Marcel Zaes Sagesser | Creative Media + Sound + Technology

Art + Research

About + Writing + CV




CV

Academic Appointments

Since 2022 — Assistant Professor of Media Arts & Technology, School of Design, SUSTech Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen
Fall 2020 — Guest Lecturer, Department of Theatre, Williams College, USA
2011-2012 — Research Assistant, Institute for Computer Music & Sound Technology, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
2009-2011 — Teaching Assistant, Bern Academy of Arts, Department of Music, Switzerland

Artistic Residencies

Summer 2018 — Studio Residency, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Interdisciplinary Arts, New Delhi, India
Winter 2017 — Mentor for Sound Design, Attakalari Biennial of Contemporary Dance, Bangalore, India
Fall 2015 — Residency108, Fine Arts and Land Arts, Upstate New York, USA
Spring 2015 — Landis & Gyr Studio Residency, Music Composition Budapest, Hungary
Fall 2012 — Studio Residency, Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Music Production, Cairo, Egypt
AY 2011/2012 — Composer-in-Residence, Music Composition Swiss Institute at Rome, Italy

Education

2021 — Ph.D. in Computer Music & Multimedia Composition, Brown University, USA; Dissertation: Within the Grid: Inquiries in the Socio-Rhythmic Ambiguities of Mechanical Time; Dissertation Committee: Kiri Miller, Ed Osborn, Butch Rovan, Paula Matthusen
2018 — MA in Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments, Brown University, USA
2010 — MA in Electroacoustic Music Composition, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland; With focus area at ICST Institute of Computer Music & Sound Technology, Zurich
2007 — MA in Music & Media Arts, Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland
2005 — BA in Music & Media Arts, Bern Academy of the Arts, Switzerland

Creative Publications

Exhibitions and Performances - Juried
2024 — Intl. Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI), Hsinchu, Taiwan
2024 — Chinese CHI, Shenzhen, China
2024 — FOG Festival, Basel, Switzerland
2024 — Musikfestival Bern, Switzerland
2023 — DIS Designing Interactive Systems conference, Arts Track, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
2023 — TEI International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, Warsaw, Poland
2022 — New York City Electroacoustic Festival (NYCEMF), New York, USA
2022 — International Computer Music Association (ICMA): Music Showcase Asia, Hong Kong
2022 — Sound and Music Computing (SMC) Conference, Saint-Etienne, France
2022 — NoiseFloor, Staffordshire University, UK
2022 — Sonorities Festival, Belfast, UK
2021 — New York City Electroacoustic Festival (NYCEMF), USA
2021 — New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference, NYU Shanghai, China
2021 — Canadian University Music Society MusCan congress, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
2021 — Bay Area Pilot Project, American Composers Forum (ACF) & Innova Recordings, USA
2021 — A (Post-)Pandemic Festival, Swissnex San Francisco, USA
2021 — SloMoCo at International Conference on Movement and Computing, USA
2021 — Verdant Vibes call for compositions, Providence RI, USA
2020 — NowNet Arts Conference, USA
2020 — Network Music Festival, UK
2020 — 21st International Society for Music Information Retrieval, Conference (ISMIR), Montreal, Canada
2020 — CHIME Fest 2020, Circulations: Symposium on Live Audio Feedback in Art, U. of Chicago, USA
2018 — Musikfestival Bern, Switzerland
2016 — International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA), City University of Hong Kong
2015 — Festival Les Digitales, Neuchâtel, Switzerland
2014 — International Society for New Music (IGNM), Bern, Switzerland
2014 — Ostrale Art Fair, Dresden, Germany
2012 — Kernel Festival (New Media Art Light Festival), Milan, Italy
2010 — Festival OutNow!, Bremen, Germany
2010 — Lab.30 Festival, Augsburg, Germany

Creative Publications

Exhibitions and Performances - Invited (Selection)
2024 — Art Delivery Program, Pingshan Art Museum (PAM), Shenzhen, China
2024 — Wuhan Biennale, Wuhan, China
2024 — DeSound Festival, Bao’an Stadium, Shenzhen, China
2024 — SeeDling Fair, CC Creative Commune, Shenzhen, China
2024 — Shenzhen Design Week, Nanshan Museum, Shenzhen, China
2024 — Shenzhen–Hong Kong–Macao Digital Design Exhibition, Shenzhen Art Museum, Shenzen, China
2024 — Shanghai Cadillac Concert Hall, Shanghai, China
2023 — Música Estranha, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil
2023 — SeeD First Pilot Project, Exhibition, Longgang, Shenzhen
2023 — Bao’an Live Music Association, Shenzhen
2023 — Oil Club, Shenzhen
2023 — Montreux Jazz Festival China, Kunshan, China
2022 — Shunde Food Museum / Dakan Art Institute, China
2022 — UABB Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, China
2022 — Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI), China
2022 — Stanford University, USA
2021 — Geneva International Film Festival (GIFF), Switzerland
2021 — First Fridays with Robert Black, Bang On A Can, New York City, USA
2021 — Gray Area, San Francisco, USA
2020 — Fridman Gallery, New York City, USA
2020 — Dampfzentrale, Bern, Switzerland
2019 — Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York City, USA
2019 — Symphony Space, New York City, USA
2019 — Biennial of Contemporary Arts (BOCA), Lisbon
2018 — House of Electronic Arts (HEK), Basel, Switzerland
2018 — Oddbird Theatre, New Delhi, India
2018 — San Francisco Center for New Music, San Francisco, USA
2018 — Aviary Gallery, Boston, USA
2017 — Attakkalari Biennial of Contemporary Dance, Bangalore, India
2016 — Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong SAR
2016 — Tráfo Contemporary Arts Center, Budapest, Hungary
2015 — Echo-Raum, Vienna, Austria
2015 — Quiet Cue, Berlin, Germany
2015 — Officine Caos, Turin, Italy
2013 — ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany
2013 — Schwere Reiter Theater, Munich, Germany
2012 — Darb 1718, Cairo, Egypt
2011 — Festival for Electronic Music RE-VOLT, Rome, Italy
2011 — Fête de la Musique, Beirut, Lebanon
2010 — Rote Fabrik, Zurich, Switzerland


