About the Performers in the Biomuse Trio

Ben Knapp leads the Music, Sensors, and Emotion (MuSE) research group at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC) at Queen’s University, Belfast. His research at SARC focuses on the understanding and measurement of the physical gestures and emotional states of musical performers and their audience. For over 20 years, Ben has been researching and developing user-interfaces and software that enable the composer and performer to augment the physical control of a musical instrument with more direct neural interaction. From the invention of the Biomuse with Hugh Lusted in 1987 to the introduction in 2005 of the concept of an Integral Music Controller (a generic class of controllers that use the direct measurement of motion and emotion to augment  traditional methods of musical instrument control), Ben has focused on creating a user-aware interface based on the acquisition and real-time analysis of biometric signals.

Eric Lyon is a composer and computer music researcher. During the 1980s and 1990s, his fixed media computer music focused on spectral and algorithmic processing of audio, with a tendency toward extreme modifications of samples, variously sourced. From the early 1990s, Lyon became involved with live computer music, performing solo, and in the Japanese band Psychedelic Bumpo, with the Kyma system. Later in the 1990s, he gravitated toward software-based live processing, starting to develop Max/MSP externals in 1999. This work resulted in his LyonPotpourri collection of Max/MSP externals, and the FFTease spectral package, developed in collaboration with Christopher Penrose. In recent years, Lyon has focused on computer chamber music, which integrates live, iterative DSP strategies into the creation of traditionally notated instrumental scores. Other interests include spatial orchestration, and articulated noise composition. Lyon teaches computer music in the School of Music and Sonic Art at Queen’s University Belfast. 

Gascia Ouzounian is a violinist working in new and intermedia music, and an historian of contemporary music and sound art. She has performed with ensembles including Theatre of Eternal Music, Sinfonia Toronto, Bang On A Can All-Stars, Hutchins Consort, and Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, undertaken residencies at STEIM and Banff Centre, and appeared in festivals including NIME, ICMC, Belfast Festival, and Sonorities. Ouzounian studied violin performance and music technologies at McGill University, and critical studies/experimental practices in music at UC San Diego. She has recently recorded three albums of chamber music by La Monte Young and Morton Feldman, scored a Student EMMY Award-winning film, and premiered ‘Eden Eden Eden’, an overnight work for 13 musicians and film projections made in collaboration with film artist Chloe Griffin.

Her writings appear in Journal for the Society of American Music, Organised Sound, Contemporary Music Review, Women & Music, Revue Circuit, and RADIO Journal. Ouzounian is a Lecturer at the School of Music and Sonic Arts at Queen’s University Belfast.