STEIM, in collaboration with the Institute of Sonology, offers a two-year masters study entitled Instruments & Interfaces. The Instruments & Interfaces track will provide dedicated students with an in-depth exploration of the issues at stake when building new instruments for electronic music. This will be done through a combination of theoretical discussion, practical art-as-research, and formalized coursework between the labs at STEIM and the faculty at Sonology. This collaboration with the Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, results in a fully accredited European Masters of Music degree. Students will have access to Sonology courses as well as opportunities at neighboring institutions such as the Royal Academy of Art and Leiden University.
Ideal candidates for the study are performing musicians, sound artists, interaction designers and software/hardware engineers with some musical background.
Over the last forty years STEIM has been an international destination for performing artists to explore new electronic instruments. With this masters program we are looking to share our body of knowledge and continue that tradition with the next generations of adventurous musicians and makers.
We look forward to hearing you.
UPDATE! Application deadline extended
The deadline for applications to join the 2013/14 STEIM Masters degree program Instruments and Interfaces has been extended to 1 June 2013.
General info:
http://www.sonology.org/NL/instruments-interfaces.html
http://www.sonology.org/UK/frameset-uk.html
Applications should be made via studielink:
Nederlands
http://www.koncon.nl/nl/Aanmelden%20en%20toelating/
English
http://www.koncon.nl/en/Application%20and%20enrollment/
Info on tuition and fees:
http://www.koncon.nl/en/Application%20and%20enrollment/Study%20Fees/
Current Students
MARIA ARISTOTELOUS 
is a painter and sound artist, born in Limassol (Cyprus). From 2003 to 2005 she attended drawing and painting lessons in the workshop of Savvas Georgiades and Andrianos Sotiris in Athens, and from 2005-2010 studied in the A’ painting workshop of Zaharias Arvanitis at the Athens School of Fine Arts. She has also studied digital sound processing/composition at the hypermedia laboratory in ASFA and advanced MaxMSP classes in SAE Athens as well as private lessons with the composer Lambros Pigounis. She is member of the Chamber of Fine arts in Greece since 2011 and a member of the Sonology electroacoustic ensemble since also 2011. Currently she is showing her first solo exhibition at penindaplinena gallery in Limassol , entitled Collective Drones where she explores the connections between sound-score-drawing and Jungian thought. Her works are part of many private and State collections in Greece, Cyprus ,the Netherlands and USA.
Maria’s masters research is into the connection of psychological archetypes to music, and is attempting to build instruments to perform “spiritual sound”. Follow Maria’s research blog at mariaaristoteloussteimsonology.blogspot.nl.
PETER EDW
ARDS is an American artist and musician who has spent the last decade exploring experimental sound and light technologies and producing musical instruments and interactive installations.
After receiving a BFA in sculpture from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2000, he established the business casperelectronics through which he sells custom musical instruments and publishes information on circuit bending and hardware hacking. In 2005 Edwards developed the creative electronics department at Hampshire College where he served as adjunct faculty for two years. Since then he has regularly taught circuit bending workshops and written musical electronics tutorials for American DIY tech magazine Make.
Edwards performs regularly and speaks on topics of art and technology at institutions and arts events worldwide including The Piksel Festival (Bergen, Norway), Pixel (Paris, France), MIT’s Media Lab (Boston), The OFFF Festival (Paris, France), Sequences Festival (Reykjavik, Iceland) and at universities across the US. He has produced commissioned installations for The Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), The Contemporary Artists Center (Troy, NY), The Clock Tower Gallery (Manhattan NY), Georgia Southern University (Statesboro, GA) and has served as a resident artist at STEIM, EMPAC(Troy, NY), Perte De Signal(Montreal, CA), The Free103point9 Wave Farm(Acra, NY) and The Flux Factory (Long Island City, NY).
Peter’s research period at STEIM will be focused on making and performing with audio-visual devices which service the desire to hack and innovate while possessing the potential to be musically and profoundly expressive. View some of Peter’s early masters work on YouTube.
JAN KLUG is an Aachen-born musician, composer and media designer who focuses on the use of computers and programming as creative tools for the creation of music performances and live video. In 1999 he graduated from studies in jazz saxophone at the Prins Claus Conservatory in Groningen, and since then has worked on several projects in dance, theater and film. He has performed extensively, blending acoustic and electronic music, video and programming – solo and in collaborations. Since 1996 he has been a permanent member of the Dutch group “Poets from Epibreren”, where he specialized in the musical accompaniment of poetry and literature, a practice he continues to pursue today through projects with Dutch writer Christine Otten. Since 2008, Jan is a core teacher of the master study ‘Interactive Media and Environments’ (MFA IME) at the Frank Mohr Institute (FMI) of Academy Minerva in Groningen, an interdisciplinary programme of advanced education in computer-related media art and experimental art research.
Jan’s research involves the development of a new DSP software and control system involving gestural hardware controllers which allow for intuitive, spontaneous, and instantaneous action/reaction needed for free improvisation. His research builds upon his pre-existing live performance system with the intent of condensing the complexity of possible parameters by meaningful mapping into an intuitive control system. By adding the possibilities of gestural controls to this system, he hopes to create an expressive and meaningful control-‘vocabulary’, giving the system the properties of a true instrument which will require practicing, experimentation and performance-experience.
http://www.janklug.com/research/
KENICHI TAKAHANA (aka. DJ Kexxx) is a Japanese artist, DJ, musician, and designer. He is active both as a dance music DJ and as an improviser improvising with timecoded vinyl and custom software written in Max/MSP.
Kenichi started his DJ career in 1995, and several years later began to compose and perform his own tracks. In 2005 he received a BA in product design, and in 2008 graduated with a MA in media art and sound art from the Tama Art University in Tokyo. In this later study he developed several instruments based upon the idea of accidental sound, triggered by aleatory phenomenon such as ambient air flow and the electrical output of chemical reactions. His current creative output encompasses not only music composition and performance, but also sound installation works.
In Kenichi’s research period at STEIM he would like to develop a new electronic musical performance system combining DJ techniques and accidental sounds. This will include the development of new physical interfaces and controllers that allow for expressive improvisation. Specifically, Kenichi will be exploring the extended use of digital vinyl systems (timecoded vinyl).