Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara

Events

MAT Seminar Series: Using the Creative Process of Music Composition and Performance for Creating and Exploring Complex Systems, by MAT Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin. Monday, March 31st, 2025. 1pm Elings Hall 1605 and via Zoom.

Abstract

What would it be like if we could generate, control and transform complex information like quantum mechanics or molecular dynamics the way that a composer or artist creates and transforms a work of art, if we could use our senses to perceive very complex n-dimensional information intuitively and as second nature?

I would like to discuss composing and performing complex systems like quantum mechanics by using the model of music composition and performance. A complex system is an arrangement of a great number of various elements with intricate relationships and interconnections. They are difficult to model and predict. Components of a complex system may appear to act spontaneously such that predicting the outcome of the complete system at any given point of time may be difficult if not impossible. In this respect composing music is analogous to building a complex system. The system changes and unfolds over time at many different levels of temporal and spatial dimensions and the outcome of the total system may not be predictable at various stages of composing the work. As a composer creating these complex systems the creative process involves what I describe as non-linear leaps of intuition. Could these leaps be quantum phase transitions? Let’s explore the possibilities.

Bio

Composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is Director and Chief Scientist of the AlloSphere Research Facility and Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on creative computational systems, multi-modal media systems content and facilities design. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California: the Digital Media Innovation Program.

She was Chief Scientist of the Program from 1998 to 2003. The culmination of Professor Kuchera-Morin’s creativity and research is the AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter, 3-story high metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. Scientifically, the AlloSphere is an instrument for gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture—abstract higher dimensional information spaces, the worlds of the very small or very large, and the realms of the very fast or very slow. Artistically, it is an instrument for the creation and performance of avant-garde new works and the development of new modes and genres of expression and forms of immersion-based entertainment. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin earned a Ph.D. in composition from the Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester in 1984.

For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
seminar.mat.ucsb.edu.

Sketches of Sensorium, an immersive audio visual event in UCSB's AlloSphere, will continue with shows in February, March and April. Reservations can be made below ↓

Sketches of Sensorium

Sketches for Sensorium showcases core elements of the late environmental artist Newton Harrison’s (1932 - 2022) long-term project, Sensorium for the World Ocean. It will premiere at the AlloSphere as a satellite to the UC Irvine Beall Center for Art and Technology’s forthcoming exhibition, Future Tense: Art, Complexity, and Uncertainty, produced in partnership with the 2024 Getty PST Art: Art and Science Collide initiative. The installation will incorporate immersive audio and visual scientific climate and ocean health data provided by the Ocean Health Index of the Halpern Lab at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.

Sketches for Sensorium is a project of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure in collaboration with Virtual Planet Technologies, Almost Human Media, and the AlloSphere Research Group. It will premiere with an original spatialized composition and an interactive data world, following Newton’s wish to impart a sense of hope to audiences.

For more information, please visit:

news.ucsb.edu/2024/021608/immersive-ocean-health-project-premieres-ucsbs-allosphere-part-getty-pst-art

www.independent.com/2024/09/11/sketches-of-sensorium-part-of-getty-pst-art-at-uc-santa-barbara

allosphere.ucsb.edu/research/sketches_of_sensorium/2024.html

Past Events

News

In a historic milestone for Greek polar research, MAT PhD students and architects Iason Paterakis and Nefeli Manoudaki are participating in the Technical University of Crete's TIE Lab's research project in Antarctica.

As part of the research team, they wrote the software and created the generative and AI content for the study: "Audio-Visual System to Mitigate the Negative Effects on Stress and Depression in Confined Spaces and Extreme Environments."

The research field relates to neuro-architecture and focuses on Media and Design Interventions in Isolated and Extreme Environments (ICEs), utilizing generative design tools and Artificial Intelligence tools to create virtual environments that aim to reduce the negative psychological impacts of long-term isolation.

Leading the Greek expedition, Architect-Engineers Christina Balomenaki and Efharis Gourounti have made history as the first Greek women researchers to set foot in Antarctica. The research conducted during this mission will contribute to the scientific understanding of human adaptation in extreme environments and strengthen Greece's position in international polar research.

The project is jointly led by Professor Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation; Marianthi Liapi, Research Program Director at the Transformable Intelligent Environments Laboratory (TUC TIE Lab); and Professor Michael Zervakis, Rector of the Technical University of Crete and Director of the DISPLAY Lab at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

www.eurecapro.eu/tuc-scientific-expedition-in-antarctica

MAT Professor Jennifer Jacobs has been awarded the NSF CAREER Award to conduct research in Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication.

