible to the audience. Utilizing Pandora’s Dream, a system that dynamically generates and distributes notation in real time, the work continuously evolves through machine listening, artificial intelligence, and live processing. The performers’ sounds are captured and fed back into the system, influencing both the electronic transformations and the unfolding score. A dynamic virtual acoustic space, based on live convolution with Impulse Responses ranging from dry (0s) to 17 second, reshapes the perception of sound. In the meantime, granular synthesis and nonlinear processing blur the boundaries between instrument, space, and electronics. A Blank Page invites performers and audiences into an emergent sonic landscape where music is written, rewritten, and reinvented in the moment.

Celeste Betancur is a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), where her research explores the intersections of music, technology, and algorithmic composition. As a composer, digital artist, and live coder, her work spans a broad spectrum—from academic concert halls to underground electronic music scenes—emphasizing real-time score generation, live coding performance, and the development of interactive audiovisual systems. Her interdisciplinary practice includes the design and construction of expanded musical instruments, large-scale installations, and sculptures. Betancur’s compositions have been performed by internationally renowned ensembles such as Leimay Ensemble, Distractfold Ensemble, Cinevivo, Andamio, Iran Sanadzadeh, Niloufar Shiri, Adapter Ensemble, RGGTRN, Linea Ensemble and many others. Beyond composition and performance, Betancur is an accomplished software developer specializing in music technology. She has contributed and is actively working for the ChucK programming language development. Her performances have taken place across more than 20 countries. She has presented her research at leading international conferences such as NeurIPS, ICLC, SMC, and NIME, contributing to the ongoing dialogue at the intersection of music, computation, and artistic expression.

Luna Valentin’s academic and musical journey is deeply intertwined with a passion for exploration, from the physical depths of caves to the rich complexities of sound. She holds a double major in Physics and Musicology (Université Grenoble-Alpes, France, 2020) and completed a master’s degree in Musicology at Université Jean Monnet (Saint-Étienne, France, 2022). Additionally, she earned a spelunker advisor certification (Diplôme d’Initiateur en Spéléologie, 2021) and a diploma in Double Bass Practice from the Conservatory of Saint-Étienne (DEM de Contrebasse, 2022). Her career took a pivotal turn into the realm of archaeoacoustics and speleoacoustics, fields that merge her scientific and musical expertise. Luna’s work is dedicated to uncovering the soundscapes of natural and human-made ancient architectures, focusing on how acoustics shapes human’s interaction with space and rituals. Currently pursuing her Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Luna’s research focuses on the intersection of acoustics, audio technologies, music composition, and archaeological sound environments. She is especially interested in using advanced signal processing and 3D modeling to simulate ancient acoustics, allowing us to experience the acoustic environments of prehistoric humans. Her ongoing work in the PaleoAcoustics team involves measuring acoustic data in Chauvet Cave, and advancing auralization techniques for public immersion.

FLOW Symphony (2024) is the second work that I composed for the Sejong Soloists string orchestra, after Overstory Overture that the ensemble premiered in New York and Seoul in March 2023. FLOW Symphony is scored for string orchestra, electronics, and AI enhancement. The ca. 18-minute piece is inspired by the “flowing” nature of rivers, constant in the rush or trickle of water but also everchanging through always-different droplets, in the slowly evolving interaction between water and rocks and riverbanks, and in our changing perception as we watch and listen to a river run by. I rediscovered these “river-esque” qualities in September 2023 as I started to work on this composition. I was staying in a remote cabin in a mountainous part of Vermont when I was attracted to the gentle, beautiful sounds of a river close by. By spending hours listening to it, I was amazed at how many layers of sound I could perceive – beyond the initial impression of pleasant sameness – as my mind grew more still and my senses opened up. Soon each stone sounded a different tune as water caressed it, a tilt of the head changed the overall tone quality, and drawing attention to near or far activity revealed a symphonic richness of counterpoint and rhythm. I was so attracted to this river that I returned a few weeks later with a battery of recording equipment and spent two days listening, moving, and capturing river sound from diverse angles, distances and positions. These hours of recordings became one source of sound for FLOW Symphony and also provided a guide to the composition itself. I worked with Sejong Soloists in New York to “translate” the sound and feel of the river into instrumental language, and then worked in my studio back in Boston to create hybrid blends of strings and water, as well as new sounds that extend and connect both. 

 FLOW Symphony proposes a “musicalized” version of this process of discovering the river’s sonic secrets. The piece is organized into eight sections that increasingly reveal inner patterns and musical potential found in the river. Starting with the river sound itself, more and more subtle details emerge as the rushing currents morph into rapid string passages, always propelled by a constantly developing melody, evolving finally into a texture that is very calm but also swarming with active detail. This is not a long piece, but the musical and emotional journey is extensive.

 To enhance the interplay of natural and musical sounds in FLOW Symphony as well as to provide a new kind of everchanging musical “flow,” we created an AI system especially for this work. Designed and programmed by Manaswi Mishra at the MIT Media Lab, “FLOW AI” serves two functions for: first, it reacts to live ensemble playing in parts of the piece and adds unusual hybrid sonorities in appropriate but surprising ways; and second, by using a new “AI Radio” system developed in our group at MIT, it allows an online version of the composition to play out differently at each hearing, preserving the essential feel and “flow” of my music while allowing listeners to dial in changes to duration, complexity and overall feel. An ever-evolving, “AI Radio” version of FLOW Symphony can be experienced at https://flow.media.mit.edu/ (Chrome browser only). I hope that these novel AI enhancements, added to the flowing melodies, overlapping harmonies, pulsating rhythms and twinkling textures of FLOW Symphony, will leave listeners as captivated, refreshed and intrigued as I was while listening to “my” Vermont river.

Composer/inventor Tod Machover is Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Music and Media and Director of the Opera of the Future group at the MIT Media Lab. Called a “musical visionary” by The New York Times, Machover creates music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries and designs technologies that expand music’s potential for everyone, from celebrated virtuosi to musicians of all abilities.

Machover’s music has been performed and commissioned by – among others – Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival (where he was 2015 Composer-in-Residence), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Seoul Arts Center, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and singers Renée Fleming and Joyce Di Donato. He has received numerous prizes and honors, including from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm and Koussevitzky Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, Musical America (which named him Composer of the Year), and the French Culture Ministry, which appointed him an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. Machover is especially celebrated for his groundbreaking operas including the AI-infused VALIS (1987; revised 2023), the audience-interactive Brain Opera (1996), the robotic Death and the Powers (2010), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, as well as Schoenberg in Hollywood (2018). He is currently working on his next opera, The Overstory, based on Richard Powers’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the relationship between humans and the non-human world.

Machover is known for developing new technologies for music, from Hyperinstruments that enhance performance expressivity for virtuosi and amateurs (Guitar Hero grew out of his Lab), to Hyperscore that uses simple lines and colors to open musical creativity for young people, to numerous sonic strategies for promoting wellbeing and combating disease, to humanely rewarding applications of musical AI. Machover lectures and writes frequently about music and its widest potential, and two book chapters – “AI and Musical Discovery” (MIT Press) and “Composing the Future of Health”, in ‘Music and Mind’ edited by soprano Renée Fleming (Viking Random House) – were published in spring 2024.

Tod Machover is currently working on a piece about the future of our democracy for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as on a “City Symphony” for Seoul, Korea.

Fragments 15.0-15.6 (Ockeghem Anamorph). This piece uses temporal dynamic networks, derived from Ockeghem’s chanson ‘Quant De Vous’, to create a guided improvisational environment in Max MS for a flexible number of singers.

