Category Archives: Affiliates

David (Jhave) Johnston

Jhave is a digital poet. He has an undergrad degree in Computer Science; a Masters of Science in interactive art; & a PhD from Concordia University where he has worked as a research affiliate with OBX, TML & NT2.The TML’s Sha Xin Wei was on his PhD thesis committee.Jhave created the remixed stream from the TML’s Summer Workshop 2005, as well as the process of Remedios’ Terrarium, a TML group show in March 2008. Jhave (beginning fall 2012) is Assistant Professor at HYPERLINK “http://www.cityu.edu.hk/scm/”City University of Hong Kong in the School of Creative Media.

HYPERLINK “http://glia.ca/”http://glia.ca

Adrian Freed

Research Director, Center for New Music, Art and Technology, University of California Berkeley.

Adrian is a pursuing an Individualized Ph.D. with the Topological Media Lab on cultural dynamics of the uptake of sociotechnical innovation, particularly in recent technologies of performance, music, and dance.

Adrian is Research Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) and he leads the Guitar and chordophone Innovation Group (GIG) there. He has pioneered many new applications of mathematics, electronics and computer science to audio, music and media production tools including the earliest Graphical User Interfaces for digital sound editing, mixing and processing. His recent work is centered around sharing new techniques for rapid prototyping interactive devices employing electrotextiles and other emerging materials.

Elizaveta Solomonova

Individualized PhD

University of Montreal
Areas of study: neuroscience of sleep and dreaming, philosophy, media arts http://umontreal.academia.edu/ElizavetaSolomonova

Liza is currently pursuing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at University of Montreal: thesis directors: Tore Nielsen (Psychiatry, University of Montreal, Sha Xin Wei (Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University), committee: Bettina Bergo (Philosophy, University of Montreal), Don Kuiken (Psychology, University of Alberta). Her work is a collaborative initiative between the Topological Media Lab and the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, she is exploring the phenomenology of embodied subjective experiences, in dreams and during wake, focusing on kinesthetic sensations and body movement within the lived space. Her M.Sc. thesis in Psychology (University of Montreal) focused on memory sources and agency in dreams. She holds a B.A. from McGill Univerisity, with a double major in Art History and Psychology, and a minor in World Religions.

David Morris

Associate Director of the Topological Media Lab

Chair of the Philosophy Department

PhD: The University of Toronto (1997)
MA: The University of Toronto (1992)
BA: The University of Toronto (1991)

My main interests are in Continental Philosophy (especially Phenomenology, Merleau-Ponty and Bergson) and Hegel, with a focus on the philosophy of the body, mind and nature in relation to current biology and cognitive science. I am currently studying the problem of the genesis of meaning and sense, in relation to biological and perceptual phenomena. My most recent publications are on: reversibility, expression, perception, animals, faces, embryology and ontology in Merleau-Ponty; organisms in Kant; embodied cognition; animals and humans, in relation to the problem of mind and body; method in Husserl, Bergson, and Peirce. My book The Sense of Space was published by SUNY Press in 2004.

Nikos Chandolias

M.Sc in Electrical & Computer Engineering, currently enrolled in M.A., Special Individualized Program (INDI).

During his studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he has developed strong skills and knowledge in programming and designing software systems. His experience as a volunteer in various European student organizations made him aware of the cultural diversity and the wealth of different perspectives in research and learning. His participation to several collaborative projects as well as many student and artistic groups cultivated a truly collaborative perspective and the understanding of common interest. His former research experience is in the fields of nature language processing and semantics. He is currently looking at expanding his knowledge in the fields of interactive media art and developing installations at an international multicultural level.

Michael Montanaro

Associate Director of the Topological Media Lab

Chair of the Department of Contemporary Dance
 Concordia University

Graduate of Hartford Conservatory
- former Assistant Artistic Director of le Groupe de la Place Royale
- founder and choreographer of Montanaro Dance
 – has choreographed for a number of companies such as Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers, Danse Partout, the National Film Board of Canada, l’Opéra de Montréal
- collaborated on video sensing systems to create interactive works at the “Institute for Studies in the Arts”, Arizona State University
- has travelled world-wide as a consultant for an interactive image museum project based in Portugal.
- Choreographer for Varekai, a Cirque du Soleil production.

Michael has a background that has crossed the boundaries of many different art forms. Accomplished as a composer, musician, actor and trans-disciplinary artist, he is best known for his work in the field of dance.

http://michaelmontanaro.com/

Omar Faleh

Omar is an interactive media developer and architect with an interest in designing responsive environments, interactive media installations, and public interventions. His work investigates the phenomenology of perception, embodiment, and presence in responsive spaces, and is interested in the two-way relations between body and space in performative settings, as well as everyday practices.

