MIT Music Tech Speaker Series Presents: Akito van Troyer

How do we design instruments that invite exploration? How does changing the sound of your own body change how you experience the world or even who you are? What music hides in forgotten objects, and how can we reveal it? This talk presents 20 years of creative technology research exploring how everyday objects, bodies, environments, and interactions can enable musical discovery, expression, and intervention. Projects range from tabletop instruments that give voice to discarded objects to mobile applications that alter how people hear their own voices or chewing sounds to large-scale systems that transform city soundscapes into collaborative compositions. Across this work, a unifying thread comes into focus: designing sound technologies to deepen listening, reconnect us, and ground us in the real world rather than abstract us from it, transmuting the ordinary into the sonic extraordinary.
Speaker Bio:
Akito van Troyer is an award-winning researcher, creative technologist, and performer specializing in experimental electronic music and interactive systems. His work explores how everyday objects, bodies, and environments can enable musical discovery, developing instruments and interfaces that bridge the physical and digital realms. van Troyer holds a Ph.D. from MIT Media Lab and is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music and a Northeastern University affiliate. He applies practice-based research through his courses in audio programming, emerging music technologies, and machine learning for musicians.

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