Nathan Wolek, Music Technology
Nathan Wolek is an audio artist and researcher whose work encompasses advanced signal processing techniques, multimedia performance, and electronic music history. He is currently Associate Professor of Digital Arts and Chair of the Creative Arts Department at Stetson University in DeLand, FL.
In 2012, Dr. Wolek was named a Fulbright Scholar and received a grant from the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation to spend 6 months in Bergen. During his stay, he worked primarily at the Bergen Center for Electronic Arts on significant enhancements and extensions to the Jamoma software platform.
His music features gradually changing textures, quivering pulses and environmental recordings of personal significance. Since 2006, Dr. Wolek has performed as a laptop instrumentalist at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art (Minneapolis, MN), Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival (Gainesville, FL), the International Symposium of Electronic Art (San Jose, CA), Conflux Festival (Brooklyn, NY), the International Computer Music Conference (New Orleans, LA), NWEAMO (San Diego, CA), Festival Music Nova (Sao Paulo, Brazil) and IUPUI Intermedia Festival (Indianapolis, IN) and and SLEO (Baton Rouge, LA).
He is the music director of the new media collective MPG: mobile performance group, which was founded by new media artist Matt Roberts. The group is dedicated to the ideal of presenting audiovisual art outside of traditional venues. They engage the public using laptops, video projection, camcorders, mp3 recorders, wireless routers, mobile phones and other technologies.
Dr. Wolek has presented research on a variety of topics at the ICMC, SEAMUS, CMS, SMPC andATMI conferences. In 2012, he was part of the executive committee that helped organize the first ever Symposium for Laptop Ensembles and Orchestras at Louisiana State University. As part of this international event, he delivered a presentation on media representations of the laptop as musical instrument.
His software development includes Max externals and audio plug-ins that enable a variety of signal processing techniques. Wolek is currently a contributor to Jamoma, an open-source platform for interactive performance systems. He is well known as the author of the Granular Toolkit, a collection of Max/MSP externals that is used by artists and researchers around the world. Wolek was also one of the developers behind Hipno, a collection of over 40 plugins that was released by Cycling 74 in 2005. Keyboard magazine called Hipno "just the antidote to sonic boredom that you need".
Nathan Wolek completed his Ph.D. in Music Technology at Northwestern University, and has studied with Gary Kendall, Amnon Wolman, and Virgil Moorefield. He has taught previously at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Columbia College Chicago andNorthwestern University.
