Jürgen Simpson
Giuseppe Torre
Neil O'Connor
Nicholas Ward
Robin Parmar
Jürgen Simpson is a composer, curator and digital arts practitioner/researcher with a focus on interdisciplinarity, live performance and collaborative practices. Working at Computer Science and Information Systems UL since 2004, he co-founded the Digital Media and Arts Research Centre in 2011 and in 2013 established ‘Light Moves’, an interdisciplinary festival bridging between dance, digital and screen-based practices. He has co-curated the festival’s seven editions and is centrally involved in its developmental wing ‘Open Futures’ supporting innovation between dance and the digital arts. As a composer his voice is rooted in the field of music, and branches out to embrace dance, theatre, opera, sound art and the gallery. Supporters include RTÉ, The Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, The British Council, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, SFU Vancouver, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Recent large-scale works include a reworking of Simeon Ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato for New Music Dublin 2023 and music/sound for the ecologically focused interdisciplinary work Weathering with Mary Wycherley, Jools Gilson and Ceara Conway. His 2015 opera "Air India [redacted]” was premiered in Vancouver, in collaboration with Turning Point Ensemble and the Banff Centre and in 2003 he received the Genesis Opera Project’s principal award for his opera “Thwaite” with librettist Simon Doyle. Film music includes a decade working with artist Clare Langan with “Metamorphosis” receiving the 2007 Oberhausen Film Festival award. Colaborators include Kevin Volans, Raymond Deane and Michael Nyman. He was a member of the band The Jimmy Cake from 2000 to 2009 and recorded and produced their critically acclaimed third album, Spectre and Crown. His writing has been published by Oxford University Press and Palgrave MacMillan and he is a member of the Programme Advisory Panel for Limerick City Gallery of Art where he has curated three exhibitions as part of Light Moves.
Email – jurgen.simpson@ul.ie / Office – CS2-009 / Tel: +353 (61) 202759
Giuseppe Torre [Laurea/M.Phil., MSc, PhD] is Lecturer of digital art practices at the University of Limerick. His research interest lies at the crossings between digital art practices, open source technology/culture and philosophy. These interests respond to a questioning of the relationships between technology and art, code and aesthetics, numbers and self; a process that has so far led him to question under what forms and forces truly creative efforts may, or may not, arise. He is the author of An Ethico-Phenomenology of Digital Art Practices (Routledge, 2021). His academic writings features in journals and books by publishing houses such as MIT Press, Springer, Routledge/Taylor & Francis. As an active digital art practitioner, his works and performances have been showecased nationally and internationally. He is a advocate of FLOOS (Free and Libre Open Source Software) in the teaching and professional practice of all digital arts. IN UL, Giuseppe Torre teaches in the B.Sc. in Music Media & Performance Technology, the Master in Experience Design (IUX) and the Master in AI.
Personal page: giuseppetorre.gitlab.io
Email – giuseppe.torre@ul.ie / Office – CS2-007 / Tel: +353 (61) 234611
Composer and Producer Neil O Connor has been involved in multi-media, experimental, electronic and electro-acoustic music for the past 20 years and has toured extensively in Ireland, Europe, Australia, Asia and the US. His work was been shown/performed at Resonances Festival @ IRCAM Paris, Kunsthalle, Berlin, Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, London and has held residencies at the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, USA and EMS – Swedish Institute of Electro-Acoustic Music, Stockholm, Sweden. His research background focused on the development of graphic notation systems for electronic music. As as performer, his compositional background is multi-channel electro acoustic music using spectral music techniques and as a performer – live improvisational electronics using custom modular synthesizers. Neil has lectured in Music, Composition and Performance Technology since 2005 at Art Institute of California (San Francisco), The Institute of Audio Research (New York City) and Trinity College (Dublin) where he received his Masters in Music Technology and PhD in Composition. Neil is represented in Ireland by the CMC (Contemporary Music Center), AIC (Association of Irish Composers), ISSTA (Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association), SMC (Spatial Music Collective) and published by IMRO (Irish Musical Rights Organisation).
Email:neil.oconnor@ul.ie / Office – CS2-025
Personal page: neiloconnor.org
Nicholas holds a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queens University Belfast. His research explores notions of physicality and effort in the context of digital musical instrument performance. Specifically he is interested in movement quality, systems for movement description, and their utility within a design context.
Email – nicholas.ward@ul.ie / Office – CS2-012 / Tel: +353 (61) 234246
Robin Parmar is a media artist and researcher exploring the phenomenology of place and our rela-tionships with nature. His cross-disciplinary practice includes electroacoustic composition, sound and video installations, and digital video. Research interests include soundscape composition, psy-choacoustics, and sonic arts theory. He has released thirteen albums, the most recent being Citalá, River of Stars (Silent Records, USA, 2023). Awards include the Invisible Places residency (2017) and an Arts Council Bursary (2017). He was selected for the national showcase Just Listening – Ireland Calling in 2011 (curated by the National Sculpture Factory) and was an invited artist at EVA Inter-national, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2010 (curated by Elizabeth Hatz).
Robin has a doctorate in Sonic Creativity from De Montfort University (Leicester, UK) and lectures in Video, Film, and Visual Communication at the University of Limerick (Ireland) where he directs the BSc. in Music, Media and Performance Technology. He is Vice-President of the Irish Science, Sound, and Technology Association (ISSTA) and was guest editor for the last issue of Interference: Journal of Audio Culture. He regularly reviews for the journal Organised Sound. His handbook Lis-tening To Places (Void Gallery, Derry, 2022) sold out its first printing.
His website is robinparmar.com .
Email – robin.parmar@ul.ie / Office – CS2-008
