Capstone projects

This course explores the techniques, aesthetics and cultural resonances of sound art. It includes the analysis and critique of students' work, and largely self-directed projects that give them the opportunity to synthesis ideas discussed in the course with their own interests and technical skills. This senior-level course encourages students to think, articulate and respond creatively to the cultural, philosophical and technical issues underpinning historical and contemporary thinking in sound.

Ryan Callis SQ-1 Sonata in F Major

This piece was written using the random setting on the Korg SQ-1 sequencer. By setting the steps to a scale and recording a number of voices in different octaves and tempos, the random notes create harmony and melody.

Quinn Erickson Matter

In this composition you will hear a sonic representation of the three states of matter. More specifically, the three states will be expressed through H2O as it transforms from ice to water and then to steam. I wanted to not only capture the sounds that these three states of matter make, but I also wanted to create the environments in which these states live. Therefore, through the use of recordings, post-processing, and sound synthesis I have created three different landscapes that reflect the ever-changing nature of matter.

Isabelle Gable A Bounded Portion of the Shoreless Sea

Chris Cutler, in his essay Plunderphonia refers to the last century or so of recorded sound as a shoreless sea of available sound. For my project, I decided I'd dip my toes into transforming some old and largely forgotten sound recordings into a new form.

Paloma Garcia Torres title

Text: ....

Kat Kamarulzaman Generative Modular VCV Patch

This video is of my Modular VCV Patch used to produce an interactive and continually evolving audio stream based on the principles of generative music composition.

Magdalena Kuczek Stressful Personality

Experence the chaos of many different personalities in one sitting like Openess, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Some blend together to capture the chaos of somone's brain who is stressed with multiple thoughts going on at once.

Liam Lynn The Demise of a Friendship

This project was inspired by the real loss of a friendship that I had. It starts off funky and happy like nothing is wrong and slowly turns into the feeling of a traumatic experience. I hope that this piece evokes a serious amount of deep emotion and you can relate somehow to this experience.

Mathew Mayton Hardware sounds

For this project I wanted to record multiple recognizable sounds and change them to make them sound like something else. The sounds I recorded were a circular-saw blade guard, the battery clipping onto the saw, the trigger, a box of screws, the drill motor, a hammer hitting a board, and a can of WD-40 being flicked.

Noah Savoie The Gallery

For my final project. I created what is essentially a virtual art gallery of some paintings that I enjoy. Each painting has a soundscape and music track to be played while looking at the painting. These extra elements will hopefully help the viewer become more immersed in the painting or perhaps interpret the painting in a different way had they not been given these extra elements to listen to. The webpages are designed to be as non distracting as possible. For the best experience, I like to full screen the page (F11) and zoom in until only the picture is in frame.

Denver Smith Neuroticism to Openness

I was tasked with creating a composition using my own recordings of non-speech, human generated sounds which would reflect a sense of transition from one personality trait to another which would reflect a sense of transition from one personality trait to another. I chose the traits neuroticism and openness. The challenge was simply to complete this project in a real and satisfying way only using my sampler and a few hardware synths.