Clay Chaplin is a computer musician, improviser, and audio engineer from Los Angeles who explores the realms of audio-visual improvisation, sound synthesis, field recording, electronics, and computer processing for creative sonic expression. Throughout his career he has worked on many projects involving experimental music, video, audio recording, and creative coding. Chaplin studied composition and computer music with Morton Subotnick, Tom Erbe, Mark Trayle, Ichiro Fujinaga and Gary Nelson and audio engineering with Ron Streicher and Jurgen Wahl.
Clay’s works have been performed internationally including performances at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, the Bent Festival, the Busan International Computer Music Festival, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektroakustiche Musik (DEGEM) studios, the Ear Zoom Sonic Arts festival, the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music (STEIM), the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conferences, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College (CCM), the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, the Korean Electro-Acoustic Society Festival, the Sonic Circuits Festivals, the Santa Fe Electronic Music Festival and many others. Clay has been composer in residence at STEIM and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College.
Clay has given talks about experimental sound practices for the American Composer’s Forum, the Machine Project gallery, the Sea and Space Explorations gallery, the Telic gallery, Otis College, and the Center for Research in the Computing Arts (CRCA) at UCSD. Clay is the Director of the Computer Music and Experimental Media studios at the Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts and is Co-director of the Experimental Sound Practices program.
PHOTOS
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am a sound artist, improviser, and recording engineer who is interested in all forms of recorded sound as material for composition, improvisation, installation, and listening. My practice is wide and diverse regarding sonic art. I make field recordings, build my own electronic circuits and synthesizers, program all types of computers to make unusual sounds, resonate objects with actuators, record micro-sounds with contact microphones, and improvise playing the laptop as a solo performer and with groups. I have studied composition at a conservatory, audio engineering via a classical music festival, and experimentalism through living and teaching in Los Angeles. I like to play the piano.
As a performer I play the laptop or a combination of electronic devices and synthesizers. I thrive on improvisation. I love the interaction between recorded, processed sound and traditional musical instruments. The sounds I create are usually derived from field recordings or samples that have been processed and altered from their origins. I enjoy experimenting with software, outboard processors, speakers, and resonators to create sounds that push listening boundaries and hinge on discovery. I like to build sonic systems, give them a push, and discover what is created by staying out of the way. I like to challenge listeners using a variety of ideas and methods including long-forms, slowly evolving ambient textures, disembodied recordings, glitched-out computer sounds, otoacoustics, and all manner of noise.
