Archives

Research and Additional Work

Publications

West, Ruth & Eitan Mendelowitz, Zach Thomas, Christopher Poovey, Luke Hillard, Kathryn Hays, Nathaniel Helgesen. “Designing a VR Arena: Integrating Virtual Environments and Physical Spaces for Social Sensorial Data-Driven Experiences” in Electronic Imaging, Advanced Online Publication. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2470-1173.2020.13.ERVR-360

Thomas, Zach. “Audiovisual Concatenative Synthesis in Replica” PhD diss., University of North Texas, Denton, 2019.

Thomas, Zach, Dan Tramte, Ermir Bejo, and Victoria Cheah. “Curation, Choice, and the Internet: Score Follower and New Music on YouTube” in International Conference of Computer Music Proceedings, Volume 2019. Michigan Publishing, 2019.

West, Ruth & Violet Johnson, I-Chen Yeh, Zach Thomas, Eitan Mendelowitz and Lars Berg. “INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night.” 2018 Art Gallery (SIGGRAPH ’18). ACM, New York, NY.

West, Ruth,  Violet Johnson, I-Chen Yeh, Zach Thomas and Eitan Mendelowitz. “Experiencing a Slice of the Sky: Immersive Rendering and Sonification of Antarctic Astronomy Data” Electronic Imaging, The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 2018, pp. 449-1-449-10(10).

West, Ruth & Violet Johnson, I-Chen Yeh, Zach Thomas, Eitan Mendelowitz and Lars Berg. “INSTRUMENT | One Antarctic Night.” Leonardo, vol. 51 no. 4, 2018, pp. 439-440.

Kinect Studies

Audiovisual Concatenative Synthesis

Portal Nexus

large-scale collaborative intermedia installation

https://nanogalactic.wordpress.com/nexus/

Replica (#1)

string trio – 15’ – live electronics and video (2019)

Replica is a multi-work project exploring techniques for real-time analysis/resynthesis, interactive approaches to machine learning, and concepts surrounding human agency in technologically-mediated environments. Each piece is in some sense built from its own documentation, integrating materials from the development process into the finished work itself. The resulting material seeks to become a replica of the live performer (sometimes in both action and appearance), with an attempt that the machinery be laid bare, exposing the relationship between technology and performer.

In Replica (#1), the analysis of a string trio performance is determines the content of the live video and sound projection. The algorithm attempts to resynthesize the sound of live performers with a database of videos, finding the best possible approximation from within the database, providing a digital impersonation of each action.

lung

fixed media ambient work – 20″ – 3rd-order ambisonics for 8 or more channels (2016)

branch—splinter—moss

fixed media acousmatic work – 7’23” – 5th-order ambisonics for 16 or more channels (2019-20)

(binaural mix)

5th-order ambisonic spatialization, can be diffused for any ambisonic configuration of loudspeakers

The materials in this work are objects desperately seeking abstraction; formal fragments collapsing into features, tangles into threads and fibers, reformed as contours and lines of a synthetic image. Sounds are continually resynthesized and compounded from their own matter as if shaped in a kiln. This work is a study of sound in in a constantly shifting space, exploring the physics of material animated by its ever-changing environment.

husk

fixed media electronics – 12′ – 3rd-order ambisonics for 16 or more channels (2017)

(binaural mix)

samples of voices, percussion, animals, field recordings

3rd-order ambisonic spatialization, can be diffused for any ambisonic configuration of loudspeakers

manifold

manifold for solo alto saxophone and electronics (2015, rev. 2017)

written for Alex Richards

bouncing

Bouncing for projection, camera, ambisonic audio (2011, rev. 2016)

by Zach Thomas and Krzysztof Wolek

Bouncing is an interactive audio-visual installation designed initially for children. It uses a Kinect controller to project an avatar of the user inside of a virtual room which becomes mapped to the space the user is standing in. Collisions with the bouncing objects inside of the virtual room give the sound feedback and help to create a sound composition using positional audio, blending virtual and real space. The project is realized bridging four different applications of which Max is a central component. The virtual environment is designed to allow users to engage in composition through play and embodiment.

presented at:
Diffrazioni Festival 2016, Florence, Italy
International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music 2015, University of North Texas, Denton, TX
Studio 300 Festival, Transylvania University
University of Louisville New Music Festival, 2011, Louisville, KY