People - Contacts
Brandon Mechtley, with Todd Ingalls, Lauren Hayes, Julian Stein, Garrett Johnson, Byron Lahey, Connor Rawls, Jessica Rajko, Peter Weisman, Assegid Kidane, Seth Thorn, Emiddio Vasquez, Sha Xin Wei
Studio Coordinator Information Brandon Mechtley (Primary contact) 2134 E Broadway Rd., Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
(480) 326-6838
Brandon Mechtley is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and Co-PI of Synthesis@ASU. His research areas include computational science applications in ecology, environmental sound, and computational steering. At Synthesis, Brandon heads the Experiential Complex Systems research stream, which uses responsive environments to allow scientists to steer computational models through movement and placement of ordinary objects. Brandon received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Arizona State University. Prior to his appointment at AME, he held postdoctoral appointments at the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary, University of London and The Kansas Biological Survey at the University of Kansas.
Todd Ingalls
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
(480) 965-7908
Todd Ingalls is a media composer who works with interactive performance and experiential media systems. He is Professor of Research in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University, where he also serves as chair of graduate studies. His research focuses on gestural communication and embodied media interaction, affect in music, and algorithmic media composition as well as novel mediated environments for stroke and Parkinson’s disease rehabilitation. His research has been published/presented in venues such as the International Computer Music Conference, ACM Multimedia, DAFx, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, National Dance Education Organization, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Todd's collaborative work has been performed internationally at SPIELART Theater Festival (Munich), VIA festival (Maubeuge), International Festival of Movement Arts (Bangalore), Cutting Edge Festival (Darmstadt), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, and the Donaueschinger Musiktage, among others.
Lauren Hayes
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
http://www.pariesa.com/
Lauren Hayes is Assistant Professor of Sound Studies within the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. She is a musician and sound artist with a decade of experience building and performing with hybrid analogue/digital instruments. Her research explores new strategies for live electronic
music performance by investigating the performer's physical relationship with the digital realm through the lens of enactive and embodied music cognition, and performing with haptic and tangible interfaces. She also composes haptic music that can be experienced as vibration throughout the body and leads PARIESA (Practice and Research in Enactive Sonic Art) at ASU.
Julian Stein
Los Angeles, CA USA
[email protected]
Julian Stein is a sound and media-artist based in Los Angeles, CA, whose work ranges from soundscape and electroacoustic composition to collaborative performance and kinetic sound installation. Influenced by methods of audiovisual synchronization and the urban environment, his work focuses on intuition and present experience, demonstrating musical applications of the everyday in both composed and real-time environments. Stein is a co-creator of the Montreal Sound Map, and has a BFA in Electroacoustic Studies from Concordia University. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Design Media Arts at UCLA.
Garrett Johnson
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Garrett Johnson draws on his practical and theoretical experiences in music in the Media Arts and Sciences (PhD) and Critical Theory (grad certificate) programs at Arizona State University, where he pursues interests including rhythm, gesture, dynamical systems, new materialisms, technicity, computation, and capital. His PhD is supervised by Sha Xin Wei (chair), Adam Nocek,
2
and Todd Ingalls. He is a graduate student affiliate of the Synthesis Center and an experimental fellow at the Lab for Critical Technics (LCT) for 2018. In 2016 he co- founded Post-Human Network (PHuN), a grad-led critical theory interest group. He has served as the director of the Arts, Media + Engineering Student Association (AMESA) since 2015, where he organizes weekly graduate student symposiums.
Byron Lahey
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Robert LiKamWa
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
480-965-2686
Robert LiKamWa is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, appointed in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE). LiKamWa heads Meteor Studio research laboratory, studying the Mobile Experiential Technology through Embedded Optimization Research. Meteor Studio designs software and hardware systems to raise the performance, efficiency, and expressiveness of smartphones, tablets, IoT, VR/AR, drones, and other mobile systems.
Jessica Rajko
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Jessica Rajko is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the liminal space between dance, the body, wearable technology, and interaction design. As an assistant
professor at Arizona State University, her current work investigates the ethical and corporeal implications of big data and the quantified self. Jessica is a founding co-director of the ASU Human Security Collaboratory and is affiliated with the Arts, Media and Engineering Synthesis Center as a collaborative researcher/artist. Rajko has presented and performed in various collaborative works nationally and internationally, including Toronto’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche festival and New York City’s Gotham Festival at The Joyce Theatre.
Connor Rawls
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Connor Rawls is a digital media software developer and technology specialist. Rawls maintains the SC media choreography development toolkit in Synthesis at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University and is responsible for maintaining the Intelligent Stage (iStage) environment, including all hardware and logistics. Rawls received his Bachelor of Science in Digital Culture in 2016.