Composer Kyle Quarles‘ work uses techniques from mathematics and computer science to ingest and re-cast musical languages of the past. He received his bachelor degrees in composition and guitar performance from the Eastman School of Music in 2012, his master’s in composition from New England Conservatory in 2021, and is currently a PhD candidate in composition at the University of Iowa.

Electrotropism is a visual music piece; an imaginary sonic and visual interpretation of cellular response to exogenous electrical fields. A bell ostinato is followed by glitches of percussive elements and drones; eventually the structure erodes to noise before returning to its initial pattern. A visual language correlates to the music, reflecting its density and rhythm. Visual noise follows auditory noise, shapes and intensity represent the sound destruction, then likewise returning to its initial structure and pattern.

Libby Fabricatore is a composer, video artist, and drummer based in New York City. Her fixed media and audiovisual compositions explore processed found sound, glitch, ambient/soundscape and field recording. Libby’s works have been programmed at festivals in North America, Europe and the Caribbean. Recently her work was presented at the ISCM World New Music Days 2024 Faroe Islands. As a drummer, Libby has performed in Glenn Branca’s ensembles for 13 years, as well as several other avant noise/punk bands in NYC. She completed an M.Phil in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin in 2004.

Have a Hand

NOTE: Due to airport authorities refusal to allow the author’s laptop onto the airplane, instead we will present a fixed media version of this work.

Have a Hand utilizes the Progressive-Adaptive Music Generator (PAMG) as an instrument. The piece is called Have a Hand, an interactive improvisational piece using generative algorithmic procedures in real time. The performer employs a custom-design, multi-touch interface to control the PAMG, which is hosted and running in a laptop computer. In a projection screen, the multi-touch interface and the development interface will be displayed. It is a software able to generate music in real time adapting and progressing the music behavior using progressive parameters. In this property, parameters’ values correlate to tension, complexity, and density in music constructions in the framework of traditional tonal systems and music cognition studies. The explicit use of humanly-understandable parameters is an adopted approach in response to the concealed nature of machine learning models. Four multi-parameter presets are assigned to XY pads’ corners to be interpolated producing transitions among presets or ‘themes’, allowing different behaviors per agent (melody, harmony, and percussion). The agents decide some changes and the human provides modifications to the parameters and to the multi-parameter position within the interpolation system. Its output is symbolic (MIDI) and is played back by virtual instruments in a DAW.

Alvaro Lopez, Ph.D, is an electronic musician, technology researcher, educator and composer. His research focuses on automated systems for music analysis, creativity, and education. His studies involving procedural music generation in videogames, and real-time parametric scoring have been featured in the 12th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Functional Art, Music, Modelling, and Design (FARM ’24), the 5th North American Conference in Videogame Music, University of Michigan, Music and the Moving Image conference New York University Steinhardt, the Art of Record Production Conference, Berklee College of Music, Boston, and The 2020 Joint Conference on AI Music Creativity at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. His approach to interactive music generation is published in the journal Sound Effects SoundEffects – An Interdisciplinary Journal of Sound and Sound Experience.

Séance. The lyrical inspiration for Séance is drawn from “The Mountain Spirit” (Shan-Gui, 山鬼), one of the most celebrated ancient Chinese poems from The Songs of Chu (Chu-Ci, 楚辭). The Songs of Chu was originally composed by Qu Yuan, the esteemed “Sanlü Daifu,” who based his works on traditional folk sacrificial songs. In Séance, I offer my own musical interpretation of “The Mountain Spirit.” The poem’s complex emotions can be understood in multiple ways: as the mountain deity’s longing and yearning for the shaman, or as the shaman’s deep love and wistful longing for the mountain spirit. This ambiguity invites a rich tapestry of interpretations. Building upon the distinctive beauty of the poem’s rhyme and tonal qualities, I have incorporated both bamboo flute and electronic sounds as creative media. By blending traditional instruments with contemporary electronic elements, the piece creates a linear, irreversible sonic landscape. Through this fusion, Séance seeks to express the tender yearning, lingering sorrow, and graceful elegance that characterize “The Mountain Spirit.”

Born in Taiwan, composer-performer Yu-Hsin CHANG earned her Ph.D. in Composition and Music Theory from the University of California, Davis. Since August 2024, she has served as a full-time Assistant Professor at the Academy of Music at Macau University of Science and Technology, where she teaches courses such as Music Technology and Electronic Music Production. Prior to her current position, Dr. Chang held adjunct positions at the Department of Music, Department of Chinese Music, the Institute of Piano Collaborative Arts at National Tainan University of the Arts, as well as the Department of Media Design at Tatung University in Taiwan. At these institutions, she taught various courses, including Music Analysis, Arrangement, and Digital Music Creation, enriching the academic and creative environments with her expertise. Dr. Chang has a long-standing interest in the contemporary contexts on Western classical music and traditional music in East Asia. Her research and compositions focus on the evolution and metamorphosis of musical traditions, extended playing techniques, and performance studies. Her interdisciplinary research explores electroacoustic music and neural network as a novel method of music analysis tools. In her creative work, Dr. Chang is deeply inspired by history, humanities, and literature, and attempts to deconstruct the temporal, syntactic, aesthetic, and symbolic elements. Her music showcases an intriguing complexity reminiscent of multiple styles, featuring shimmering timbres and compelling pulses. Dr. Chang aims to explore the boundary between a meditative nature and a subconscious turmoil using electroacoustic techniques, sampling, and experimental compositional methods to reconstruct the beauty and intellectual process that she experiences through sound.

Ik Kil is dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Gerardo Calderon, an extraordinary musician whose love for all kinds of music, including soundscapes and storytelling through sound, touched everyone who knew him. Gerardo, originally from Mexico but living in the USA, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly while visiting his homeland. His passion for music and his ability to tell stories through it have deeply inspired me, and I wanted to honor his memory with this composition. Ik Kil was born out of a personal experience I had while visiting the Yucatán Peninsula in 2018. I traveled to Cenote Ik Kil, a massive and awe-inspiring natural wonder. The moment I entered the water, I was struck by the overwhelming energy it held—dark, heavy, and almost unnerving. The water felt like it carried the weight of history, secrets, and rituals long past. After only a short time in the cenote, I felt compelled to leave, shaken by the intense atmosphere that seemed to envelop the space. Later, by pure coincidence, I came across an article about Cenote Ik Kil, learning about its ancient significance to the Mayan civilization. Ik Kil was a sacred site, believed to be a portal to the underworld, where human sacrifices were made to Chaac, the rain god. Archaeological findings of bones and jewelry beneath its deep waters confirmed its role in Mayan rituals. The heaviness I felt in the water suddenly made sense. The cenote wasn’t just a natural pool; it was a place where the spiritual and earthly worlds converged, and its energy carried the weight of those ancient practices. This composition is my way of telling that story—both the story of the cenote and of my friend Gerardo, whose spirit was larger than life and whose love for music was boundless. Ik Kil blends the ancient and the modern, weaving the sounds of pre-Hispanic instruments with electronic textures. The soft, ancient tones emerge like whispers carried through the air, reflecting the sacredness and mystery of Ik Kil, while electronic sounds provide a contemporary depth, symbolizing the timeless nature of this sacred place. The fusion of these elements gradually builds, evoking the weighty, haunting energy of the cenote and the ancient rituals that took place there. Through Ik Kil, I hope to capture not only the eerie beauty of the cenote but also the profound impact Gerardo had on those around him. His love for storytelling through music continues to inspire me, and this composition is my tribute to him. This one’s for you, Gerardo. Enjoy.

