Sam Gillies is a composer, improviser, and sound artist with an interest in the function of noise as both a musical and communicative code in music and art. His work treads the line between the musically beautiful and ugly, embracing live performance, multimedia and installation art forms to create alternating sound and visual worlds of extreme fragility and overwhelming density.

His music has been performed at national and international events and festivals including: the Electric Spring Festival (UK); Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK); Sound/Image Festival (UK); Dark Music Days Festival (ICE); VIPA Festival (SPA); Stoke Newington Contemporary Music Festival (UK); Scale Variable series (AUS); Club Zho (AUS); as well as the Australasian Computer Music Conference (2016, AUS) and three years of the International Computer Music Conference (2013, AUS; 2014, GRE; 2015, USA).

Sam is currently a Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project ‘Ernest Berk: An Expressionist Outsider’ and a Principal Investigator on the AHRC Curiosity project ‘Tape Archive Analysis Toolkit (TAAT): Determining the best approach, scale, and feasibility for new toolsets in analysing large tape archives.’ He has published numerous book chapters and papers on the subjects of early British electronic music history, and contemporary practices in audiovisual art with mobile frames of perspective.

Sam’s research practice occupies two distinct fields: practice-based research in ensemble and electronic music, with a specific focus on composing for audiovisual environments, and musicological research in 20^th century electronic music.

Areas of Expertise:

• Composition for VR, CVR, and audiovisual environments
• Electronic and electroacoustic improvisation
• Sound diffusion and spatial music
• Early electronic music history
• Creation and analysis of digital archives for music