San Francisco Electronic Music Festival

Ashley Bellouin

Bellouin’s work explores the merging of sound art, electro-acoustic composition, and instrument building. She focuses on the studies of sonology, psychoacoustics, and the interaction between sound and architecture. Her compositions emphasize and exploit the sonic potential contained within a single musical gesture, regularly using electronics to develop latent qualities. Spatialization, beat frequencies, auditory illusions, and microtonal tunings are frequent compositional tools. Ashley holds an MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College, where she was awarded the Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award. She has presented her work at the Soundwave ((5)) Festival, the 26th Annual SEAMUS National Conference, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, UC Santa Cruz, and Stanford University, among other venues. She has additionally been awarded residencies at the Paul Dresher Ensemble Artist Residency Center, the UC Berkeley Center for New Media, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
http://ashleybellouin.wordpress.com

Bourdon (2013) uses microtonal tunings as a foundation for rhythm. A custom-built Max patch accentuates frequency beating patterns, transforming minute tuning variations into complex patterns. The space between closely paired tones is analyzed, giving rise to acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena.