Prof Joseph Hyde

Personal Statement

Personal Statement

Course Director: MA Composition

BA(Hons), PhD [Birmingham]

Personal Statement:

I am involved in a variety of teaching in the Department of Music, on our new MMus Creative Sound and Media Technology and various Creative Music Technology modules. I also maintain an active research practice as a composer and digital artist, making music, multimedia performance works and installations.

My work has won a number of awards and mentions, in competitions such as Transmediale, COMTECart, the Concours Internationale de Bourges, the Concorso Luigi Russolo and Prix Ars Electronica. It has been commissioned by bodies such as the BBC, Sonic Arts Network, the International Symposium on Electronic Art and Rambert Dance. It has been performed at events such as the New York and Montreal film festivals, Pandaemonium, Transmediale, the International Computer Music Conference, the Gaudeamus festival and IRCAM.

Membership of Professional Bodies/Subject Associations:

Director, Sonic Arts Network

Teaching Specialism:

Sonic art, composition, digital multimedia

Research:

My work consists of music and sound work, multimedia pieces, and performance work (generally collaborative, and recently primarily in dance).

Commissions:

MADE/European Commission (2011)

Dance Works Rotterdam (2011)

CCRMA/Stanford University (2010)

Korzo Theater/Holland Dance Festival (2007/8)

Rambert Dance Company (2006/7)

Nederlands Dans Theater (2005)

Hewlett Packard/SE3D/Arts and Business (2004/5)

Netherlands Dance Theater/Andre Gingras (2004/5)

Japan Foundation/Dance and Media Japan (2004)

Future Physical/East England Arts (2002/3)

Jerwood Space (2002/3)

Imlata Dance Company (2002)

Andre Gingras Dance Company (2002)

Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company (2001)

BBC National Orchestra of Wales (2001)

DA2/Watershed Media Centre (2000)

Performance Research journal (1999)

Shawford Mill Theatre (1999)

BEAST/West Midlands Arts (1998)

SPNM/ISCM (1998)

The Swiss Centre for Computer Music (1995)

The GMEB (1995)

The BBC (two commissions in 1995)

The International Symposium on Electronic Art and Silicon Graphics Ltd. (1994)

Sonic Arts Network (1993)

Current/Recent Scholarship:

My main current research project is me and my shadow, a large-scale commission from MADE (Mobility for Digital Arts in Europe), funded by the European Commission. The project will consist of four installations - in London, Paris, Brussels and Istanbul, with telematic links between them. The installations are based on motion-capture using the Microsoft Kinect sensor.

A longer-term project is an exploration of Visual Music (very roughly, the expression of musical ideas through visual means), and in particular the work of Oskar Fischinger. This work has taken me to California twice, to visit the Center for Visual Music and the Fischinger archive in LA, and to visit the Fischinger residence in Long Beach. In 2012 I have secured an AHRC Fellowship grant to further this research, culminating in publications and creative work informed by Fischinger's creative practice.

I am continuing to collaborate on dance works with choreographer Andre Gingras - recent commissions have come from Rambert Dance (Feb 07), Korzo Theater (Feb 08) and Dance Works Rotterdam (Jan 2011). The Rambert commission had runs at Sadler's Wells in both 2007 and 2008, and all three pieces have toured extensively around Europe. I have other dance collaborations coming up in 2012, working on the Danceroom Spectroscopy project (Watershed Pervasive Media Lab, Bristol) and with Guerrila dance (London).