Roads

Curtis Roads is Professor in Media Arts and Technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he is also Associate Director of the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE). Together with programmer David Thall, he recently developed EmissionControl, interactive software for generalized particle synthesis. His books include The Computer Music Tutorial (1996, The MIT Press) and Microsound (2002, The MIT Press). His electronic music collection POINT LINE CLOUD is now available as a CD + DVD on the Asphodel label (San Francisco).

Since 1997, in collaboration with a number of researchers and artists (Brian O’Reilly, Woon Seung Yeo, Francisco Iovino, Brian O’Reilly, James Ingram, and John Thompson) I have been interested in a set of overlapping problems connected to the visualization of sound. The research problems concern interrelations between sound, image, and music notation:

• Interactive composing environments based on drawing and manipulation of images of waveforms, envelopes, and sonographic spectra
• Scientific visualizations of sonic data based on sound analysis
• Scientific sonification of image (or other data) data to sound
• Artistic visualizations of music, either abstract or representational music animations
• Study scores and for electronic music, comprising still images that intermingle sonographic, iconic, and symbolic representations

At the University of California, Santa Barbara, these operate under the umbrella of what I call the YNEZ research project.