The title of the NSF award is Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication. Professor Jacobs was awarded the NSF Career Award to further her research in integrating skilled manual and material production with computational fabrication.

The CAREER Program offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

Professor Jacobs thanks all of the amazing members the Expressive Computation Lab whose research contributed the intellectual foundations of this award.

NSF link: Dynamic Control Systems for Manual-Computational Fabrication

Expressive Computation Lab

Professor George Legrady’s exhibit “Scratching the Surface” at the RCM Galerie in Paris, France, receives a great review by Jospeph Nechvatal in White Hot Magazine, February 2025.

George Legrady: Scratching the Surface. Digital Pictures from the 1980s to Present.

RCM Galerie, Paris

www.rcmgalerie.com

Tuesday, December 17 2024 to Sunday February 16, 2025

32 rue de Lille, 75007

Tue-Fri 2pm-7pm & by appointment

whitehotmagazine.com/articles/32-rue-de-lille-paris/6789

Leonardo, one of the leading international journals of contemporary science and technology in the arts, has recognized Gustavo Rincon PhD for his outstanding contributions to the publication for his work as a peer reviewer. MAT congratulates Dr. Rincon for his tireless contributions to the field of media arts.

Dr. Rincon is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the AlloSphere Research Facility at UC Santa Barbara. His interestes include Architectural Design/Engineering, Computational Design and Fabrication, New Media Architectures and Immersive VR Environments.

https://leonardo.info/blog/2025/01/21/recognition-of-leonardos-outstanding-peer-reviewers

α-Forest: An Immersive Sound and Light Journey Through Inner-consciousness Exploration, is on exhibit at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts from January 18 - March 30, 2025.

α-Forest: An Immersive Sound and Light Journey Through Inner-consciousness Exploration

Production Team: Olifa Hsieh (MAT visiting scholar), Timothy Wood (MAT researcher), and Weihao Qiu (MAT PhD student).

The subconscious is where your intrinsic qualities thrive; where seeds of inspiration reside; and where many impulses, emotions, and thoughts are hidden and never expressed. Sometimes they only appear in dreams.

α-Forest is a participatory immersive theater with healing qualities, created by the following three artists: Olifa Ching-Ying Hsieh, Timothy Wood, and Weihao Qiu. The work integrates electronic sound, interactive design, and AI algorithmic imaging technology to capture the audience’s brainwaves (Electroencephalography, EEG) and collect data on their physical movements, resulting in real-time co-created content. At a residency base offered by the Experimental Forest of National Taiwan University, the artists collected unique forest sounds from a mountainous area in central Taiwan, Nantou. They also visited the region’s indigenous tribe and learned about their culture.

More about the exhibition (PDF)

The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

The Second Edition (2023) of a book by Professor Curtis Roads, "The Computer Music Tutorial" has been released.

The Computer Music Tutorial, Second Edition (2023) by Curtis Roads

Curtis Roads, professor in Media Arts and Technology and affiliate faculty in Music at UCSB, has announced the publication of an expanded, updated, and fully revised Second Edition of his textbook The Computer Music Tutorial (2023, The MIT Press, 1257 pages).

Essential and state-of-the-art, The Computer Music Tutorial, Second Edition is a singular text that introduces computer and electronic music, explains its motivations, and puts topics into context. Curtis Roads's step-by-step presentation orients musicians, engineers, scientists, and anyone else new to computer and electronic music.

The new edition continues to be the definitive tutorial on all aspects of computer music, including digital audio, signal processing, musical input devices, performance software, editing systems, algorithmic composition, MIDI, and psychoacoustics, but the second edition also reflects the enormous growth of the field since the book's original publication in 1996. New chapters cover up-to-date topics like virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, and instrument and patch editors. Exhaustively referenced and cross-referenced, the second edition adds hundreds of new figures and references to the original charts, diagrams, screen images, and photographs in order to explain basic concepts and terms.

Features include:

New chapters on virtual analog, pulsar synthesis, concatenative synthesis, spectrum analysis by atomic decomposition, Open Sound Control, spectrum editors, instrument and patch editors, and an appendix on machine learning.

Two thousand references support the book's descriptions and point readers to further study.

Mathematical notation and program code examples used only when necessary.

Twenty-five years of classroom, seminar, and workshop use inform the pace and level of the material.