Washington Plada is a contemporary music composer based in Kansas City. His work is deeply influenced by his Uruguayan heritage, drawing on the folk traditions of Tango, Milonga, and Candombe to create a unique fusion of South American rhythms and contemporary Western structures. His compositions often blend acoustic and electronic elements, exploring the intersection of cultural memory, sonic storytelling, and modern sound design. He is a recipient of the prestigious Ibermúsicas award, and his music has been performed across the United States, South America, and Europe. Recent works explore the integration of pre-Hispanic instruments with fixed media and electroacoustic textures, emphasizing immersive and narrative-driven soundscapes. Plada is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, where he also teaches composition and instrumentation as a graduate teaching assistant.

Meditation I for Patti Cudd. Written in the winter of 2022/23, this piece extends some previously explored ideas and creates some new (to me). I recorded a MIDI score that would become the printed score using my computer keyboard as input. At this point I already knew I wanted the piece to be for tiny instruments to be played with the fingers. This improvised approach to writing allowed me to lie down, close my eyes, and play something that reflected my relaxed state. I was thinking of the kinds of ad-hoc, larger-scale polyrhythmic structures set up in Feldman’s music. I’m pretty sure what I came up with doesn’t sound like Feldman. The electronic part is where I borrowed heavily from past ideas. I set up a layer of resynthesis, sample playback, and other broad reinterpretations of analyzed materials. A second layer further transmutes those sounds. These networks are randomly created in performance, and they are rather unpredictable. In this sense, I see the unpredictability as a metaphor for the thoughts that I cannot help but enter my head in meditative practice. As in meditation, despite the antagonism of some of those thoughts, it is best to just observe them and watch them dissipate rather than give them too much meaning or attention.

Barry Moon has been creating electronic music since he first figured out the sound-on-sound feature on his father’s reel-to-reel tape recorder. He was also fond of imitating bird sounds where he grew up in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. Barry was introduced to “computer music” by David Hirst, where he used HMSL and C. The biggest advance in his creative potential came when Cort Lippe arrived at University of Buffalo. Several pieces were composed for the ISPW, and some of these were ported to the beta version of Max/MSP. His “Interact I”, written for Elizabeth McNutt was the first piece performed at an ICMC using Max/MSP (I’m putting this here to be controversial, maybe – this was ICMC in Ann Arbor, 1998). Barry’s work has been performed all over the place and he has experienced the joys and frustrations of working with many musicians, artists, choreographers, etc. He quit a job at ASU in 2024 to enjoy his grandchildren in Detroit and focus on discovering his true Self.

Moments Between Thoughts, the quiet times between ideas could be more that just silence. It is often considered that thoughts are the mind as we are almost constantly involved in internal dialog. However, the gaps between thoughts appear to grow longer as we pay more attention to them. As we become more aware that the gaps lead to mindfulness and awareness, we realize that they are consciousness. This piece explores the interplay between thoughts and silence. The mind and consciousness. The music involves a background track consisting of image synthesis, harmonic spectra and samples to provide backdrop for the live performance. The live electronics feature real-time granular synthesis, vector string synthesis, and harmonic resynthesis controlled by a Roli Seaboard Rise 49 MIDI controller with extensive use of MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). An Arturia Microfreak Synthesizer and iPad add additional textures as well. A sound driven video backdrop accompanies the composition.

DAVID DOW is a composer, keyboardist, sound designer and educator. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music composition from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Arts degree in music composition from San Jose State University in San Jose, California. In addition, he holds a certificate in computer music from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a composer, he has created well over one hundred fifty music compositions in many different styles. His electronic music has been performed several times on the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States National Conference, the International Computer Music Conference, the Daegu South Korea International Computer Music Festival, The Electronic Music Festival in Stuttgart Germany, the New York City Electronic Music Festival, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Computer Exposition in San Francisco, California Through his recording studio, Aurora Music Productions (www.auroramusicproductions.com), he produces music for composers, theater, dance, computer games and video soundtracks as well as radio and television commercials. Besides performing music professionally as a keyboard player and singer for over forty years, he is a Professor of Music and directs the Music Technology Program at Modesto Junior College in Modesto California.

Arcade Mirages is a multimedia work for violin, flute, motion sensor, choreography, and computer. In it, two performers interact physically and musically. One of them, the flutist, wears a motion sensor on her instrument, which allows her to control computer-generated sounds. The work explores concepts of power and miscommunication.

Maja Cerar is a violinist whose repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the present, including performances with live electronics, theater and dance. Since her debut in the Zürich Tonhalle in 1991, she has performed internationally as a soloist with orchestras and given recitals with distinguished artists. She has played at festivals such as the Davos “Young Artist in Concert,” the Lockenhaus Festival, the ISCM World Music Days, the ICMC (Singapore, Barcelona, etc.), SEAMUS, “Viva Vivaldi” in Mexico City, Diffrazioni (Florence), etc. Maja Cerar has premiered and recorded numerous works written for and dedicated to her. She has worked with many composers, including Jean-Baptiste Barrière, Sebastian Currier, R. Luke DuBois, Beat Furrer, Elizabeth Hoffman, György Kurtág, Alvin Lucier, Katharine Norman, Yoshiaki Onishi, Morton Subotnick, and John Zorn. A featured performer at NYCEMF since 2016 (then an event of the NY Philharmonic Biennial), collaborative works involving robotics and wearable motion sensors have been featured at “Re:New Frontiers of Creativity” (Columbia), “Listening in the Sound Kitchen” (Princeton), the Metropolitan Museum’s Balcony Bar and fostered by The Tribeca Film Institute and by the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival. www.majacerar.com

Hearing The Otherworld for Solo Performer with Four Gongs, Transducers, and Sensor-Equipped Illuminated Glove Controllers Sound is more than a physical phenomenon—it is vibration, energy, and a portal to something beyond. Hearing the Otherworld invites the audience into a liminal space where resonance and vibration become a bridge between the material world and a higher plane of existence. This piece treats the gong not just as an instrument, but as a vessel for unseen forces. Transducers excite the gongs by sending precisely tuned sine waves that activate their resonant frequencies, allowing them to vibrate and sing with rich multiphonics. The performer, using sensor-equipped illuminated glove controllers, channels these energies, shaping the evolving soundscape through movement, intention, and interaction with light. The result is an immersive sonic ritual—an invocation of shifting frequencies, where human presence, metallic resonance, and unseen energies merge. The boundaries between performer, instrument, and environment dissolve, leaving only waves of vibration that resonate within and beyond.

Tianfang Jia is a composer and sound artist whose work explores themes of death, alienation, ritual, and transcendence. His music often engages with microtonality, temporal expansion and contraction, and stochastic gestures shaped by subtle aspects of human physicality. Tianfang is also actively engaged in electronic sensor design, sonification, music gamification, and multimedia work. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Dr. Stratis Minakakis, Dr. John Mallia, and Dr. Katarina Miljkovic. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center under the guidance of Dr. Douglas Geers and Dr. Suzanne Farrin

Corporeality (in honor of Harry Partch) 2024 Partch’s aim was to develop a performance with his self-made instruments that offers both an acoustic and a physical presence (Corporeality). “Cage and Nancarrow were tinkerers and Harry Partch was even more so,” wrote Reinhard Schulz in the SZ of Sept. 4, 2002. The newly developed automaton is based on a talking drum and the Pandeiro tambourine. Brazilian virtuosos use the pandeiro to achieve the effect of a full ensemble by shaking, beating and damping. In technical studies, Gerber attempted to provide several degrees of freedom for beating, damping, rubbing and motorized brushes (whiskers, developed in earlier automatons) by means of movable suspension of the pandeiro. Variable pitches are created on the talking drum, but these are not aimed at micro-tonality in accordance with Partch’s aesthetic. Rhythmically moving toy shark figures complete the humorous hobbyist approach. A video of the partial composition on the percussion machine serves the co-composer Karina Erhard as a model and inspiration for her flute part in 2024. She approaches the new rhythmic soundscapes by using contemporary playing techniques on the bansuri and pan flute. In the 2025 Boston version of “corporeality” Esther Lamneck on tárogató is composing in realtime in front of the play-along video of the automaton. The concept enables complex rhythms with visualization and human-machine confrontation, selected algorithms and improvisation.

