John is a post-digital/electronic musician based in Brisbane Australia where he is Head of Creative Music Technology and Senior Lecturer at Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University (QCGU). Prior to QCGU John held the position of Visiting Assistant Professor in the Music Department at Brown University (USA), and before that Lecturer in Music and Creative Music Technologies at Kingston University, London (UK).
John’s Ph.D. ‘New Relations for the Live Musician?’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and completed in 2009 under the supervision of Bennett Hogg and Sally Jane Norman at Newcastle University (UK). His thesis charts an idiosyncratic zone within the continuum of what it is to be a live musician at the dawn of the 21st century. From his perspective, music is an emergent form radiating from pre-composed situations and instrumental ecologies, the performance of and in which it is improvised. Inspired by instability and focusing on tactile interaction, John’s pseudo-anthropomorphic practice raises issues of causality, agency and legibility. His work focuses on ‘performing technologies’, raising the question: are we performing the technology or is it performing us?
John’s research is published via Ashgate, Cambridge University Press, Organised Sound, Leonardo Music Journal, Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Contemporary Music Review, Creative Sources Recordings, Soundmuseum.fm, and Clinical Archives. Notable performance-based events include: Tilde~ New Music and Sound Art Festival, Melbourne (2017); Australasian Computer Music Conference, Adelaide (2017), Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music, Belfast (2016); Glasgow Electronic and Audiovisual Media Festival, Glasgow (2016); North East of North Digital Arts Festival, Aberdeen (2016); International Conference on Live Interfaces, Sussex (2016); New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Louisiana (2015) and London (2014); New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, New York (2014); Society for Electroacoustic Music in the United States, Wesleyan (2014); International Computer Music Conference, Athens (2014) and Huddersfield (2011); Brunel Electronic Analogue Music Festival, London (2012); Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast (2011); Borealis Festival for Contemporary Music, Bergen (2009); The Sage, Gateshead (2009); Club Transmediale, Berlin (2008); AV Festival, Newcastle (2008); Studio for Electro Instrumental Music (STEIM), Amsterdam (2008).