Who am I? | What do I do? | projects | experience | education | anything else | website | linkedin
I'm fairly new to the world of web development, but no stranger to technology and have been coding and using electronics since I was ten (I wrote the Blackadder theme tune in Basic on a BBC Micro, I was a weird kid). I am now a doctor of music and have spent my artistic career developing new technology to facilitate creative interactions between groups of people both on stage and in education, I've even written 45,000 words of PhD thesis about it.
I recently graduated from Europe's leading Web Developer bootcamp Maker's Academy and I am currently on the lookout for a team that has a good cultural fit for me. Ideally this would be a place where agile development, testing, pairing and XP values go hand in hand with ongoing personal development, good communication, emotional intelligence and the freedom to be creative and learn new things.
For the last twelve years my work has focussed on building software and electronic devices that either model or support human interaction:
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I designed, programmed and project managed The Stream, a generative composition system that modelled a virtual society and converted the data streams to musical score. The work was performed on numerous occaisions as part of a residency with the RPS award winning contemporary music ensemble Apartment House.
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I developed camera tracking software with audio feedback for a research project which used entrainment to rhythm to rehabilitate the upper limb movement of stroke patients in collaboration with researchers at Goldsmiths and UEA.
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I designed and built the multiplayer electronic instrument Conductable for the Aldburgh festival in 2013 as part of a team of engineers, musicians and model design undergraduates.
I have also performed, formed ensembles, organised events and tours, built electronic instruments, and exhibited sound art installations across the UK and Europe at venues including Ars Electronica(Linsz), SARC(Belfast), the ICA(London) and the Tate Modern.
I am keen to share what I do and besides blogging and sharing my project diaries, I have talked about and presented my work at universities and conferences across the UK, at Dorkbot meetings and Maker Faires, and also on BBC TV & Radio, Resonance FM, and The Discovery Channel(Canada). I also feature as part of the British Music Collection.
Most recently I worked as part of a team to develop dawn, a simple genetic simulator/generative artwork built in JavaScript using the Matter P5 libraries with testing in Jasmine.
I recently completed the Makers Academy coding bootcamp and learnt lots of new things very intensely in a very short space of time including Ruby, Rails, Javascript, TDD, HTML and many other things that seem too numerous given the fact that they only occured over four months. I implemented them on the following projects:
| Project | Description | Tech stack | Testing | Team type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| dawn | This is a procedurally generated sociogenetic simulation with it's own blog if you want to find out more. Dawn is a zero player game/artwork using physics, animation and sound | JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Matter.js, P5.js, eslint | Jasmine | Group |
| jennifer.js | Everyone loves testing, so why not build your own Javascript testing framework? But how to test the testing framework? Hmmm | JavaScript | jennifer.js | Group |
| v a p o r b n b | A vaporwave themed AirBnB clone with added a e s t h e t i c | Ruby, DataMapper, PostgreSQL, Sinatra, CSS, Bootstrap, HTML, Rubocop | Capybara, Rspec | Group |
| Gilded Rose | This is a tech test I completed over a day and a half in Ruby, I was particularly happy with my sneaky use of class inheritance in order to sidestep the rule against updating the item class ;) | Ruby, rubocop | Rspec | Solo |
I have a fairly extensive amount of work experience covering a lot of areas and skills, here is some of it:
Access to Music FE College Norwich (February 2014 - July 2017)
Technical & Resources Manager
Atom Live/Access to Music FE College (January 2012 - February 2014)
National Events Co-ordinator
Aldeburgh Music (February 2012 - August 2012)
Composer & programmer
University of East Anglia (January 2012 - May 2012)
Lecturer in Electroacoustic Composition
University of East Anglia (January 2011 - May 2011)
Lecturer in Electroacoustic Live Electronics Performance
University of East Anglia (January 2012 - April 2012)
Undergraduate Dissertation Supervisor
University of East Anglia (February 2011 - May 2011)
Teaching Fellowship Award/Research Assistant
ExAudi/Aldeburgh Music/UEA (January 2011 - September 2012)
Student Mentor/Group facilitator
Sound and Music/Apartment House (April 2011 - June 2013)
Composer in Residence - Embedded Award
Access to Music FE College Norwich (September 2009 - July 2011)
Composition Tutor/Mentor
I love learning, I would learn all day every day if I could, I've managed to get away with it fairly well so far:
University of East Anglia (September 2009 to July 2018)
PhD, Music Composition
Goldsmiths, University of London (September 2006 - July 2007)
MMus, Studio Composition
City University, London (September 2001 - July 2004)
BSC Hons, Digital Music
I love cooking, especially for friends and family. I have lots of friends who ask me to cook when I'm at their houses which is kind of exploitation, but generally I enjoy it. I am also a huge fan of gaming, particularly Skyrim, GTAV and No Man's Sky on the PS4. Aside from this I play in a few bands irregularly including LOM and a Ambient/Doom Jazz band.