Abstract

This lecture traces my compositional path from the beginnings to the current moment. I comment on the works in the catalog, placing them within the biographical context of my artistic circumstances at the time.

My process of electronic music composition could be likened to that of a solitary painter in that I both plan and realize the final work in my studio.

My composition process unfolds in seven phases:

1. Initial conception
2. Tool configuration and research
3. Creation of sound material
4. Classifying and editing the source material
5. Initial assembly of mesostructures
6. Planning of macrostructure
7. Multi-scale composition

I explain each phase and present excerpts of the works in chronological order.

Bio

Curtis Roads is Professor Emeritus in Media Arts and Technology and in Music at UCSB. His latest book is The Computer Music Tutorial (2023, The MIT Press).

www.curtisroads.net

Abstract

How can virtual realities create spaces for voice, affect, healing, and connection across diverse communities? In this lecture, Semi Ryu traces the evolution of her transdisciplinary art research through embodied avatar performance, affective computing, and XR ritual. Drawing from projects including VoicingElder, VoicingHan, SentimentVoice, and My Seeking Gut, she explores how virtual bodies activate personal and collective voices, how VR embodies affect, and how these experiences create new possibilities for relationality and collective experience.

Her transdisciplinary practice brings media art into sustained collaboration with medicine, social work, gerontology, and engineering, integrating artistic experimentation, technological innovation, community-based inquiry, and clinical research. Across these collaborations, Ryu approaches XR as a contemporary form of healing ritual—an embodied and relational space where voices are amplified, affect circulates, and new forms of awareness, relationships, and community can emerge.

Bio

Semi Ryu 류세미 is a media artist and Professor of Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts, Affiliate Associate Professor at VCU School of Medicine, and Director of EXE Lab: Embodied XR + Emotion AI. Inspired by Korean healing rituals, her transdisciplinary practice bridges art, technology, and health through avatars, extended reality (XR), and affective computing. Her work has been presented in more than 20 countries, and her research has been widely published in leading journals spanning art, technology, and health. Her chapters appear in The Routledge Handbook of Arts and Health and The Point of Being, and she serves on the editorial board of Arts & Health. A TEDx speaker, Ryu has received the Hamilton International Arts in Health Award (First Place, Arts for Innovation), the VCUarts Faculty Award for Distinguished Achievement in Research, and National/International Recognition Award. She is currently developing a book on My Seeking Gut with Wesleyan University Press.

www.semiryu.net