Shahabedin Sagheb
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Shahab Sagheb is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of Art, design and engineering. In his practice he attempts merging different disciplines to devise a new medium capable of conveying various messages. He has been involved with many engineering and design practices, his portfolio consists of examples of product design, interior design, 3D illustration and interactive media design. Shahab holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MA in Industrial Design. Currently, he is an MFA candidate with Digital
3
Technology concentration at Arizona State University.
Seth Thorn
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Dr. Seth Thorn is an artist-researcher in digital sound, violin and viola performance, hyperinstruments, musical gesture, and philosophy. Thorn completed is Ph.D. in Computer Music and Multimedia at Brown University in 2018 and is currently an instructor of electronic and digital audio in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. Thorn has played at, or had his work performed at, ICMC, NIME, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, The Splice Festival, the Guthman Competition at Georgia Institute of Technology, and has been invited as a composer to residencies by the iPark Foundation, Hewnoaks Colony, and Playa Foundation. He has held Fullbright, Brown Open Graduate Education, and Tisch Foundation fellowships.
Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra is a Cypriot- Dominican media artist and a PhD candidate at ASU’s Media Art and Science program. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics and a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Film Studies from Miami University where he studied under a Fulbright Scholarship and an MA in Modern European Philosophy, from the CRMEP, Kingston University. His current research looks at analog media and alternative modes of computation in order to methodologically rethink digitality.
Assegid Kidane
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Peter Weisman
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Sha Xin Wei
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
480-965-9438
Sha Xin Wei is Professor and Director of the School of Arts, Media + Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University. He directs the Synthesis Center for responsive environments and improvisation with colleagues in AME and affiliate research centers. From 2005-2013, Sha was the Canada Research chair in media arts and sciences, and associate professor of fine arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. From 2001 to 2013, he directed the Topological Media Lab (TML), an atelier-laboratory for the study of gesture and materiality from computational and phenomenological perspectives. He established the TML at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001, and moved the lab to Montréal in 2005 with the support of the Canada Fund for Innovation and the CRC.
Studio Coordinator Information Brandon Mechtley (Primary contact) 2134 E Broadway Rd., Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
(480) 326-6838
Brandon Mechtley is an Assistant Research Professor in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering and Co-PI of Synthesis@ASU. His research areas include computational science applications in ecology, environmental sound, and computational steering. At Synthesis, Brandon heads the Experiential Complex Systems research stream, which uses responsive environments to allow scientists to steer computational models through movement and placement of ordinary objects. Brandon received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Arizona State University. Prior to his appointment at AME, he held postdoctoral appointments at the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary, University of London and The Kansas Biological Survey at the University of Kansas.
Todd Ingalls
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
(480) 965-7908
Todd Ingalls is a media composer who works with interactive performance and experiential media systems. He is Professor of Research in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University, where he also serves as chair of graduate studies. His research focuses on gestural communication and embodied media interaction, affect in music, and algorithmic media composition as well as novel mediated environments for stroke and Parkinson’s disease rehabilitation. His research has been published/presented in venues such as the International Computer Music Conference, ACM Multimedia, DAFx, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology, National Dance Education Organization, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Todd's collaborative work has been performed internationally at SPIELART Theater Festival (Munich), VIA festival (Maubeuge), International Festival of Movement Arts (Bangalore), Cutting Edge Festival (Darmstadt), Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, and the Donaueschinger Musiktage, among others.
Lauren Hayes
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
http://www.pariesa.com/
Lauren Hayes is Assistant Professor of Sound Studies within the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. She is a musician and sound artist with a decade of experience building and performing with hybrid analogue/digital instruments. Her research explores new strategies for live electronic
music performance by investigating the performer's physical relationship with the digital realm through the lens of enactive and embodied music cognition, and performing with haptic and tangible interfaces. She also composes haptic music that can be experienced as vibration throughout the body and leads PARIESA (Practice and Research in Enactive Sonic Art) at ASU.
Julian Stein
Los Angeles, CA USA
[email protected]
Julian Stein is a sound and media-artist based in Los Angeles, CA, whose work ranges from soundscape and electroacoustic composition to collaborative performance and kinetic sound installation. Influenced by methods of audiovisual synchronization and the urban environment, his work focuses on intuition and present experience, demonstrating musical applications of the everyday in both composed and real-time environments. Stein is a co-creator of the Montreal Sound Map, and has a BFA in Electroacoustic Studies from Concordia University. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Design Media Arts at UCLA.