Musical Records

Forthcoming — House/Aries/Zaes: Metric Friction, Editions Verde, New York, USA
2023 — Aries Zaes: Dust, Prefermusic, Switzerland
2023 — Dissolving Archive I, Kukuruz Quartet, Innova Records/American Composers Forum, USA
2022 — Parallel Prints, with Yarn/Wire, Editions Verde, New York, USA
2020 — Aries Zaes: Debris, Prefermusic, Switzerland
2018 — Pulsations, Edition Dumpf, Switzerland
2016 — Sjö: Två, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2014 — Sjö, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2014 — Prairie Urbaine, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2014 — Wüsten, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2014 — Cut Low from Above, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2014 — Lel Samar Project: Grain de Ciel, Tonus Music Records, Switzerland
2011 — The Last Place (Left), Tonus Music Records, Switzerland

Presentations & Talks

Conference Presentations
  • 2024 — “Folding Raw Sonic Matter into Musical Beat: Kyoka’s Material Economy as “Techno Fluency” Society for Music Production Research Conference, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK.
  • 2023 — “Drum Machines in Popular Music Production: The Convergence of a Digital Logic in Technology and Aesthetic” The 3rd National Publishing Doctoral Academic Forum, University of Shanghai of Science and Technology, Shanghai.
  • 2023 — “‘Megaphoned Voices’ Amongst Skyscrapers: Mapping the Provisional Sound Infrastructure of the Pandemic in Shenzhen” SCMS Society for Cinema & Media Studies, annual conference, Denver, USA
  • 2022 — “Rhythms, Textures, Identities: Folding as a Technique in Kyoka’s Signature Sound” International Association for the Study of Popular Music - Australia and New Zealand Branch (IASPM-ANZ), yearly conference, RMIT Melbourne, Australia
  • 2022 — “Mediating Place Is Staging Time: How Digital Media Frames Time in Traces of Noise” Future Bodies Symposium, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg Virginia, USA
  • 2022 — “Designing Representation of Sound: Notes Toward the Convergence of Notation and User Interface in Digital Musicking Practices” Convergence Conference, De Montford University, Institute for Sonic Creativity MTI, Leicester, UK
  • 2022 — “Of Scrolling & Mixing: Simulated Motion in Web Audio as Practice-Informed Scholarship” Symposium on Music, Migration, and Mobility, Royal Collage of Music, London, UK
  • 2022 — “Rhythms, Textures, Identities: Folding as a Technique in Kyoka’s Signature Sound” International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM), Annual conference, Daegu, South Korea
  • 2022 — “Being-Without. Gathering in Synchronous Isolation” Performance Philosophy, 5th Biennial Conference, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland
  • 2022 — “From Listening to Playing: An Idiosyncratic Spatial User Interface in Web Audio” Everyday is Spatial: Immersive Audio Conference, University of Gloucestershire, UK
  • 2022 — “Rethinking Time Keeping Histories: (Mechanical) Time Grids as Imagined and Social” Rethinking the History of Technology-based Music Conference, University of Huddersfield, UK
  • 2022 — “Pluse Geometries: Fixed Media Piece” Sound and Music Computing SMC 2022, Saint-Etienne, France
  • 2022 — “Reckoning with the Topographies of Listening: The Participatory Sound Archive #otherbeats” Cultural Studies Association (CSA) Conference, Columbia College Chicago, USA
  • 2022 — “Michigan Avenue: Portraying Urban Centers in Electronic Dance Music” International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA
  • 2022 — “Pulsations: Musical Work” NoiseFloor Art Festival and Symposium, Staffordshire University, UK
  • 2022 “Rendering Collected Ephemera Audible: Sonic Design as Attending to Multiplicity” International Seminar on Sonic Design at the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Norway
  • 2022 “Of Prompting, Collecting, and Crossfading: Writing Community-Based Scholarship in Sound” Postgraduate Symposium for Creative Practices Research: Arts and Communities, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK
  • 2022 “Composing Time: The Sonic Materiality of Grids, Deviations and Envelopes” Sonorities Symposium, Belfast, UK
  • 2022 “The ‘Perfect’ Ensemble Member: Time-Keeping as Negotiation of Individuality” Rethinking Participatory Processes Through Music, University of Huddersfield, UK
  • 2021 “From Listening to Playing – Browser-Based Music-Making” Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) Conference, USA
  • 2021 “#otherbeats: Resisting the Grid – Performing Asynchrony” IRCAM Forum, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  • 2021 “Other Beats from 2020” Aesthetic Relations, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  • 2020 “Deviant and Resistant Time Grids of the Pandemic” Sounds of the Pandemic, University of Florence, Italy
  • 2020 “When Noise Is Temporal, Drum Machine Histories of Failure & Gain” Residual Noise Symposium, Brown University, USA
  • 2020 “#otherbeats” 21st International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference ISMIR, Montreal, Canada
  • 2019 “Resisting the Grid – Performing Asynchrony” Rhythm in Music since 1900, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Invited Talks
  • 2024 — Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, South Korea
  • 2024 — School of Arts, Media and Creative Technologies, Salford University, Salford, UK
  • 2023 — SZTU Shenzhen Technology University, School of Design and Innovation, Shenzhen, China
  • 2023 — Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou campus), Ph.D. seminar, Division of Computational Media and Arts, Guangzhou, China
  • 2023 — DKU Duke Kunshan University, Division of Arts & Humanities, China
  • 2023 — CUHK Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Hong Kong
  • 2023 — Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Ph.D. seminar, Division of Integrative Systems and Design, Hong Kong
  • 2023 — CAC Chronos Arts Center, artist talk, Shanghai
  • 2023 — CSUSB California State University, San Bernardino, Dept. of Music
  • 2023 — CUHK Chinese University of Hong Kong, School of Music, Shenzhen, “Music, AI, and Code”
  • 2023 — NYU New York University Shanghai, Department of Humanities, Talk “Music & Coding”
  • 2023 — USST University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, College of Communication and Art Design, China
  • 2022 — Zhejiang University, College of Media and International Culture, Program of Cross-cultural Communication, China
  • 2020 — Cornell University, Department of Music, artist talk
  • 2019 — BU Boston University, Department of Music, artist talk
  • 2019 — Manhattan School of Music, artist talk, New York City
  • 2019 — SNU Shiv Nadar University, Department of Art and Performing Arts, India
  • 2017 — Brown University, Department of Architecture, lecture on urban sound
  • 2012 — HEAD Geneva School of Art & Design, Geneva

