I'm a composer, multimedia artist and researcher. I spend roughly half my time making new things and the other half taking stuff apart.

Right now, I run the creative audio studio Dogbotic: a Berkeley-based workshop that makes out-of-the-box music and sound for all kinds of media. I was a ‘18 Thomas J. Watson fellow, in which I spent a year traveling the world researching experimental musical instruments. I am a ‘17 graduate of Oberlin College and Conservatory, with degrees in music composition, geology, and film.

Doodles by Kelly Efthimiu, Animation by Kirk Pearson

Doodles by Kelly Efthimiu, Animation by Kirk Pearson

A lot of my creative career is spent tinkering. I make music with BIT, a band that experiments with the sonic qualities of everyday objects. I've also composed pieces for sampled cattle auctioneers, sound designed car commercials using blenders, and rigged up tightropes with electromagnets, treating them like oversized guitar strings. I've written music, built installations, and designed experiences for the New Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, Google, Nike, and Facebook, and have received accolades from Cannes, Cleveland International Film Festival, and many others. 

This tinkering has also led me through a career in research. My methodology often includes creative and unexpected uses of electronic tools, such as modeling seismic data with audio processing algorithms, building virtual humans to assess how children speak, or using CT scanners to investigate how trilobites moved. I've served as visiting researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at both CMU and UW, and recently published a paper in paleontology with AMNH. In the humanities, I often write about film, music theory, and a considerably more niche interest of mine-- theme park narratology. 

I cut sandwiches diagonally.

Friends, Goofballs, Collaborators:

Vanessa Grasing, songwriter, vocalist

Joan Villaperros, composer, inventor

Nick Dunston, bassist, composer

PEE-PAH!, Andrés Cervilla's factory of sound

Andres Cuervo, software developer, designer

James Vitz-Wong, bassist, composer

Antfood, creative audio studio

Mary Lilith Fischer, writer, choreographer, artist

Zach Christy, animator, motion graphics artist

Ingrid Peñailillo, designer, padawan illustrator, human being

Katerena Kuksenok, creative software developer

Julian Korzeniowsky, composer

Sage Jenson, multimedia artist

Hayden Arp, composer, songwriter

Clara Lu, visual artist

Joo Won Park, composer, inventor

Mari Kroin, artist, architect