Garrett Johnson
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Garrett Johnson draws on his practical and theoretical experiences in music in the Media Arts and Sciences (PhD) and Critical Theory (grad certificate) programs at Arizona State University, where he pursues interests including rhythm, gesture, dynamical systems, new materialisms, technicity, computation, and capital. His PhD is supervised by Sha Xin Wei (chair), Adam Nocek,
2
and Todd Ingalls. He is a graduate student affiliate of the Synthesis Center and an experimental fellow at the Lab for Critical Technics (LCT) for 2018. In 2016 he co- founded Post-Human Network (PHuN), a grad-led critical theory interest group. He has served as the director of the Arts, Media + Engineering Student Association (AMESA) since 2015, where he organizes weekly graduate student symposiums.
Byron Lahey
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Robert LiKamWa
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
480-965-2686
Robert LiKamWa is an assistant professor at Arizona State University, appointed in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering (AME) and the School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering (ECEE). LiKamWa heads Meteor Studio research laboratory, studying the Mobile Experiential Technology through Embedded Optimization Research. Meteor Studio designs software and hardware systems to raise the performance, efficiency, and expressiveness of smartphones, tablets, IoT, VR/AR, drones, and other mobile systems.
Jessica Rajko
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Jessica Rajko is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the liminal space between dance, the body, wearable technology, and interaction design. As an assistant
professor at Arizona State University, her current work investigates the ethical and corporeal implications of big data and the quantified self. Jessica is a founding co-director of the ASU Human Security Collaboratory and is affiliated with the Arts, Media and Engineering Synthesis Center as a collaborative researcher/artist. Rajko has presented and performed in various collaborative works nationally and internationally, including Toronto’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche festival and New York City’s Gotham Festival at The Joyce Theatre.
Connor Rawls
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Connor Rawls is a digital media software developer and technology specialist. Rawls maintains the SC media choreography development toolkit in Synthesis at the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University and is responsible for maintaining the Intelligent Stage (iStage) environment, including all hardware and logistics. Rawls received his Bachelor of Science in Digital Culture in 2016.
Shahabedin Sagheb
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Shahab Sagheb is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of Art, design and engineering. In his practice he attempts merging different disciplines to devise a new medium capable of conveying various messages. He has been involved with many engineering and design practices, his portfolio consists of examples of product design, interior design, 3D illustration and interactive media design. Shahab holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a MA in Industrial Design. Currently, he is an MFA candidate with Digital
3
Technology concentration at Arizona State University.
Seth Thorn
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Dr. Seth Thorn is an artist-researcher in digital sound, violin and viola performance, hyperinstruments, musical gesture, and philosophy. Thorn completed is Ph.D. in Computer Music and Multimedia at Brown University in 2018 and is currently an instructor of electronic and digital audio in the School of Arts, Media and Engineering at Arizona State University. Thorn has played at, or had his work performed at, ICMC, NIME, SEAMUS, NYCEMF, The Splice Festival, the Guthman Competition at Georgia Institute of Technology, and has been invited as a composer to residencies by the iPark Foundation, Hewnoaks Colony, and Playa Foundation. He has held Fullbright, Brown Open Graduate Education, and Tisch Foundation fellowships.
Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Oswaldo Emiddio Vasquez Hadjilyra is a Cypriot- Dominican media artist and a PhD candidate at ASU’s Media Art and Science program. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Statistics and a BA in Philosophy with a minor in Film Studies from Miami University where he studied under a Fulbright Scholarship and an MA in Modern European Philosophy, from the CRMEP, Kingston University. His current research looks at analog media and alternative modes of computation in order to methodologically rethink digitality.
Assegid Kidane
Tempe, AZ USA [email protected]
Peter Weisman
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
Sha Xin Wei
Tempe, AZ USA
[email protected]
480-965-9438
Sha Xin Wei is Professor and Director of the School of Arts, Media + Engineering (AME) at Arizona State University. He directs the Synthesis Center for responsive environments and improvisation with colleagues in AME and affiliate research centers. From 2005-2013, Sha was the Canada Research chair in media arts and sciences, and associate professor of fine arts at Concordia University in Montréal, Canada. From 2001 to 2013, he directed the Topological Media Lab (TML), an atelier-laboratory for the study of gesture and materiality from computational and phenomenological perspectives. He established the TML at Georgia Institute of Technology in 2001, and moved the lab to Montréal in 2005 with the support of the Canada Fund for Innovation and the CRC.
Topological Media Lab experiments: Einsteins Dreams time conditioning, Mere Phantoms shadow puppets, Grotesque Perturbations via hacked toys Dedale architecture studio, Meteor Shower, gestural follower (IRCAM) eggplant, Cosmicomics sensitive sky