Karl F. Gerber began playing the electric bass autodidactically. In 1975, he attended musicology lectures with Riethmüller in Freiburg as a guest student. After turning to jazz, he studied double bass with Adelhard Roidinger in Munich. He has a M Sc. in physics from the LMU Munich. As a composer he is self-taught, but attended courses with H. W. Erdmann, Cort Lippe, Robert Rowe, Carola Bauckholt, Götz Tangerding, Alex Grünwald, Joe Haider and Joe Viera. He has performed live algorithmic performances, including a co-improvisation with the University of Michigan Dancers at the 1998 ICMC in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This featured live formula editing, an anticipation of live coding. “Beautiful Numbers” was awarded the electronic “Music for Dance” award at Bourges. Since “Loops” for solo piano, he has also created works in traditional notation without electronics such as “VC3e” for harpsichord four hands. After an invitation to the 2017 Kontakte Festival at the AdK Berlin, his “computer music without loudspeakers” has also attracted international interest. For example, in the Boston Berklee and South Korea, Seoul 2019. His installation “Violinautomat” was selected by the ISCM for the World Music Days in Tallinn, Estonia. The critic of Dagens Nyheter wrote “fascinating both technically and sonically”. He received the “Award of Distinction” at Matera Intermedia 2020 in Italy and the Best Music Award of the CMMR, Tokyo. His current projects include an automaton for alto recorder, a bowed psaltery with 16 bows, an extended snare drum and a hammer zither. His controller Sensor 32 array was nominated finalist at the Guthman new musical instrument competition 2023.

Echo from the Wei’s Pipa in Ming Dynasty was different from the modern pipa that we hear today, not only in size but also in sound. The composer experimented with combining this historical instrument with modern electronic music using two points: the original samples and the Samplers Library. For sound material, the composer recorded Wei’s Pipa in Ming Dynasty restored by Qi Mingjing, a professor at the School of Music of Huzhou University. She reconstructed the instruments–the Wei’s Pipa in Ming Dynasty by translating Weishi Yuepu (魏氏乐谱, “Master Wei’s music scores”). The composer deconstructed the sound materials and built a fantasy sound world. For the Samplers Library, Qi Mingjing and her group made Pipa1617, a free Sampler recorded by the reconstructed Ming Dynasty Pipa. The composer uses an iPhone as a data-driven instrument, combining the Sampler and algorithmic polyphonic synth, interpreting the Pipa innovatively. Instead of playing the Morden Pipa, the composer plays the Ming Pipa on stage.

Shuyu Lin is a composer, electronic music composer based in Xiamen, China. Her acoustic music has been featured in venues and festivals, such as in China, the United States, and Europe and has been performed by groups, such as Shanghai Kun Opera, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, PHACE Contemporary Music Ensemble, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, and IU New Music Ensemble, etc.; her electronic music has been played in the festivals such as NYCEMF, WOCMAT, and MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING, ICMC, and EMM. She earned a B.M. from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and M.M. and D.M. from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Her principal composition teachers include David Dzubay, Aaron Travers, Eugene O’Brien, Daqun Jia, Deqing Wen, Weihao Qiang, and Qing Shao. For electronic music, she studies with Jeffrey Hass, John Gibson, Chi Wang, Chengbi An, and Qian Zhou. Now, she is teaching in the Music School of Huzhou University. is a composer, electronic music composer based in Xiamen, China. Her acoustic music has been featured in venues and festivals, such as in China, the United States, and Europe and has been performed by groups, such as Shanghai Kun Opera, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, PHACE Contemporary Music Ensemble, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, and IU New Music Ensemble, etc.; her electronic music has been played in the festivals such as NYCEMF, WOCMAT, and MUSICACOUSTICA-BEIJING, ICMC, and EMM. She earned a B.M. from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and M.M. and D.M. from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Her principal composition teachers include David Dzubay, Aaron Travers, Eugene O’Brien, Daqun Jia, Deqing Wen, Weihao Qiang, and Qing Shao. For electronic music, she studies with Jeffrey Hass, John Gibson, Chi Wang, Chengbi An, and Qian Zhou. Now, she is teaching in the Music School of Huzhou University.

Traverse: for Recorder and Electronics (2024) is an eight-minute electroacoustic composition for acoustic recorders and electronics. All sounds are created through live improvisation on soprano and alto recorders. The composer recorded her live improvisations and processed them using a range of Csound and Cabbage plugins, including her custom-made Cabbage plugins for the composition and those from the McCurdy Collection. The piece also features contemporary extended techniques for the recorder, such as flutter tongue and sputato, blended with sounds created in Csound. The composition will be presented in the form of live performance by the composer, blending the sounds of acoustic instruments with live electronics.

Ngar Yin Bethanie (Bethanie) Liu is an electroacoustic composer, researcher, and music technology developer. As a performer, she has graced multiple prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall, St. John’s Smith Square and Conservatorium van Amsterdam. Her performances on the recorder have garnered distinctive international accolades. At the age of 15, Bethanie became the first and youngest prize winner from Asia at the Open Recorder Days Amsterdam to rank among the world’s top 3, receiving the antique Coolsma Bressan Alto Recorder. Bethanie is also the recipient of the honorable Jury Prize in the Taiwan International Recorder Festival in 2018, bestowed by the renowned Swiss recorder virtuoso Mr. Maurice Steger. Other notable achievements include her concerto debut as the concerto prize winner in the Tel Aviv International Recorder Competition in 2019, consequently performed as a featured soloist at the Israel Conservatory of Music. She also had the honor of being selected for Radio Television Hong Kong(RTHK)’s “Young Music Makers”, where she showcased her talents on respective television programs. Bethanie now channels her expertise in recorder performance into the electronic realm. Her current artistic practice amalgamates acoustic elements such as recorder and voice, with controllerism and live electronics. Her composition and research have been presented at the International Csound Conference in Vienna, Austria. During her time as a student at Berklee College of Music, she was presented the Imogen Heap Award by the Electronic Production and Design department, in recognition of her outstanding achievements in music technology. Her studies were also fully supported by the Berklee World Tour Full Tuition Scholarship. This fall, she will begin her Master’s in Music, Science, and Technology at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University.

The Magic Flute is a work that explores the world from the perspective of a flute to showcase its fun, and the sounds produced are largely randomly triggered.

Zhang Yue is studying Computer Music Composition at Wuhan Conservatory of Music, under the guidance of Associate Professor Feng Jian. In recent years, the works created have been selected multiple times for the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), the International Symposium on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT), and the Hangzhou International Electronic Music Festival (EMAC). In 2023, he won the “Best STUDENT MUSIC AWARD” award at 2023ICMC for his work “Flying with the Starling” The 2024 work ‘Butterfly Revelation’ won the first prize (Group B electronic soundtrack) at the IEMC2024 International Electronic Music Competition and the second prize at the EMAC Hangzhou International Electronic Music Competition.

Country Roads. Although I have never been particularly interested in country music, I find myself attracted to many aspects of the guitar playing: the control over string bend intonation; the pedal-steel emulations — oblique motion where one string remains stable while another bends; the polyphonic potential of hybrid picking; the open sonorities of the double and triple stops. Country Roads explores these techniques, re-contextualized in a contemporary setting and augmented with electronic elements. The first movement is largely concerned with string bends. The second movement employs Travis picking in the right hand, a classic country fingerstyle developed by Merle Travis. Movement three reveals itself to be a duet of sorts; the left-hand plays solo while the right hand renders the other part by bowing the lowest string with a drumstick.

