Fiona Xue Ju, originally from China, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Experimental Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University. As a composer, media artist, improviser, and sound and visual designer, she creates immersive experiences that bridge digital and physical spaces, blending electronic music, visual and performance art. Fiona holds a Bachelor’s degree in composition from Oberlin Conservatory and a Master’s in Contemporary Performance and Composition (CoPeCo) from CNSMD Lyon, with additional studies at EMTA in Tallinn, KMH in Stockholm, and HfMT in Hamburg. Her works, ranging from chamber music to multimedia installations, have been presented across the U.S. and Europe, often exploring political themes and challenging societal perceptions. Learn more at www.xjcomposer.com

Kerem Ergener is an electronic music composer and multimedia artist whose works have been part of many compilations around the world. After he graduated from Izmir Saint Joseph French High School he continued his undergraduate study in Bahçeşehir University’s Mechatronics Engineering department which he helped the establishment of BAU Stanford Robotics Research Project Laboratory. Then he continued his graduate education in Istanbul Technical University MIAM. He received his Master of Arts in Music/Sonic Arts in 2019. His solo work has been released under his own name and under the nickname “Le Horla”. He founded his record label Le Horla Records that aims to bring out unheard avant-garde and experimental sound to listeners in 2016. After he graduated from Istanbul Technical University MIAM Sonic Arts department, he held a three-year long lectureship position at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang’s Institute of Music, Science and Engineering department in Bangkok, Thailand. He is currently a PhD candidate at Louisiana State University majoring in Experimental Music and Digital Media and minoring in Architecture. His work is currently focused on sound installations, concept of space and immersive audio design.

Portfolio: keremergener.com

After completing two degrees in Music Composition, Scott began studying for a PhD in the Experimental Music & Digital Media program at Louisiana State University in 2020. Scott is continually learning fascinating new ways to make music through emerging technologies. He is particularly interested in audio/visual art, and video game sound.

Henry Kiley is a Music/EMDM major and a member of the Class of 2024. Hailing from Ann Arbor, Michigan, his interest in music began when he became interested in electronic music and subsequently learned to be a DJ. His goal is to bring an experimental edge to electronic dance music while still keeping the fundamentals and the joys of the genre intact at LSU. His goal for the 2023-24 school year is to release his first full-length album. His favorite artists and groups include Primus, Pendulum, Skrillex, Dillon Francis, and Sullivan King.

You can find his latest compositions on his SoundCloud page, accessible at https://soundcloud.com/real_dj_boost

Ka Hei Cheng is pursuing her PhD in Music (Experimental Music and Digital Media) in the Louisiana State University, and she studied in the Education University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Bowling Green State University.  During her studies in the Louisiana State University and the Bowling Green State University, she was awarded full scholarship and assistantship. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Cheng approaches a diversified culture and philosophy that extend her musical dimensions and nourish a similarly diverse approach to her music composition by “brush strokes” with sonic palette. She has composed different genres of music, including music jingles, music for animation, tailor-made event music, electroacoustic music, and acoustic composition with or without programming. Her piece, The Trigger Machine was performed in the Earth Day Art Model 2020, which was organized by IUPUI. Her works was accepted by the Exchange for Midwestern Collegiate Composers; and she has written music/pieces for the Screen Music Program and the Collaborative Composition Initiative (CCI). One of her works was recorded in a CD, CCI//Sessions, vol. 2.  In 2020, she wrote a chamber orchestral piece, Nibiru, for the Cleveland Chamber Symphony and she was commissioned to write a commercial promotional music for the video from the CNA Group. She joined Splice Festival and participated in workshops. She also had her works performed in New Music Gathering and zFestival. Her work, The Entangling Turner, was performed in NIME (The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression) and was presented in ICAD (International Community For Auditory Display). She was the presenter of her research paper, Unobtrusive Auditory Display for Weather Reporting, in ICAD 2021.