Academic Teaching Experience

  • Fall 2024 — Sound Design, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with the Shenzhen Accessibility Association, sound walks for cultural accessibility (8 students)
  • Spring 2024 — Composing Experience, SUSTech School of Design (17 students)
  • Spring 2024 — Circular Products: Experience, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with JMGO video projectors (22 students)
  • Fall 2023 — Sound Design, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with TCL (12 students)
  • Spring 2023 — Circular Products: Experience, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with C-Future-Lab Shenzhen (12 students)
  • Fall 2022 — Sound Design, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Shenzhen Bi-City Biennial for Urbanism and Architecture (16 students)
  • Spring 2022 — Circular Products: Experience, SUSTech School of Design, in collaboration with Block 16 Cultural Center (11 students)
  • Fall 2020 — Digital Performance, Department of Theatre, Williams College (30 students)
  • Spring 2020 — MEME Ensemble: Anti-Fascist Drum Machines, Department of Music, Brown University (10 students)
  • Fall 2019 — Seminar in Electronic Music: Real-Time Systems, Department of Music, Brown University (12 students)

Awards, Grants, & Fellowships

  • 2023-2025 — Zhejiang Coservatory & Ministry of Tourism, China: Digital Music project grant
  • 2022-2028 — City of Shenzhen “Pengcheng Peacock” fellowship for international talents
  • 2021 — Beyond 2020: A (Post-)Pandemic Practice, production grant, Swissnex San Francisco
  • 2019 — Brown Arts Institute, Public Presentation Grant, Brown University
  • 2019 — Joukowsky Summer Research Award, Brown University
  • 2018 — The Ned and Frances Black Fund, music composition grant, USA
  • 2018 — UBS Bank of Switzerland, artistic production grant
  • 2015 — Fulbright Grant, United States of America
  • 2015 — Lyra Foundation, grant for highly talented young artists, Switzerland
  • 2015 — Kunstschub, artistic production grant, Switzerland
  • 2014 — Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, music recording grant
  • 2014 — Isabelle Zogheb Foundation, artistic production grant, Switzerland
  • 2011 — UBS Bank of Switzerland, music composition grant
  • 2010 — Kiefer Hablitzel Foundation, award for an outstanding musical practice, Switzerland
  • 2009 — Société Suisse des Auteurs (SSA), music composition grant, Switzerland
  • 2008 — Société Suisse des Auteurs (SSA), music composition grant, Switzerland

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