Viterbi Early Career Chair Lecture Series

CURTIS ROADS: Synthesis, Analysis, and Visualization of Sound based on Gabor's Atomic Model Professor of Media Arts and Technology / Music, UCSBEvent poster: http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco/events/20060303-roads.pdfABSTRACT: This laboratory report covers a range of projects developed over the past five years. Thanks to the collaboration of other researchers, this work is able to proceed in several directions simultaneously, unified by a common thread. Some of this research is purely scientific; some is purely artistic; most of it combines scientific and aesthetic concerns. All the research is based on a granular or atomic model of sound proposed by Dennis Gabor in the 1940s. Granular analysis and synthesis of sound has evolved over more than five decades from theories and primitive experiments into a broad range of applied techniques. Specific to the granular model is its focus on the micro time scale (typically 1 to 100 ms). Granular techniques treat sound as a stream of acoustic atoms in both the time domain of waveforms and the time-frequency domain of analyzed sounds. First I will briefly trace the history of the idea of sound particles. Next I present PulsarGenerator, an application that realizes a specific type of particle synthesis with links to past analog techniques. I will also present the SweepingQGranulator, a software tool that I wrote for the microfiltration of granulated sound. The latest threads in this line of research go in two directions. The first is a time-frequency analysis method known as matching pursuit wavelet analysis. The second is a new prototype for generalized synthesis and control of particle synthesis called Emission Control. Finally, I present some of the sounds and visualizations that we have been developing in conjunction with this research, some of which are motivated by scientific aims, others of which are artistically motivated, and some that attempt to satisfy both aims.BIOSKETCH: Curtis Roads (b. 1951) holds a joint appointment as Professor in Media Arts and Technology and in Music at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also Vice Chair of MAT and Associate Director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UCSB. He studied music composition and computer programming at California Institute of the Arts, the University of California, San Diego (B. A. Summa Cum Laude), and the University of Paris VIII (PhD). From 1980 to 1986 he was a researcher in computer music at the MIT Experimental Music Studio and the MIT Media Laboratory. He then taught at the University of Naples "Federico II," Harvard University, Oberlin Conservatory, CCMIX (Paris), and the University of Paris VIII. He has led masterclasses at the Australian National Conservatory (Melbourne) and the Prometeo Laboratorio (Parma), among others. He is co-organizer of international workshops on musical signal processing in Sorrento, Capri, and Santa Barbara (1988, 1991, 1997, 2000). He has served on the composition juries of the Ars Electronica (Linz) and the International Electroacoustic Music Competition (Bourges, France). Certain of his compositions feature granular and pulsar synthesis, methods he developed for generating sound from acoustical particles. At UCSB he developed the Creatophone, a system for spatial projection of sound in concert, and the Creatovox, an expressive instrument for virtuoso performance developed in collaboration with Alberto de Campo. de Campo and Roads and developed PulsarGenerator, a program for sound particle synthesis. Together with programmer David Thall, he recently developed EmissionControl, a new program for generalized particle synthesis.Host: Elaine Chew, Viterbi Early Career, Assistant Professor of Industrial and Systems EngineeringSupported in part by the Viterbi Early Career Chair Funds, the Integrated Media Systems Center, and the Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.For other lectures in the series, please see http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~mucoaco/events/vecc0506.html

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Elaine Chew