ABOUT

Current

My most active musical endeavors are The Locust and The Institute for Navigating the Universal Self (INUS), both of which I play guitar and sing in. I have been teaching at Studio West and The Recording Arts Center (TRAC) since 2015. I am sponsored by KOMA Elektronik (based in Berlin) as well as DigiTech.

History

My background mostly stems from my involvements in independent subculture music. Since 1994 I have played guitar and sang in a musical group named The Locust. We recorded several records which were released by a handful of record labels including Epitaph (Anti) and Mike Patton's Ipecac. During the group's active years we toured Europe ten times, Japan three times, and the US a dozen times. Artists we did full tours with include Fantômas, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Melt Banana, Dillinger Escape Plan, and At the Drive-In. John Waters used two Locust songs in his film Cecil B. Demented.

I played synthesizers in a group named Holy Molar, which released four records. I also appeared on albums by Bastard Noise and Aux Raus (NL) as a guest musician. In addition I have also performed solo infotainment pieces, rooted in experimental pedagogy, which incorporated audio devices/effects I built using Arduino microcontrollers and the visual programing language Pure Data.

For over 6 years I taught various courses in the Audio Production department of the Art Institute of California — San Diego. I was the lead sound engineer at a venue named Whistle Stop for several years and I was a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader focusing on music, art, and popular science, among other topics.

In 2011 I graduated with a degree from the music department at UCSD in a program called Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts Major (ICAM). In the music department I was fortunate enough to study under the creator of Max/MSP and Pure Data, Miller Puckette, as well as the owner of Soundhack, Tom Erbe, who was an important mentor. I also had the great pleasure of learning under world renowned neuro-scientist Dr. Ramachandran, world-altering hacktivist Ricardo Dominguez, and world-challenging gender theorist Micha Cardenas, all of whom are infinitely inspiring. While I was a student at USCD I worked on campus at the Gallery@calit2 giving tours of new media research facilities at The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), now known as the Qualcomm Institute. This included operating and demonstrating the StarCAVE, NexCAVE, and HIPerSPACE.

For a short period I functioned as a volunteer in The Brain and Perceptual Process Laboratory, directed by Dr. Ramachandran at UCSD. The lab ran a sex/body experiment which I conceived and designed. The gesture was an attempt to help formalize the concept of science outsourcing creativity to artists for the ultimate purpose of aiding the evolution of the collective unconscious.

For three years I co-curated a monthly event entitled Makeout Weird (MW) at The Whistle Stop. The event brought local experimental artists/musicians together with inventors and professors, showcasing their visual art and live musical performances.