Crafting Sound Lab Team

We are excited to share the Spring 2020 team members of the Crafting Sound Lab!

Dr. Abby Aresty is a sound artist, composer, and educator. Her community-based creative practice empowers individuals to work creatively with sound, and to share their stories while building community through collective making, integrated learning, and storytelling.

Aresty’s site-specific installations have been featured in local and national news outlets; Paths II: The Music of Trees, a temporary installation in Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum, was featured in an interview with Melissa Block on NPR’s All Things Considered and was hailed as “otherworldly” and “sometimes eerie, sometimes transportingly lovely,” by the Seattle Times.

Aresty has presented her research in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong, in conferences including ICMC, Balance/Unbalance, ISEA, and Sonic Environments. She has held fellowships at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University, Grinnell College, and the Acoustic Ecology Lab at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts.  She recently taught a workshop in multimodal storytelling for 40 college and university students from around the world as part of a Humanitarian Entrepreneurship summer institute at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Aresty is Technical Director and Lecturer for the Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) Department at Oberlin Conservatory.  She teaches the Electronic Music course for Oberlin's Community Music School, 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.

Oli Bentley is a musician and multimedia artist from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is in her third year as a TIMARA Major and is currently studying with Eli Stine. Her primary areas of interest are creating interactive installations, electroacoustic composition, and songwriting. She has been the Studio Assistant in the TIMARA department and a research assistant for Abby Aresty for two years. This past summer, she was an instructor at Sonic Arts Workshop, a week-long camp for highschoolers interested in audio, and the Girls Electronic Arts Retreat, a STEAM camp for 3-5th grade girls. She writes and performs her music around campus as much as she can. 

Rachel Gibson is a percussionist and music technologist from Tower City, Pennsylvania. She is currently pursuing a double major in Percussion Performance and Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA). She currently studies percussion with Michael Rosen and computer music with Aurie Hsu and Abby Aresty. Rachel has presented her work at NIME and TEI and has received numerous awards such as the Oberlin Avedis Zildjian Percussion Award, Presser Undergraduate Scholar Award, and most recently, the SEAMUS Allen Strange Award. She also has received the Oberlin College Research Fellowship and a NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates Fellowship. 

Claudia Hinsdale is a composer and performer studying Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) and dance at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She is currently studying with Aurie Hsu and Abby Aresty. She enjoys mixing electroacoustic elements with choral, chamber and pop music, and regularly collaborates with other artists across different mediums. Last year, Claudia received an XARTS grant to complete a project centered around architectural research and the creation of convolution reverb. She has worked as a teaching assistant for Abby Aresty for two years, and also works as a live sound technician on campus. 

Michael Gaspari is a composer, pianist, synth player, and DJ from Robbinsville, NJ.  He is currently attending Oberlin Conservatory as a composition major and plans on having a second major with Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA). His private instructor for composition is Stephen Hartke.  He now writes in many genres and in mediums such as acoustic, fixed media, and electro-acoustic. Michael has recently been working with children with special needs, and has been exploring ways in which music can make an impact on them.  He is doing this using programs like Max MSP, and hardware such as USB button controllers for ease of use. This is Michael’s first semester working as a research assistant for Abby Aresty, specifically working on code and audio for the “Of Earth and Sun” installation.

Katarina Elyse Mazur is an herbalist, harpist, vocalist, sculptor, and composer based in the oak forests of southeastern Pennsylvania. Through live performance, fixed-media composition, and found-object sculpture, she hopes to enliven the senses while honoring her awareness of place with love for all beings on every plane!

Ivy Fu is a second-year student at Oberlin studying Computer Science. Her interests on numerous subjects include interactive technology, music production, art installations, English/Chinese literature and ancient artifacts has led to her continuous efforts and output. As a composer she has produced 10+ pieces of work, some are performed in music festival or in Oberlin, others are recorded in her home studio and published on media such as Youtube and NetEase music. As a programmer and artist she is skilled in Python, Java, Max MSP, Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Adobe Premiere, Unity, Supercollider and Git. As an artifact lover she has worked in Shaanxi History Museum to introduce visitors historical facts of ancient ornaments. She consider herself an adventurer who is willing to test out anything that she haven’t gotten a sense of—a reason why she’s now exploring the forest of sound art and acoustic ecology, in which she has recently discovered infinite possibilities.

Helen He (they/them) is a fifth-year double-degree student at Oberlin studying Computer Science and TIMARA, with a minor in dance and secondary studies in organ performance. As a composer, they have attended festivals and workshops around the world, including the 2017 International Music Festival of the Adriatic and the Kyiv Contemporary Music Days masterclass; they have also presented in conferences such as MUSLAB Mexico and N_SEME (National Student Electronic Music Event). Additionally, they are a member of the student council of the Society of Composers, Inc., and they on the board of the Millenium Composers Initiative. In the field of computer science, Helen's paper on privacy and activism in the transgender community has been accepted into the 2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, and they will be starting as a software engineer at Electronic Arts after graduation. 

Maya McCollum is a first year TIMARA and Studio Art double-degree student at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Maya enjoys building sound sculptures and original instruments, and finds the process of art making incredibly inspiring. She loves using found objects and interweaving their stories and histories into her art. Maya is very excited to be working as Abby Aresty’s research assistant for yet another semester.

Gabriel Baskin is a first year schlub at Oberlin College, by way of Ballston Spa, New York. He has a lot of vague interests, many of which have something or other to do with Oberlin’s Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) department. He’s quite enjoyed what TIMARA classes he’s taken so far, and is very excited to be a part Professor Aresty’s research. Gabriel plays by the rules, keeps his head down, and stays out of trouble.