Mike Frengel is a composer, performer, researcher, software developer, and educator. He holds degrees in electroacoustic music from San Jose State University, Dartmouth College and City University, London. Mike had the great fortune to study with Jon Appleton, Charles Dodge, Larry Polansky, Denis Smalley, Allen Strange, and Christian Wolff. His works have received international recognition and have been included on the Sonic Circuits VII, ICMC’95, CDCM Vol.26, 2000 Luigi Russolo and ICMC 2009 compact discs and are performed at music events around the world. His book, The Unorthodox Guitar: A Guide to Alternative Performance Practice, is available through Oxford University Press. His latest compact disc, Music for Guitar and Electronics, is available through Ravello Records. Mike is currently on the faculty of the music department at Northeastern University, where he teaches courses in music technology. He is also founder of Boom Audio Technologies—a software company devoted to bringing high-quality audio software to market. Their first product is Soundbug, an audio editor for macOS. Mike’s latest music endeavor is a trio (guitar, bass, drums) playing his original new music recontextualized into a jazz setting. The trio plays regularly at jazz venues in New England.

Enchente (Flood, in English) was inspired by a historic flooding event in the composer’s hometown of Evergreen, Colorado. Written for 1–4 performers and Pure Data, the sound flows like the waters that felled trees and broke bridges—unpredictable and untamed.

Heather Dea Jennings is an American-born composer and performer based in Brazil since 1997. She is a professor at the UFRN School of Music and a member of the UFRN composers group BRAVO. She studied with Richard Boulanger, Alvin Lucier, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Warren Senders, Elke Beatriz Riedel and Priscilla Gale. She is currently studying music composition at the UFBA Graduate Program in Music with Dr. Guilherme Bertissolo.

Laboratory of Found Sounds is an innovative improvisational performance that explores the hidden musicality of everyday objects. Inspired by the intersection of scientific methodology and artistic exploration, this work transforms ordinary items into extraordinary sound sources through the use of two custom-built electroacoustic instruments controlled by a computer program.

The performance unfolds as a series of sonic discoveries, where everyday objects reveal unexpected acoustic properties through playful experimentation and real-time exploration. Through real-time digital signal processing and electromagnetic excitation, these objects become vehicles for complex timbral exploration, generating a wide spectrum of sounds ranging from delicate textures to intense noise structures. The theatrical laboratory setting emphasizes the systematic nature of the investigation while highlighting the inherent playfulness of experimental discovery.

This work represents a convergence of traditional acoustic principles with contemporary technology. The custom instruments allow for precise control while maintaining the spontaneity essential to improvised performance. By challenging conventional boundaries between music and noise, art and science, and control and chaos, the piece invites the audience to reconsider their relationship with the familiar materials surrounding them.

This piece celebrates the spirit of curiosity and the wonder of uncovering the unexpected beauty hidden within the mundane. It represents ongoing research into new paradigms of musical expression, exploring how technological innovation can enhance the fundamental human elements of performance.

Akito van Troyer is a media artist, researcher, and performer specializing in experimental electronic music and interactive systems. With a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT, his work explores the intersection of technology and musical expression through the development of new paradigms for musical instruments that encourage creative exploration. van Troyer’s research focuses on designing innovative interfaces that transform everyday objects into musical instruments. His award-winning project, MM-RT, received the People’s Choice Award for Most Unusual Musical Instrument at the Guthman Musical Instrument Competition. His approach bridges physical and digital realms, enabling players to directly touch and manipulate electronic sounds through tangible interactions. His recent research investigates how artificial intelligence can enhance instrument design and performance, with particular attention to creating intuitive, expressive interactions. As a performer, van Troyer blends custom-built digital instruments with physical objects to create immersive sonic environments that challenge traditional notions of musical interaction. His musical interfaces and performance system innovations have been presented at major conferences, including NIME, CHI, and various ACM venues. His work has been featured in prominent publications such as Scientific American and CBS’s 60 Minutes. Currently an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music and lecturer at Northeastern University, van Troyer teaches audio programming, multimedia performance, and AI applications for musicians. Through collaborations with musicians, researchers, and technologists, he explores novel approaches to musical expression, developing systems that balance technological innovation with artistic depth, making complex concepts accessible through engaging musical experiences.

Means both sanctioned and forbidden is written for baritone saxophone, live processing and fixed media. The live processing is achieved using Ableton Live. The fixed media elements were generated through a series of no-input mixer improvisation sessions and edited to create the final piece. The title comes from Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “The artist must be blind to distinctions between “recognized” or “unrecognized” conventions of form, deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and hearken to its words alone. Then he will, with safety, employ means both sanctioned and forbidden by his contemporaries. All means are sacred which are called for by the inner need. All means are sinful which obscure that inner need.” Written for Belgian saxophonist, Floris Van der Veken, he performed the world premiere at the North American Saxophone Alliance Conference at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma on March 16, 2024.

A composer/sound artist, singer/songwriter, guitarist, educator, and radio host, Chris Cresswell is a curious musician whose work betrays his affection for sonic wanderlust. With an ear that incorporates all sorts of sounds, from a no input mixer and baroque counterpoint, to field recordings and a singer/songwriter at an open mic night, Cresswell’s music has been praised for its “unworldly atmosphere” (Vital Weekly) and “textural variety” (Gramophone) that “… blurs the boundaries between industrial and organic, soothing and suspenseful, and introspective and anxious” (International Clarinet Association). PopMatters described his work as, alternately, “truly immersive, dreamlike” and an “eloquent, barely controlled nightmare”. As comfortable working with leading contemporary performers as he is first time musicians, Cresswell’s music has been performed around the world in coffee shops, art galleries, and prestigious concert halls like the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels. Cresswell is the host of A Curious Ear on WCNY-FM, a program dedicated to exploring the unlikely connections between disparate musical worlds. He works as a teaching artist, an adjunct lecturer at Onondaga Community College and maintains a private compositions studio. When not doing musical things, he can be found running the streets and trails of Central New York, watching St. Louis Cardinals baseball or Syracuse basketball, and spending time with his wife Amber and their adorable kitty, Eloise.

The Wind Blowing Sounds of Nature (吹·万) The work is based on the concept of “playing ten thousand different tunes” in Zhuangzi (庄子), using wind sound as the main element. Through continuous manipulation and organization, the process of how the wind produces different sounds when it blows through all things and becomes stronger and weaker is depicted, allowing listeners to imagine freely. The work was created using Csound for programming through sound design. The composer programmed FM as the only sound synthesis technique to synthesize the basic sound materials used in the work. Then, through program control, the sound materials were processed and manipulated to form various different acoustic sensations, which were effectively organized. The Widget program was designed to control parameters such as timbre, phasing, particle synthesis, and carrier frequency ratio during real-time operation, creating an imaginary space where different sounds are produced by the wind blowing through everything. The goal was to take listeners on a spiritual journey through Zhuangzi’s world of from the soft breeze to the raging storms and back to tranquility. Electronic music has been around for over a century, during which numerous techniques, methods, and ideologies have emerged, as well as many disputes about legitimacy and certainty. However, despite the changes in form and technology throughout its development, the core of electronic music remains unchanged; it is merely people’s minds that have changed. More than two thousand years ago, Zhuangzi had proposed to the world that there could be different voices and choices. In the piece, the original signal is processed by granular synthesis, which also shows the debate and noise of people. This work uses FM technology as its primary technique, which has been used by musicians for over half a century to create countless different sounds without exhaustion. Although the techniques are similar, the composer’s mindset is different, resulting in numerous different sounds and works. This also supports Zhuangzi’s philosophy. Although different electronic music may appear different at first glance, we will eventually find that all music ultimately converge. This work pays tribute to FM technology and its inventor, Professor John Chowning.

