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This is the Sound Studies Group at the SUSTech School of Design, Shenzhen. It is led by Dr. Qiushi Xu and Dr. Marcel Zaes Sagesser. Our research focuses on sound in relationship with technology, the environment, and human listening. It includes sound technology, sound studies, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), sound design, philosophy of science and technology, spatial audio, interactive audio, and creative media. The output of this team is published in prestigious international journals, at domestic and international conferences, and at international exhibitions and concert halls.

We are continuously looking for exceptional students for short-term or long-term internships and visiting student positions in our group. Please send us your CV and your portfolio if you are interested.

SUSTech School of Design ● Sound Studies Group
南方科技大学创新创意设计学院 ● 声音研究科研组

#Sound Studies
#Creative Media
#Digital Media Arts
#VR + Sonic Architectures
#Interaction Design
#Sound Design
#Auditory Interaction
#Human Computer Interaction HCI

Marcel Zaes Sagesser






Marcel Zaes (or Marcel Zaes Sagesser) is an artist and researcher investigating how humans are increasingly intertwined with their technologies. By putting a strong emphasis on sound and its underlying media and materiality, Marcel creates opportunities for listening to constructed or found environments through technology, so as to understand how sound, once technologized, shapes our human experience as much as it renders social, cultural, and political phenomena audible. Examples include drum machine use in popular music, participatory rhythm collections in browser-based interfaces, or interactive musical scores for electronic music performances. This work leads to a rich hybrid practice in academic scholarship and creative work, including interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches as well as technological development. After a PhD in Music + Multimedia Composition (Brown University ’21), Marcel relocated to Shenzhen and since then investigates, with his interdisciplinary focus, the sonic materiality of the Greater Bay Area, reflecting on how “high tech” and “low tech” aspects of one of the largest areas of human settlement play out in sound and sonic media – and again, how these sonic materialities render the humans’ relationship to local technologies audible and visible. Marcel’s work has appeared internationally in academic venues such as Computer Science (DIS, TEI, HCII, VINCI, CHCHI), media studies (SCMS), computer music (NIME, ICMC, ISMIR, SEAMUS), popular music studies (IASPM), at spatial audio, musicology, artistic research, and cultural studies conferences (CSA), and in journals such as the Journal of Media Art Study and Theory, or Norient Sampling Politics. His creative work has been exhibited or performed at venues such as the Center for New Music San Francisco, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, The Stone at The New School New York, the Biennial of Contemporary Arts Lisbon, at ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, at Shanghai Cadillac Concert Hall, Montreux Jazz Festival China, Hong Kong Center for the Arts, or Wuhan Biennale. As an acknowledgment of his work, Marcel received a number of international grants, prizes and fellowships, among others the Fulbright Fellowship by the United States of America.

Personal website: marcelzaes.com
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