As Prof. Roads states: "I finished writing the first edition in 1993. It finally came out in 1996, the year I joined the UCSB Music faculty as a Visiting Associate Professor. Writing the Second Edition required going through the research literature in the field since 1993. It often felt overwhelming but I just had to keep going. In 2017 I devoted all my creative time to the project. I promised myself I would finish it in 2020, and at 10 PM on 31 December 2020 I finished writing. Time for Champagne! The production process took all of 2021 and most of 2022. In a way it was a perfect project for the pandemic lockdown, as it gave me a daily purpose in a time of isolation. The textbook has been the core of my teaching at UCSB."

An article about the release of the 2nd edition was published in the UCSB Current:

news.ucsb.edu/2023/021272/core-textbook-computer-music-distills-vast-information-space-definitive-tutorial

The book can be found at MIT Press:

mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044912/the-computer-music-tutorial

Professor Roads's previous books include Microsound (2001, The MIT Press) and Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (2015, Oxford University Press).

Past News

Alumni Testimonials

"With a deep interest in exploring sound, not only creatively, but technically and scientifically, I began my studies at MAT at UCSB. It was here, through academic discipline and perseverance, alongside professors and colleagues, that I was able to hone my skills and begin my successful career.

Years later, I am leading development of game audio and augmented reality technology at Apple.

The strong academic foundations that I gained in spatial audio, sound synthesis, and audio engine architecture have allowed me to achieve even greater success in my career. I will always be grateful to those who helped me take those first steps to success!"

David Thall
Lead Audio Programmer
Game and Augmented Reality Technology
Apple
"As a UCSB MAT Master's student (2002-2004), I benefited greatly from the required and elective courses taught by professional leaders with broad perspectives, both technical and humanistic. This helped me to improve my research skills, and to refine my academic vision, which culminated in a PhD (2009) from UCSB Electrical and Computer Engineering specializing in Digital Signal Processing. Since that time I have been employed at several academic institutions around Europe, where my broad technical and humanistic perspective has been unique and advantageous."

Bob L. Sturm, Associate Professor
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Royal Institute of Technology KTH
Stockholm, Sweden
"As one of the first graduates of the Media Arts and Technology PhD program, I have found the experiences provided by the MAT community invaluable to both my professional development and personal enjoyment of creating technology-based experiences, throughout life. I have been employed for more than 10 years now in the department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University Copenhagen, where I teach both interaction design and real-time signal processing for audio and music performance. As Associate Professor, I guide students to create their own software and hardware tools, concepts, and practices for creating new sonic and embodied interactions, as well as running the Augmented Performance Lab. Together with my colleagues, I helped start the Sound and Music Computing masters program in 2014, and co-chaired the international New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in 2017."

Dan Overholt
Associate Professor
Aalborg Univeristy, Copenhagen
Denmark
"MAT is a rare graduate program in that it operates more like an creative ecosystem -- your work as a researcher is significant and connects to others. People care a lot about what you are doing, and invest thought into your own thinking. Throughout my eight years of study, from 2007 to 2015, and as a postdoctoral student afterwards, this supportive environment provided the technological, financial, and intellectual resources necessary for me to take risks in my work. As a result, I was able to dive deep into subjects I thought were off limits to my cognitive function, and achieve the great satisfaction of learning how to learn better. It is a testament to the culture fostered there that an experimental filmmaker such as myself entering the program with very basic programming skills can now make regular contributions to mathematics journals, work as a real-time computer graphics programmer in the DTLA arts district, be asked to consult on science fiction television dramas, and innovate novel geometrical algorithms of use in architecture. I think the MAT program at UCSB is a hidden gem -- you enter it with one direction in mind, and come out brilliantly refracted into a spectrum of possibilities."

Pablo Colapinto
Oblong Industries Inc & Independent Artist
Los Angeles
"The education and mentorship I received as an MAT student gave me the skills to discuss my work critically and in the context of the rich history of media arts; and has been pivotal in having my work accepted in exhibitions around the world, including Dubai, Montreal, Tehran, Hong Kong, New York and cities throughout the US. Further, my PhD in MAT was instrumental in securing my position as Curator of Interactive Media for MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration and Innovation. In that capacity, almost half of the artists I have curated into MOXI have been MAT alumni, MAT faculty, MAT students, and distinguished media artists who I met as part of my work in the MAT program. My collaborations with MAT students and alumni are ongoing, and I continue to be grateful for the education, mentorship and community of the UCSB MAT program."

Marco Pinter
Computational Artist
Curator of Interactive Media, MOXI (The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation)
Director of Software Innovation, InTouch Health

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