Wanjun YANG is an engineer, programmer, sound designer, researcher and electronic music musician. Now he is an associate professor of Music Engineering Department, Sichuan Conservatory of Music. In the past 25 years, he lives at Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, Southern of China, and taught at Sichuan Conservatory of Music. His research and creative interests lie in Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, Sound Design, Software Developing, New Media Art, Multimedia Design. He was invited to attend EMS 2011 Annual in New York, 2011. In 2012, he was invited to attend electronic music exchange in University of Oregon. In 2017, his work was selected in ICSC 2017, also invited to attend EMS 2017 in Nagoya; his paper was selected in ICMC 2017 in Shanghai. In 2018, he was invited to attend ICMC 2018 as Concert Reviewer. His piece was selected and performed in New York, ICMC 2019 and NYCEMF 2019, and also invited to attend electronic music exchange in University of Oregon, and invited to visit and exchange at CCRMA, Stanford University and UCLA in the same year. In 2020, his pieces were selected by NYCEMF 2020, and one of them was performed in Virtual Online Festival in NYCEMF 2020. In 2021, his pieces were selected by ICMC 2021 and NYCEMF 2021, and performed in ICMC 2021 and NYCEMF 2021. In 2022, his piece was selected and performed in ICSC 2022. In 2023, piece selected and performed in ICMC 2023. In 2024, piece selected and performed in ICMC 2024 Seoul. He was also a reviewer of ICMC, IEMC, NCDA for years.

Nucul. At Auschwitz, the military doctor Mengele, a war criminal, often chose which of the detained children to be directly exterminated, which would live as material for his inhuman experiments, and which would be kept for use as labor. In “Nucul” (“The Walnut Tree”), a teenager discovers that he does not want to make this life-and-death choice even at the cost of his brother’s life.

Alexandru Berceanu is a director of mixed realities, a researcher and an associate professor at the Department of Animation and Interaction at the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” (UNATC). He was the scientific coordinator of the MET and STAD projects and the manager of the International Center for Research and Education in Innovative and Creative Technologies (CINEtic) center at UNATC. His work is based on interdisciplinary research and artistic practice. His practice has as its core the potential of art and play as a medium for emotional and social development.

Anca-Elena Manolache is a writer, scriptwriter, producer, and co-creator of Vână Animation Studio in Bucharest, Romania. She produced Keep, a short animation that was selected for DOK Leipzig, and oversees the production of most animations coming out of the studio. Anca’s work spans a wide range of projects, from educational and social initiatives to cultural ones, including museum exhibitions. With a unique ability to see both the big picture and the nuances of every project, Anca thrives in both the storyteller’s and producer’s roles, ensuring a perfect development frame while collaborating closely with other artists.

Constantin Basica is a Romanian composer living in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose current work focuses on symbiotic interrelations between music, video, and performers. His works have been performed by artists and ensembles in North America, Europe, and Asia. Constantin earned a DMA in Composition at Stanford University, where he also completed his postdoctoral training. He holds an MA in Multimedia Composition from the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre (DE), and two BA degrees in Composition and Conducting from the National University of Music Bucharest (RO). Currently, he is a lecturer at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).
www.constantinbasica.com

Migration Script centers on the unrelenting forces of nature that push creatures to live their lives as molded through centuries-old patterns without question. Using Mark Wheeler’s ‘Overwintering’ script and Zach Scholl’s ‘granchild’ script for the Monome Norns, the performer reacts to and shapes the slowly evolving harmonic content generated in real-time from bird migration patterns captured across Europe. Building new polyphonic and rhythmic overlays from bird song field recordings and the aforementioned sonified data, the performer uses granular engines and digital sample reduction processing to impart their fleeting influence on an unrelenting force. In this manner, the musician gains an improvisation partner out of one of their own instruments, a source of stochastic drive they must attempt to sculpt and decide how to react to in each performance. Bird song recordings used in this piece are provided by the Yle Finnish Public Service Media Company under a Creative Commons license.

Anthony T. Marasco is a composer, sound artist, and instrument designer who takes influence from the aesthetics of today’s Digimodernist culture. His music and installations showcase emerging technologies to highlight their creative flexibility, combining interactive sensor systems and cyber-hacked circuit-bent hardware with modular synthesizers and tabletop sound computers. An internationally recognized artist, Marasco’s works have been featured at SEAMUS, the Networked Music Festival, NIME, MoxSonic, ICMC, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, the Electroacoustic Barn Dance, Mise-En Festival, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, and more. Marasco was the grand-prize winner of the 2013 UnCaged Toy Piano Festival’s Call for Scores, a resident artist at Signal Culture Experimental Media Labs, and a winner of the American Composers Forum Philadelphia’s “If You Could Hear These Walls” project. He’s received commissions from WIRED Magazine, the Elm Trio, smol ensemble, Phyllis Chen, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Toy Piano Composers, and Maureen Batt. Dr. Marasco is an Assistant Professor of Music Composition and Technology and the Director of the Electronic Music Studios at Michigan State University.

Hysteresis. A cascading wave of cymbal samples is captured, warped, frozen, and timbrally transformed as the program data of a Casio synth is rewired. Forcing ROM address lines to either a 1 or 0 respectively triggers a ‘freezing’ effect or change in timbre, but both cannot simultaneously be active for fear of a short circuit. With variable resistance, at the edge of logic thresholds, where a 1 begins to look like a 0, the sample loop can ‘break free from the freeze’ and reactivate by true chance. The variety of percussive timbres and its related aleatoric ‘unfreezing’ is explored in a dance of pivot choices and electrical temperament.

The piece begins with a single sample which becomes highly transformed by the end of the piece. The data for the sample comes from a basic synthesized suspended cymbal sound effect stored in the ROM data of the synth, accessible by normal means. With a particular connection (A13+D7) on the ROM chip, the cymbal sample is found to be warped and elongated beyond recognition. By playing the keyboard note tied to the activation of the sample ten times in rapid succession, the sample is staggered ten times and forms a wave of noise loosely reminiscent of the original suspended cymbal. Using a modification to the system clock, which allows one to control the speed of CPU events using a knob, the sample (which consists of many segments) can be slowed down even further to draw out its interesting parts, or accelerated to pass by less interesting ones.

By connecting various ROM data lines with a 5V signal, the bitstream on each data line is forced to a logical “1.” This dramatically changes program data of the ROM and achieves a variety of sonic effects. The warped sus. cymbal sample can be looped, reversed, or looped and reversed in segments. This “captures” the sample, causing it to continuously cycle in some form, allowing the performer to focus on other controls.

The next set of controls focus on connecting Address lines A13-A17 to either a 5V signal or to Gnd, but not to both, as this would cause a short circuit. Switching an A line to 5V forces the bitstream on that line to a logic “1”, and switching to Gnd forces that line to a logic “0”. This causes again a dramatic change in program, as the ROM is now addressing drastically different data than expected by the CPU. This is achieved using a SPDT on-off-on switch in series with a 10 turn 100 ohm pot. Switching up forces the A line to a logic “1”; down, to a logic “0”.

The sonic effect of switching up to a “1” depends on the level of resistance. If the resistance is low, the sample is “frozen” into a ~1 second subloop on the current segment at the time of switching. If the resistance is high, the timbre of the sample will change (to another percussive sound) and continue to cycle in full. Tuning the resistance to precisely at the threshold of the high logic level (~2.2V), the ROM will receive a “1” or “0” on the activated address line by chance, triggering a random “unfreezing” of a subloop.