Michael Blandino is a composer, researcher, and higher education professional. His research and compositions have focused on the communication of musical gestures through sensors, on digital expression in contexts of climate change, on augmenting live audio scenes with environmental risk data, on creative application of retrieved music information, and on experimental sound diffusion through high density loudspeaker arrays. He received his Ph.D. in EMDM in 2021. blandino.art

Matthew Bardin, originally a native of Central Florida, is currently based in Baton Rouge, and has written music for large ensembles, chamber groups, voice, solo instruments, and electronics. He holds a Master of Music from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and a  Bachelor of Music from Stetson University. Matthew is currently working towards a Ph.D in Experimental Music & Digital Media from Louisiana State University. He is currently affiliated with the American Society of Composer, Authors, and Publishers. As a student, Matthew has placed in Stetson University’s annual composition contest with his works No More, and 2:1. His works are often performed by several student soloists and groups throughout the course of the academic year. He also has presented his music at the annual Electric LaTex festival, co-hosted an online workshop at NIME 2020, and is currently serving as the 2021 Composer in Residence of the University Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, LA. during his time in residency, he composed the works Slow Down, Stop, Breathe, Keep Going, The Cups of Communion, and On the Question of Angels.

matthewbardin.com

Dylan Burchett does a variety of sound-related things, often with materials powered by electricity. Much of his work involves repurposed materials, noisy sounds, and varying degrees of improvisation. Dylan received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2018, a BFA in Music Composition from the New College of Florida in 2015, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Experimental Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University.

https://dylanburchett.bandcamp.com/

Erin Demastes is an experimental composer, performer, and instrument maker whose research combines sound and technology with humor, drama, and absurdity. She uses everyday, household objects and hacked electronics for her installations and performances and subverts their use and perception with play and experimentation. By placing items in theatrical settings, Erin brings out the character of things we normally may not think twice about. In addition to her interest in physical materials, Erin also experiments with instruction and interaction design by playing with the boundaries of her scores, performances, and installations to find a balance between structure and uncertainty.

https://www.erindemastes.com/

Austin Franklin is an internationally recognized composer and sound artist based in Baton Rouge, LA where he is currently pursuing a PhD in Experimental Music & Digital Media from Louisiana State University. His interests include music involving process, such as algorithmic composition and music incorporating machine learning technologies. His latest album, Four Idols, has been described as “an elegant, artistic statement that demonstrates the flexible possibilities of electronic music” (The Sybaritic Singer). Austin has several pieces for percussion published through C-Alan Publications and his music has been performed throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. He is the recipient of several awards and commissions, including the RMN Call for Electroacoustic Works 2021, the Hypercube Composition Lab, SCI Region IV Mixtape, PARMA Winter Call for Scores, the Dead Resonance Call for Aleatoric Scores, the Sound/Sight Art Collaboration, the First Annual LSU Composition Competition, and the CNME Call for Scores. His music has also been selected for festivals and conferences such as the New Music on the Bayou Festival, Splice Institute, NYCEMF Festival, WOCMAT, Alba Music Festival, Society of Composers Incorporated, and Electric LaTex. Austin has presented research at the Web Audio Conference (2021) that explores using Web API’s as the basis for designing digital instruments, and at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (2019) Conference that involves simultaneous auditory and vibrotactile stimuli. His String
Quartet No. 1 “Lanterns” was also recently aired on the Viva 21st Century 50/50 Marathon on Classical Discoveries with Marvin Rosen. For more visit austinfranklinmusic.com.

Thomas received his M.M. and B.M. in Music Composition from The University of Alabama and currently works towards a Ph.D. in Music Composition at LSU with a minor in Experimental Music and Digital Media. Prominent mentors throughout his studies include Mara Gibson, C.P. First, Peter Westergaard, and Yotam Haber. He enjoys collaborating with performers, including at festivals such as the Atlantic Music Festival, highSCORE Festival, and ArtPlay Festival. His thesis The Reflections of My Introverted Sneakers can be heard on the album Early Musings: New Music for Violin performed by Davis Brooks and released through Navona Records. His music has been performed internationally and also can be heard at arboretums, libraries, museums, and any other receptive venue. To contact or listen to his music, visit thomaslwilson.com

William A Thompson IV or “WATIV” is a composer, pianist, Hammond organist,  electronic musician and educator. His unique music has attracted attention NPR’s “All Things Considered” and the BBC. Thompson’s art has been most profoundly impacted by his one year tour of duty spent in Baghdad during the Iraq War in 2004 as a Counter- intelligence Agent.

Thompson studied jazz piano at the University of New Orleans and earned a Masters degree in jazz studies.  However, his studies there were interrupted by a one year tour of duty in Iraq while serving in the Army National Guard.  Baghdad Music Jornal was the result of that deployment and is the first album to be released from a combat theater.

