People

Dr John Levack Drever 
(Senior Lecturer, Head of Unit for Sound Practice Research)

Dr John Levack Drever has been lecturing in and around the Electronic Music Studios (EMS) at Goldsmiths since 2003. He studied Music at the University of Wales, Bangor (1992-95), followed by an MMus study in Electroacoustic Music Composition at the University of East Anglia (1995-6). In 2001 he was awarded a PhD from Dartington College of Arts, for a programme of research titled 'Phonographies: Practical and Theoretical Explorations into Composing with Disembodied Sound'. Following his PhD he co-coordinated Sounding Dartmoor, a participative soundscape study of Dartmoor National Park (2000-2) for the Digital Crowd (University of Plymouth). During 2003-04 he was an ACE/AHRB Arts and Science Research Fellow with Centre for Computational Creativity, City University exploring ‘electronic music performance interfaces that learn from their users’, and in 2012 he was awarded a Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control from the Institute of Acoustics, with specialist modules in Building Acoustics and Environmental Noise.

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Dr Freida Abtan 
(Lecturer in Music Computing)

Freida Abtan is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and composer. Her music falls somewhere in between musique concrete and more modern noise and experimental audio and both genres are influential to her sound. Her work has been compared to bands such as Coil, and Zoviet France, because of her use of spectral manipulation and collage.

Freida primarily works with samples of both musical and non-musical objects that she records herself and then manipulates, often beyond recognition, through techniques derived from musique concrète and through successive layers of digital signal processing. She uses structures reminiscent of popular music and more abstract compositional variants to sequence these sounds into melodic songs before incorporating her own treated voice.

As well as having created visual shows for and performed with the internationally renown group Nurse with Wound, Freida has presented her own sound and visual work at festivals across North America and Europe. Her first album “subtle movements” is available on United Dairies / Jnana Records. Her upcoming release “the hands of the dancer” is available on finite state and through Jnana Records.

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Dr Patricia Alessandrini 
(Lecturer in Studio Composition)

Patricia Alessandrini’s works, principally involving live electronics and/or interactive video, actively engage with the concert music repertoire, and issues of representation, interpretation, perception and memory. She has become increasingly involved in multimedia, theatrical and collaborative work, often involving social and political issues.

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Dr Lisa Busby 
(Lecturer in Music)

In her capacity as a practicing musician, artist and researcher Lisa's works span the audio, visual and tactile/interactive; and in the past have incorporated a variety of media including music & sound, textiles & needlework, photographic collage & digital image manipulation, text & story, illustration, video, and use of found objects. Her work deliberately challenges notions of discipline specific categorisation and dissemination, placing itself across the boundaries of fine art, performance and pop music/culture. Her work has been released by record labels but has also been commissioned by various arts venues. As such she has presented work in locations as diverse as nightclubs and music festivals to galleries and shop windows. Her work may be presented under her own name, as part of the project Sleeps in Oysters, or under artist pseudonyms Lisa Sleeps and Mary and Polly.

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Ian Stonehouse 
(Head of the Electronic Music Studios)

Ian Stonehouse trained as a fine artist at the University of Wolverhampton with experimental filmmaker Guy Sherwin, and has worked variously as a film, sound, video & animation lecturer at the Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton, the University of Wolverhampton and Middlesex University, as well as a freelance sound recordist and film/video editor. Prior to Goldsmiths, he was employed at London Electronic Arts (latterly the Lux Centre for Film, Video & Digital Arts) in Hoxton Square, London, working with artists and video/film-makers such as Jane & Louise Wilson, Gillian Wearing, John Maybury, Gary Hume and many others. He was employed as Studio Manager in the Dept. of Music in 1999 and, since 2004, as Head of the Electronic Music Studios. He is a board member of the UK & Ireland Soundscape Community (UKISC).

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James Bulley 
(Graduate Representative)

James Bulley (b.1984) is an artist and composer whose work focuses upon exploring sound composition through site-specific installation, sculpture and autonomous systems. He has shown and performed at venues including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Barbican, the Natural History Museum and the Fine Art Society. His work has been featured by the BBC, ITV, the Quietus, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times and the Guardian. He is a member of the New Radiophonic Workshop under Matthew Herbert. In 2013, in partnership with the systems artist Daniel Jones as Jones/Bulley, he was nominated for British Composer of the Year and has since been touring the acclaimed forest-based installation piece Living Symphonies with Jones, commissioned by Sound and Music, the Forestry Commission and Arts Council England. As a curator, he co-curated the Oramics to Electronica exhibition at the Science Museum in 2010, the result of his continuing work research into the work of Daphne Oram. In 2011 he co-curated the Sho-Zyg sound showcase, a week long exhibition and events programme featuring work from over fifty artists working with sound, including exhibition rooms exploring the work of Daphne Oram, Lawrence Upton and Hugh Davies. In 2012, he curated Sound Arts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. In 2014 he curated Sound and the City at the Natural History Museum, London and directed the Sound Art Curating conference at Goldsmiths, University of London.

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Helen Frosi - http://www.soundfjord.org/
Maria Chavez - http://www.mariachavez.org/
Gilbert Nuono - http://gilbertnouno.net/
Lawrence Upton - http://lawrenceupton.org/
Dr Hiroshi Yoshida




Meri Kytö (University of Eastern Finland, Visiting Fellow, 2011- 12) Lawrence Upton (AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts, 2008-11)
Dr Mick Grierson (AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts, 2006-9)
Professor Shuji Okada (Seian University of Art and Design, Japan, Visiting Fellow 2013-14)