Switching the A line down to a logic “0” will change the timbre (to another percussive sound) without affecting anything else. Since an A line can only be either switched up or down, not both, the various combinations of timbre and subloop segments must be explored by pivoting to and from. The electrical compatibility of the circuit-bend sounds is thus at odds with its sonic intrigue, and the job of the performer is to navigate and reconcile the two. This piece explores and plays with this interaction, seeing how far it can be pushed.

Cryptwarbler is a circuit-bending project that pushes a Casio MT-240 to its limits. Using a system of homemade controllers, the sounds of corrupted data are exposed and woven into a bizarre digital tapestry. By making connections between the ROM-CPU lines, program & instruction data are rerouted and superimposed in a very analog way. The result is a radical, whimsical departure from normal operation: glitched sounds, textures, and effects, each with their own unique intrigues and inherent limitations. Cryptwarbler’s compositional method embraces this unique relationship between performer and circuit-bent instrument: exploring a sound’s attributes while navigating its electrical constraints. Alex Bernhardt, the composer/tinkerer behind Cryptwarbler, has been exploring the MT-240 since 2019, building, researching, experimenting, investigating, and he hopes that others see the potential of circuit-bending from this approach.

L’amour pur.

A pure, bold, dazzling connection of souls
At a heartbreakingly beautiful point in time and space.
How truthful and courageous can you truly be?

— Commissioned by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). This piece is a collaboration with Victor Zheng on engineering and live electronics in performance.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Liann J. Kang is a composer residing in the US. In her work, she seeks to direct the audience’s perception of sound and space altered by crafted sonic illusions. Inspired by her own synesthesia, her compositions stimulate not only hearing, but all the senses collectively to each awaken uniquely in response to the temporal art of music.

Kang is a 2025 Tanglewood Music Center Composition Fellow and has been named First Prize winner of the 2024 Sweetwater/SEAMUS Commission Competition, and winner of the Twenty-Third Annual 21st Century Piano Commission Competition at the University of Illinois. She is also the recipient of 2024 Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship. Her works have featured internationally at events and conferences including SEAMUS, EMM, NYCEMF, ICMC, Napoleon Electronic Media Festival, CHIMEFest at University of Chicago, Chosun Daily National Debut Concert in Seoul, South Korea, Sound Spaces in Malmö, Sweden, and the highSCORE Festival in Pavia, Italy.

Her primary teachers have included Philippe Hurel, Yan Maresz, João Pedro Oliveira, Eli Fieldsteel, and has previously had masterclasses led by Kaija Saariaho and John Harbison. She earned a Bachelor of Music in composition with honors from Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. Currently, Kang is a doctoral candidate in composition-theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she also earned her Master of Music.

Floes. Inspired by concern for the havoc wrought by climate change, Floes is the result of an interactive process, with each of three collaborators (composer Judith Shatin, artist SoHyun Bae and choreographer Virginia Mecene) sharing their work and using it as a cross-media springboard. Named for the large ice sheets that form ever more frequently on bodies of water around melting glaciers, our piece embodies formation, collision, breaking, flowing. It would not have been possible without technological mediation for the collaboration, including the flow of the video, dance and digital music, the latter created by heavy processing of underwater glacier field recordings. The music video was premiered on 10/19/24 on the UVA TechnoSonics Festival, while the version with dance was premiered on 3/18/2025 on the Martha Graham Sounds New Studio Series.

Judith Shatin (www.judithshatin.com) is known for music that is ‘…bursting with imaginative detail’ (San Francisco Chronicle). A sonic explorer, be it acoustic instruments or electronic sources, she pairs timbral innovation with imaginative narrative designs. Her music ranges from improvisational, as in her Quotidian series, to virtuosic performative, to digital. Commissions have come from organizations including the Barlow Endowment, Carnegie Hall, the Fromm Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as ensembles such as the National, Illinois and Richmond Symphonies, the Cassatt and Kronos Quartets, the Dutch Hexagon Ensemble and Berlin PianoPercussion. It is recorded on more than 30 albums. Shatin is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor Emerita at UVA, where she founded the Virginia Center for Computer Music.

Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time. When two black holes collide, collapsing into one another, they create a highly deformed new black hole that emits gravitational waves from its equator. This gravitational wave moves up and down in frequency a few times before it dies, creating “chirps.” This composition imagines a sound world filled with chirps that disrupt our temporal expectations. These disruptions result in rapid transformations between allusions to acoustic instruments, sonic environments, and percussive noises that are animated and playful.

Jon Christopher Nelson (b. 1960) is a Professor of Composition at the University of North Texas College of Music where he is as an associate of CEMI (the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia). Nelson is perhaps best known for his work in computer and electronic music. His electroacoustic compositions have been performed widely at festivals and conferences throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He has been honored with numerous awards including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Commission. He is the recipient of Luigi Russolo Prize (1995), Bourges Prizes (1996, 1997, 1999, 2002 and the Bourges Euphonies d’Or prize in 2004) and the International Computer Music Association’s Americas Regional Award (2012) and Music Award (2020). In addition to his electro-acoustic works, Nelson has composed a variety of acoustic compositions that have been performed by ensembles such as the New World Symphony, the Memphis Symphony, the Brazos Valley Symphony Orchestra, ALEA III, and others. He has composed in residence at Sweden’s national Electronic Music Studios, the Visby International Composers Center and at IMEB in Bourges, France.

Interstellar is the latest work co-created by the members of the L2Ork Tweeter International Ensemble. Led by its founder and Director Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic, the performance features live performers over 5,000 miles apart and integrates projection mapping co-developed by a visual artist Thomas Tucker and Bukvic. Tightly integrated sync of the ensuing telematic electronic music that blends EDM and Ambiental is made possible using L2Ork Tweeter free and open-source software platform that also interfaces with the MadMapper software responsible for the visual projection mapping. “Interstellar” is commissioned by the Alexandria VA Office of the Arts. It is inspired by StudioKCA’s “Interstellar Influencer (Make an Impact)” installation on display in Alexandria’s Waterfront Park. Like the installation, this piece tells the story of an asteroid whose impact shaped Chesapeake Bay over 35 million years ago.

Ivica Bukvic
The work of post-disciplinary creative Ivica Ico Bukvic (b. 1976) encompasses audio-visual, acoustic, and electronic research, technologies, performances, and installations, grants, and patent disclosures. His recent work focuses on creativity enabling technologies, such as mobile technology-mediated ensembles, and audio immersion, including spatialization and data sonification. Bukvic currently serves as the Director of Virginia Tech Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology’s Creativity + Innovation interdisciplinary initiative. He is the founder and director of the Digital Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio (DISIS) and the Linux Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork), and a member of the Center for Human-Computer Interaction with a courtesy appointment in Computer Science. For additional info visit ico.bukvic.net

Thomas Tucker
As a visual artist, Thomas Tucker specializes in harnessing new technologies to unveil invisible or immaterial subjects, ranging from unseeable forces to complex geometries and histories. His applied research spans virtual spatial environments, groundbreaking scientific and historic visualizations, and dynamic interactive artworks. Engaging in transdisciplinary collaborations at the forefront of art, technology, humanities, and sciences shapes his practice, evident in research contributions at this critical intersection. As a Creative Director, Thomas leads projects that exemplify successful transdisciplinary collaboration models, integrating art, creative technology, and visualization across diverse research methodologies. His work facilitates the integration of creative methodologies and technologies, aiding researchers in visualizing the intangible.

L2Ork Tweeter International Ensemble members who co-created and premiered the work were (listed in alphabetical order): Ivica Ico Bukvic (Director, on site), Uma Futoransky (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Gala Gonzalez Barrios (on site), Justin Kerobo (on site), Joaquín Montecino (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Jacob Alan Smith (North Carolina), Lauti Sosa (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Caden Vandervort (Virginia), and Lane Wills (Virginia). The final roster of community members who will perform at NIME 2025 will be announced at the concert. They are joined by a visual projection artist Thomas Tucker.

