Pete Shepherd
Associate Lecturer (Audio)
Having been involved in the music industry for the last 30 years, initially as a player/performer but for the past 20 years a primarily a live sound engineer and studio producer and composer I returned to academia in 2012, studying Creative Music Technology at Falmouth University.During this time I began to experiment with sound as an artistic medium away from the conventions of traditional musical structures and rules.This led to three major works at undergraduate level, Bacteria, a multimedia piece designed for the Fascinate showcase and performed on the moor in Falmouth during the Tall Ships Festival. The piece featured an onward developing soundscape of fixed synthesis and volatile Max/MSP engines together with projections that were mapped onto 3 local buildings. Sonores Obscura was my research project in my third year, again featuring a dynamically shifting Max/MSP soundscape together with vibrating sheets of metal and a shifting video screen agitated by sub sonic waves from three 'bass cannons' My final project in this series was The Idiosyncratic Symphony, a series of three short pieces again powered by Max/MSP and featuring multiple video projection. It was during this time that I began to examine the roles of performer and spectator roles in contemporary sound installations.
Having graduated Falmouth with first class honors in 2014 I went on to study Computer Music at Plymouth university at masters level. This resulted in a further exploration of the performer spectator relationship informed by Ranciere's The Emancipated Spectator Derridean ideas of Deconstruction and Deleuzian concepts of territory, milieu and the chaosmos. This research led to Flow, a multi elemental interactive piece powered by Max/MSP that delegated all control of the ongoing nature of the piece to the visitor through a number of haptic and kinetic sensors. upon completion I was awarded my Masters (ResM) with a highly commended pass.
Since leaving academia as a researcher I have continued to write and devise new software for the progression of sound art and interactive spaces as well as assuming a teaching role at Falmouth in both the games academy and music departments.
External Links
Qualifications
Qualifications
| Year | Qualification | Awarding body |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Research Masters (ResM) Computer Music | Plymouth University |
| 2015 | BA(Hons) Creative Music Technology | Falmouth University |
Research Interests
Research interests and expertise
My academic practice explores experimental sonic art, interactive installation work and the creation of bespoke software to facilitate this. As a consequence the majority of my research is practice based, however I contextualise much of my output referencing 20th and early 21st century philosophy, primarily along the postmodern, post structural lines of enquiry. Of particular interest in this are the Deleuzian ideas of territory, its dissemination, Milieu and component structures, together with Derridean concepts of Hauntology, which, given our access to the immense library of materials in the post digital age allow for a decontextualisation of the past into the present and raise questions of temporality in regard of artistic materials.Research Topics
- Sonic Art
- Post and meta modern philosophy
- Audio development. Max/MSP
Teaching
Areas of teaching
- Games audio
- Musicology
- Computer music techniques
Courses taught
- BA(Hons) Game development (Audio)
- BA(Hons) Music
- BA(Hons) Popular Music
- BA(Hons) Creative Music Technology