Currently William Thompson is a PhD student at Louisiana State University’s Experimental Music and Digital Media program.  Additionally he works as a professional musician in New Orleans, La where he leads bands such as WATIV, Trapper Keaper, The Red Organ Trio, and The Betty Shirley band.  He is also very involved in education and teaches “Composition for Digital Media” at Tulane University “Sound Design” at Lee High School.

“I am a composer, teacher, sonic artist and musician. My lifelong journey has been a search for a medium through which I can communicate my personal truth. Electronic computer music has fulfilled that purpose for me for many years.”

As a contemporary music composer and performer, Ms. Winn is well versed in many aspects of current music technology, and incorporates this specialty into her teaching. She has been teaching piano since 1979. She has served on the music faculty of Southeastern Louisiana University, and has been interim director of Southeastern Louisiana University’s Community Music School. She is currently serving as the Gifted and Talented Music Instructor for the Zachary Community School system since 2005. She is also presently a Louisiana State evaluator for Talented Music, and has been an adjudicator for MTNA, LMTA and the DeBose National Piano Competitions. Her most recent passion is research into developing notation for repurposed electronic devices to use as instruments for marginalized and under resourced music education programs.

Tate Carson is a composer from New Orleans, Louisiana. He studied jazz composition and performance at both Loyola University New Orleans and the University of New Orleans. Carson was active in the New Orleans jazz improvisation scene from 2009 until 2015 when he moved to Oakland, California to attend Mills College where he earned an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Experimental Music and Recording Media.

More information about his work can be found at http://www.tatecarson.com

Landon Viator is a PhD student in the LSU EMDM program who is a composer, musician, music theorist, programmer, engineer, researcher, and educator. He plays guitar and percussion. He has written music for cello and piano, string quartet, percussion ensemble, electroacoustic music, and oboe and voice. He is a practicing audio engineer that focuses on recording and mixing rock/metal music and sound for film/video games. His bachelor’s degree in music technology provided him  with knowledge on recording and mixing practices which he keeps sharp with his electroacoustic compositions by using field-recorded audio in many of them. He is  familiar with many digital audio workstations but works primarily in Logic Pro X. He also  works extensively in MaxMSP to research and prototype digital signal processing for physical modeling and audio plugin development. He has also worked extensively with Arduino micro-controllers in conjunction with laser cutting to build electronic instruments that receive and send serial data. His primary passion is teaching; he has taught as a teaching assistant in his Master’s and Doctoral studies and genuinely enjoys being able to give knowledge to students who are pursuing an education in music and audio.

More about Landon and his work can be found at his website landonviator.com

Eric Sheffield is a musician and maker focused on physical computing, interactive multimedia, and augmented non-traditional instruments. He has a Master’s degree in Media Arts from the University of Michigan and is pursuing a PhD in the Experimental Music and Digital Media program at Louisiana State University. Eric is also a founding member of the group Bell Monks, which has several releases available at music.bellmonks.com and on clang (clang.cl).

Anthony T. Marasco is a composer and sound artist who takes influence from the aesthetics of today’s Digimodernist culture, exploring the relationships between the eccentric and the every-day, the strict and the indeterminate, the raw and the refined, and the retro and the contemporary. These explorations result in a wide variety of works written for electro-acoustic ensembles, interdisciplinary fixed-media works, interactive computer performance systems, and multimedia installations.

An internationally recognized composer, he has received commissions from performers and institutions such as WIRED Magazine, Phyllis Chen, the American Composers Forum Philadelphia, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Toy Piano Composers, the Rhymes With Opera New Chamber Music Workshop, Data Garden, andPLAY Duo, and the soundSCAPE International Composition Exchange. Marasco was the grand-prize winner of the UnCaged Toy Piano Festival’s 2013 Call for Scores, a resident artist at Signal Culture Experimental Media Labs, and a grant winner for the American Composers Forum’s “If You Could Hear These Walls” project. His works have been featured at festivals across the globe, such as the Toronto international Electroacoustic Symposium, Electroacoustic Barn Dance, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, ICMC, Montreal Contemporary Music Lab, and Omaha Under the Radar. In the fall of 2014, his piece Communiqué was featured on the debut album release by Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, Realign the Time. He is currently a PhD candidate in Experimental Music & Digital Media at Louisiana State University.

Jeff Albert is a musician, music technologist, and educator. He is Associate Professor and Director of the School of Music Industry at Loyola University New Orleans, and in May of 2013, he became the first graduate of the PhD program in Experimental Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University, where his teachers included Stephen David Beck and Jesse Allison. He also holds degrees from Loyola University – New Orleans, and the University of New Orleans, and has served on the faculty of Xavier University of Louisiana and the University of New Orleans. Jeff’s areas of research include the intersections of improvisation and technology, performance paradigms for live computer music, and audio pedagogy.

Jeff has given presentations at the conferences of the Society for ElectroAcoustic Music in the United States, the Symposium for Laptop Ensembles and Orchestras, the International Society for Improvised Music, the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, and the inaugural Symposium on Integrated Composition Improvisation and Technology. His article “Improvisation as Tool and Intention: Organizational Approaches in Laptop Orchestras and Their Effect on Personal Musical Practices” was published December of 2012 in Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation.

Jeff is the founder and chief instigator of the Open Ears Music Series, and writes the blog/podcast Scratch My Brain.

Chase Mitchusson is a composer with a Master’s degree in music composition from University of Memphis. His works are primarily electronic, blending FM synthesizers with his own field recordings and exploiting interesting rhythms. Much of his influence comes from video games, Japanese culture, hip hop, nature, and textural audio and images. His orchestra piece and chamber works are driven by acoustic implementation of electronic instrument behaviors that explore texture and timbre. He helped found Memphis music collective Spoiler Alert in 2012 and is a featured artist on the ЯΛRΞ ППUƉΞS net label. Chase joined EMDM in the fall of 2016 to work on his PhD.

Andrew Pfalz holds degrees in composition from Florida State University (BM 2011) and East Carolina University (MM 2014). His music explores the augmentation of performers’ capabilities through computer programming. His research is currently focused on the historical development of experimental techniques and practices in the twentieth century. His work can be heard at apfalz.github.io.

Danny Holmes is a composer, sound artist, researcher, software developer, and music educator. Danny was a PhD in Experimental Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University. His major research areas include mobile music, gesture and performance, and music technology in education.

Ben Taylor is an interdisciplinary artist and creative coder who specializes in web art, web audio, and networked performance practices. He has presented his research nationally and internationally at the Pixilerations New Media Festival (Brown/RISD, 2011), New Interfaces for Musical Expression (KAIST South Korea 2013, Goldsmiths London 2014), Web Audio Conference (IRCAM/Mozilla 2015), Leaders in Software and Art, Music for People and Thingamajigs, and others. He is a founding member of the Louisiana Mobile App Orchestra (LMAO), and his music has been released by SEAMUS.

He received an M.F.A. In Electronic Music & Recording Media from Mills College and has studied with members of the League of Automatic Music Composers and The Hub, Brian Harnetty, and Pauline Oliveros. When not making art with the web, Ben is developer and CTO at bitdreams.io, a creative audio app company, and teaches creative coding at Goucher College Digital Arts.

Zak Berkowitz is a composer, media artist, and percussionist currently pursuing his PhD in Experimental Music & Digital Media at Louisiana State University. He received his Master of Music degree in Music Technology from Georgia Southern University, where he studied primarily with Dr. John Thompson and taught audio engineering and electronic music production. He was awarded a Bachelor of Music in Instrumental Performance from New Mexico State University, where he studied percussion with Dr. Fred Bugbee and Dr. Ed Pias.

Zak’s work has been presented at recent festivals and conferences including the Linux Audio Conference, ICMC, Channel Noise at Georgia Southern University, the New Mexico State University Contemporary Arts Festival, and SEAMUS.

William Walker Conlin is a composer, saxophonist and media technologist. Since 2011 he has held an annual Experimental Music Concert Series in Baton Rouge. At LSU in the Experimental Music and Digital Media PHD program, Mr. Conlin works to create compositions for: laptop orchestra, fixed media, video, interactive installations, art collaborations and more. In 2013 he presented at the inaugural TEDxLSU with his friend and colleague Nick Hwang. Their presentation is a manifesto of electroacoustic musicianship. In 2013 he completed his Masters in Saxophone Performance at Louisiana State University.

Nick Hwang is an ABD PhD candidate in Music Composition (with a minor in Experimental Music and Digital Media) at LSU. His research areas include interactive art installations, compositions for laptop orchestra, musique concréte, and actuated electro-acoustic instruments.

Lindsey Hartman is an ABD Ph.D. candidate in EMDM, focusing on the history and practice of DIY electronics and early live electronic music.

Matthew Blessing came to LSU from SUNY Stony Brook, and focuses on embedded electro-acoustic instrument building.