This year, TIMARA had four student participants in the National Student Electronic Music Event(NSEME), this year, held at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. TIMARA majors Ian English, Will Bertrand, Drew Smith, and Helen He attended six concerts, and got the chance to present their work and experience the works of others. The accompanying picture has (l-r) Ian English, Will Bertrand, Drew Smith, and Eli Stine (class of 2014 and co-presenter of NSEME)

Second year TIMARA major Drew Smith presented their piece, written in TECH 201, Open Your Window, written using using a Ciat Lombard Plumbutter, an instrument made by Peter Blasser (’01), the ARP 2600, and guitar – processed using the Buchla 200. “The piece goes from pleasant and calm to really intense, and then there’s a disillusion of intensity. This piece was fueled by anxiety that gave me trouble sleeping.” – Drew

Helen He presented her installation Memories of Light, her final project from TIMARA’s technical director Abby Aresty’s sound installation class. “The installation consists of five box modules, each containing a light sensor and speaker. Lights are programmed to turn on and off at certain intervals, and the light sensor triggers sounds from Max MSP. Memories of Light was inspired by a cemetary, because people always associate cemeteries with words such as creepy and unsettling. I see them as a place where the dead live. They are the land of our ancestors.” – Helen

Will Bertrand, third year TIMARA and physics major, presented Dregs-Magic, a collaborative audiovisual piece with Austin Covell, student at SMFA. “I did sound and Austin did animation, and all the sounds came from a recording session we did with pots and pans with the excitement of using a good contact mic for the first time. I assembled all the sound stuff, and then he did the animation/video to go along with it.” – Will

Ian English, third year TIMARA major, showcased their piece Organism 2.5. “It is basically the culmination of about six months of recording sounds. The piece was originally mostly bells and electric organ. I got most of the percussive blip blop sounds by using sidechain compression, phase inversion, and gate. There are earlier incarnations of the piece that are much more ambient and less genius.” – Ian

Bertrand reflects on his experience at NSEME: “Helen’s installation was great, the concerts were all cool! Someone did a piece where they did a broadcast from a local radio station and then drove people around the perimeter of the broadcast area to hear it come in and out of focus. The highlight for me was the late-night show, where I saw Aaron Dilloway (owner of Oberlin’s very own Hanson Records) give a really pummeling noise set to close out the conference.”