Omar is currently pursuing an MA in individualized studies at Concordia University in Montreal, studying the areas of architecture, arts, technology, and philosophy. He is a member of the Hexagram research institute in Montreal, Canada, and is currently a part-time faculty at the department of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University.
He holds a bachelor degree in Architecture, with a master of science in Virtual Environments from the Bartlett, University College London. He also holds a second bachelor degree with a major in Computer science and Computation Arts from Concordia University.

Omar has been involved with the Topological Media Lab as a research assistant since 2006, worked in several R&D projects for the web and mobile devices, and is a consultant and analyst for interactive development projects for mobile and web applications.

http://www.morscad.com

Doug Van Nort

Banting Post-doctoral Fellow, Topological Media Lab 2013-2015

Doug Van Nort is an experimental musician and researcher whose work is dedicated to the creation of immersive and visceral sonic experiences, and to personal and collective creative expression through composition, free improvisation and generally electro-acoustic means of production. His instruments are custom-built systems that draw on concepts ranging from spectral analysis/synthesis to artificial life and machine listening algorithms, and his source materials include any and all sounds discovered through attentive listening to the world.

Dr. van Nort’s Ph.D. 2010 from McGill University concerned, Modular and Adaptive Control of Sound Processing. He worked with Prof. Marcelo Wanderley’s Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory (IDMIL), a lab affiliated with McGill University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT).

Van Nort’s work, presented internationally, has recently spanned telematic music, laptop
ensemble compositions driven by evolutionary “human algorithms”, improvisations in various acoustic/electronic settings, multi-channel electroacoustic pieces, sonic installations and various idiosyncratic algorithms related to machine improvisation and interactive sound sculpting.Van Nort often performs with his custom GREIS software designed for on-the-fly spectral and textural sound transformations. He is a member of the trio Triple Point with Pauline Oliveros and Jonas Braasch, where his focus lies in improvised transformation of the sounds arising from his acoustic partners. This group also collaborates through research and teaching, and in this context Van Nort has been actively designing and creating an intelligent system (named FILTER) for improvisation, currently as research associate in music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.A discussion of Triple Point, GREIS and this intelligent systems work, of which he was primary author, was acknowledged with the “best paper award” at the 2010 International Computer Music Conference. Recordings of Van Nort’s music can be found on Deep Listening, Pogus and Zeromoon among other experimental music labels, and his writing has recently appeared in Organised Sound and the Leonardo Music Journal. He has performed at venues ranging from the [sat] and Casa del Popolo in Montreal, Casa da Musica in Porto, Betong in Oslo, The Red Room in Baltimore, The Guelph Jazz Festival, Roulette, Harvestworks, the Miller Theatre, Issue Project Room and the Stone in NYC, at Town Hall (NYC) on intonarumori as part of the Performa futurist biennial, and at EMPAC in Troy, NY. His compositional work has been featured in contexts as disparate as the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD) and New Interfaces for Musical Expression

(NIME) to the Flea theatre’s “music with a view” series and the NYC electroacoustic music festival at Elebash Hall. Collaboration has been an important thread of recent work, including Oliveros, Braasch, Francisco López, Al Margolis (aka if, bwana), Stuart Dempster, Chris Chafe, KathyKennedy, Ben Miller, Anne Bourne, Judy Dunaway, the Composers Inside Electronics and many others. Van Nort holds a Ph.D. in Music Technology from McGill University, an M.F.A. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.A. and B.A. in Pure Mathematics from the State University of New York (Potsdam) including studies in Electronic Composition at the Crane School of Music.

Affiliation
Research Associate
Electronic Arts and Architectural Acoustics
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Link

Doug Van Nort

Julian Stein

Julian Stein is a composer and sound artist currently residing in Montréal, QC. His work often explores musical applications of the everyday, placing a large focus on intuition and present- experience. Exploring both composed and real-time environments, his work has ranged from multichannel composition and theatre sound-design to collaborative performance and kinetic sound installation. In specific, his work is interested by methods of audio-visual synchronization, phonetics, animal communication, and the urban environment.

Julian is a co-creator of the Montreal Sound Map (http://www.montrealsoundmap.com), and has recently completed a BFA in Music (Electroacoustic Studies) from Concordia University. He is urrently is a researcher at matralab and the Topological Media Lab, both which are part of the Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation at Concordia University.

Affiliation: gesture bending, ILYA

www.julianstein.net , www.montrealsoundmap.com

Harry Smoak

Harry Smoak is a Montréal-based American artist, PhD candidate in Fine Arts Special Individualized Program (Supervisors: Chris Salter, Sha Xin Wei, and Erin Manning) at Concordia University, and senior research associate at the Hexagram Institute for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies. His current interests revolve around the development of experimental sensor-based interactive media environments. Harry is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology having received his Masters in Human-Computer Interaction in 2004. He was the founding Research Coordinator for the Topological Media Lab at Hexagram-Concordia.

www.harrysmoak.com