Local Artists and Scholars

Kyle Hartzell is an instrument builder and sound artist focusing on experimental acoustic instruments. He uses both traditional methods of craft and digital fabrication to create one of a kind instruments for other performing artists and his own performance practice. Currently, he is finishing up an extended version of a Hurdy Gurdy for Aurie Hsu in the conservatory. Kyle is also the Digital Media Engineer at Oberlin College and an Instructor in sound design in cinema studies and sound art in studio art.

Eli Stine is a composer, programmer, and educator. Stine is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin Conservatory. Stine received Ph.D. and Masters degrees in Composition and Computer Technologies as a Jefferson Fellow at the University of Virginia and bachelor’s degrees in Technology In Music And Related Arts and Computer Science from Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory.

Stine's work explores electroacoustic sound, multimedia technologies (often custom-built software, video projection, and multi-channel speaker systems), and collaboration between disciplines (artistic and otherwise).

Leah Vonderheide is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at Oberlin College. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, and M.A. from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her research interests include global cinema, feminist film theory, film and ethics, and strategies of resistance across fiction, documentary, and experimental film.

Abby Aresty is a sound artist, composer, and educator. Her community-based creative practice invites individuals and communities to work creatively with sound, and to share their stories through collective making, integrated learning, and storytelling. Aresty is Technical Director and Lecturer for the Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) Department at Oberlin Conservatory and she is the Bonner Center for Service Learning's 2019-2020 Faculty Fellow. In 2019, in collaboration with Oberlin Center for the Arts and Oberlin Conservatory, Aresty founded the Girls Electronic Arts Retreat (GEAR), a 5-Day STEAM summer camp for 3-5th grade girls hosted in the TIMARA studios.

Rachel Gibson is percussionist and composer from Tower City, Pennsylvania. She is currently pursuing a double major in Percussion Performance and Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA). She began playing percussion when she was nine and currently studies percussion with Michael Rosen and computer music with Aurie Hsu and Abby Aresty. She previously studied percussion with Robert Nowak and has completed additional computer music studies with Edgar Berdahl and Stephen Beck. Rachel has performed in the Oberlin Percussion Group, Oberlin Orchestra, Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, and the Oberlin Improvisation and New-Music Collective (OINC). She is the recipient of the Oberlin Conservatory Avedis Zildjian Percussion Award and the Presser Undergraduate Scholar Award. In addition, she has presented two theremin projects at the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction. Most recently, she was selected for the Oberlin College Research Fellowship and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) fellowship at Louisiana State University.

Drew Smith (b. 1999, they/them) is an electroacoustic composer, multi-instrumentalist and multimedia artist from Lawrence, KS. They are currently in their third year at Oberlin Conservatory, where they are pursuing a BM in TIMARA and studying with Eli Stine and Tom Lopez. Since starting at Oberlin, Smith's background in noise and experimental rock music combined with a newfound love for contemporary classical composition, which allowed them to begin writing electroacoustic chamber music and multimedia works incorporating instillation, dance, sculpture, and video. Their chamber works have been programmed at national conferences such as SEAMUS, N_SEME and SPLICE Festival, and they were a recent composition participant at the soundSCAPE Festival in Cesena, Italy.

Dirk Roosenburg is a sound artist who focuses on instrument design, performance art, and improvisation. They are currently a Double Degree student at Oberlin College studying TIMARA and Physics. They spend most of their free hours tinkering with electronics or woodturning.

Max Addae is a vocalist, composer, arranger, and creative programmer from Bloomfield, New Jersey. He is in his 4th year at Oberlin College & Conservatory as a Double Degree student in Computer Science and Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA), studying with Eli Stine. Max’s primary career goals and interests lie in the intersection of machine learning, software design, and music, to enhance the ways in which musicians create, teach, and interact with music. Much of Max's work focuses on developing software as a tool for live music performance, along with using live coding to create unique soundscapes via creative coding environments such as ChucK and Max/MSP.

Max Kramer is a 4th year Psychology/CS student in the college. He has worked with the Timara department for classes and projects for 3 years as well as a multi year performing member of OINC. Special thanks to Sara Hedberg, Zoe Heuser, and Aurie Hsu for helping to realize the Cyborg Fencing project over the course of 2018.