Founded by Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic in May 2009, and named as one of the top six national transdisciplinary exemplars (a2ru, 2015), and one of the top eight research projects at Virginia Tech (DCist, 2014), a contemporary multimedia ensemble Linux Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork, pronounced as ‘lohrk’), explores musical collaboration through the use of innovative human-computer interaction technologies for the purpose of pursuing an integrative approach to design, engineering, arts, and science. In 2020, the initiative launched L2Ork Tweeter synchronous telematic musicking platform, and with it the L2Ork International Ensemble whose members live thousands of miles apart across multiple continents.

l2ork.music.vt.edu

Motion Notions, was born from a close collaboration with Mari Kimura. She is not just an amazing violinist, but she has developed a sensor which she wears on her right wrist, on the arm with which she holds the bow. This means that the sensor can detect all sorts of information, and I had to think about all that information and how I wanted to use it and incorporate into the music. This was a great challenge. During the many hours of working together with Mari, I must have written enough music for 3 violin works to try everything out, then I threw them away. How many “premieres” did we do? I lost count. Because neither of us liked the first few “premieres” (even though she is too polite to say anything, I was sure I didn’t like them) I started composing again from scratch, trying again. She was willing to do all that, and to fit everything into her busy schedule. Then Covid happened. All our schedules became empty. I wrote to her, saying “the universe is telling us, we must work on this piece again now, every day, even though we have had our official “premieres”. So, we started working again, from scratch. Finally, we arrived that moment, where both of us – I could tell from my computer screen, looking at her reaction, exclaimed, “YES, this is it!”
— Dai Fujikura

Motion Notions was made possible with the funds supported by the University of California, Irvine. It was premiered on July 9th, 2019 at the Chigiana International Festival, Palazzo Chigi Saracini in Siena, Italy, performed by Mari Kimura.

Dai Fujikura is a London-based composer that was born in Osaka, Japan in 1977. He moved to the UK at fifteen and studied under Sir George Benjamin.

In 2020, Fujikura’s opera “A Dream of Armageddon,” based on H.G. Wells’ story of the same name, premiered at the New National Theatre Tokyo and was widely acclaimed. That same year, his Fourth Piano Concerto, “Akiko’s Piano,” commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing and was released by Sony Music. His work “Entwine” has been performed by orchestras including the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and the New York Philharmonic.

His orchestral work “Wavering World” was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony and performed by other notable orchestras around the globe. His music theatre piece “Metamorphosis of a Living Room,” in collaboration with theatre director Toshiki Okada, has been staged in several cities and is set to premiere in Japan in 2024.

Fujikura has presented three operas: “SOLARIS” (2015), co-commissioned by several European opera houses; “The Gold-Bug” (2018), commissioned by Theatre Basel; and “A Dream of Armageddon” commissioned by New National Theatre Tokyo (2020).

His collaborations span various genres, working with artists like Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Sylvian. For the film “Mitsubachi to Enrai” (LISTEN TO THE UNIVERSE), he composed “Spring and Asura.”

Fujikura has composed for traditional Japanese instruments as well as European period instruments. Since 2017 he has been the Artistic Director of the Born Creative Festival at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre. He also curated concerts at La Folle Journée au Japon in 2016 and 2019.

His music has been recorded on labels such as NMC, Kairos, Sony Music, and Fujikura’s own record label, Minabel Records. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Ivor Novello Award and the Silver Lion from the Venice Biennale.

His works are published by Ricordi Berlin.

SOMAXMOBILE (2025) is a work that includes improvisation driven by IRCAM’s state-of-the-art SOMAX system. This advanced improvisation engine processes live violin audio alongside motion data from the MUGIC® sensor, worn on the violinists’ bow arm. The seamless interaction between SOMAX, the violin, and MUGIC® features a dynamic real-tie dialogue pushing the boundaries of expressive and seamless human-machine collaboration. The interactive graphic depicts the interaction of the bowing movement and SOMAX. SOMAXMOBILE was premiered at SEAMUS 2025 conference at the Purdue University on March 24, 2025, where she was awarded the 2025 SEAMUS Award.

Mari Kimura’s pioneering work at the intersection of music and technology has earned her numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fromm Commission from Harvard, and a residency at IRCAM in Paris. In 2025, she received the SEAMUS Award for lifetime achievement in electroacoustic music. The Carnegie Corporation also recognized her as an Immigrant: Pride of America. Celebrated by The New York Times as a “virtuoso playing at the edge,” Kimura is internationally known for subharmonics—a bowing technique she developed to produce pitches an octave below the violin’s lowest string without retuning. Her compositions integrate motion-sensor technology and contemporary music, receiving many commissions such as from Cassatt String Quartet, Decipher Ensemble, and Harvard’s New Music Ensemble. As a performer, she has premiered works by John Adams, Luciano Berio, and Tania León, and performed with the Hamburg and Tokyo Symphonies. A noted improviser, Kimura has collaborated with Henry Kaiser, Elliott Sharp, and Jim O’Rourke. Her 2024 solo album MUGETSU was praised by Sharp, who called her an “architect” of sound. In 2020, she commercialized MUGIC®, a wearable Wi-Fi motion sensor for artistic performance. It’s now used at numerous institutions including Harvard, UC Berkeley, University of Arts in Berlin and Juilliard, and has appeared at venues such as the Venice Biennale and Lincoln Center. During the COVID-19 shutdown, she earned an MBA from UC Irvine’s Merage School and was nominated for Entrepreneur Leader of the Year, receiving a Certificate of Recognition from the U.S. House and California Legislature. In June 2025, her work with MUGIC® is featured at the Osaka Expo in Japan. Kimura has taught at Juilliard since 1998 and joined UC Irvine in 2017 as Professor of Music in the ICIT (Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology).

Canons (for DW) began as a strict four part canon that is part of a collection of pieces that I am composing for physically modeled instruments entitled “Music Boxes”. The canon was later processed largely with granular synthesis to enlarge its duration. Through that process, the note to note details of the original canon were forfeited while the overall shape of the lines was retained. The composition is dedicated to the memory of David Wessel.

Ronald Bruce Smith is a composer whose works incorporate both acoustic instruments and electronics. Smith’s music has been described as “fresh and lustrous” (The New York Times); “seductive and unique” (Ottawa Citizen); “filling in silences blank canvas with the delicacy of an impressionist’s brush” (Vancouver Sun); “wonderfully evocative”; and “intriguing, lovely and seductive” (San Francisco Chronicle); “a highly charged sonic space, fresh and enigmatic” (Los Angeles Times); “sophisticated and ambitious – fascinating and satisfying” (San Francisco Classical Voice); and as “showing a remarkable sensitivity to tone colors” (Toronto Globe and Mail).

He has received commissions funded by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, the Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundations in the Library of Congress, the Barlow Endowment for Music Composition, the Manhattan School of Music, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and CNMAT, University of California, Berkeley. Performers of his works include guitarist David Tanenbaum, pianist Vicky Chow, clarinetists Laura Carmichael and Rane Moore, violiniat Kate Stenberg, the Arraymusic Ensemble, California E.A.R. Unit, Cikada, Columbia Sinfonietta, Continuum Ensemble (Toronto), Del Sol String Quartet, Earplay, New Music Concerts Ensemble (Toronto), Pierrot Ensemble, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Vancouver New Music Ensemble, Verge Ensemble, Xanthos Ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has been a featured composer at Other Minds 12 in San Francisco, the Festival of the Sound, Open Ears and the Banff Festival of the Arts.