Dr Simon Atkinson

Simon is Principal Lecturer in Music, Technology and Innovation and has worked at De Montfort University since 2000.  He is a member of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, and 2004-2012 was Subject Leader for the area.  His work is primarily in musical composition made possible through digital technologies, however he has worked in a diverse and eclectic range of musical projects, mediums and contexts over the years.  He is also committed to making a contribution to the wider understanding and appreciation of contemporary music, particularly electroacoustic and experimental electronic musics.  This influences the thrust of his scholarly work, as well as forming the impetus behind past work in concert production and promotion, cross-art form collaboration, and community arts projects.  He was a founding member of the Scottish group invisibEARts and he co-directs the AHRC and UNESCO-funded Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS) project (www.ears.dmu.ac.uk) which is hosted at De Montfort.

Simon studied for his first degree in Music at the University of East Anglia, graduating in 1990.  During this time his interest in music and technology developed whilst a composition student of Denis Smalley.  He was also an active clarinettist, studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.  In 1994 has was awarded the University of Edinburgh Faculties of Arts, Divinity and Music Scholarship, which assisted in his completing a PhD in the Faculty of Music in 2000, studying with Peter Nelson and Nigel Osborne.  He has received several funding awards, from the AHRB / AHRC, Scottish Arts Council, The Arts Trust of Scotland, Hope Scott Trust, IUA/Phonos Foundation, Barcelona, and East Midlands Development Agency.  He has enjoyed extended periods as a visiting composer at Pompeu Fabra Univerisity in Barcelona and Stiftelsen Elektro-akustik Musik I Sverige (EMS), Stockholm.  More recently, in 2011, he was a Visiting Erasmus Scholar at the Ionian University, Corfu.  He is currently completing a cycle of digital compositions created from analogue feedback sounds, interiorities, is starting a new collaboration with De Montfort colleague Kerry Franksen, dance and intermedia artist, and is working on a commission from INA-GRM due to be premiered at Radio France in Paris in October 2013.

• Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre
• Institute of Creative Technologies

Click here for a full listing of Simon Atkinson's publications and outputs.

Recent compositions

Interiorities a cycle of digital musical compositions created from analogue feedback sounds, commissioned by Society for Electroacoustic Music in Sweden.

Voices of Leicester: sound and mixed media installation, Phoenix Square Digital Arts Centre, Leicester (January 6th-31st 2010)

Selected writings

The Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS) project: www.ears.dmu.ac.uk.

Organised Sound, Volume 15, Issue 01: Sonic Imagery, December 2009, Cambridge University Press (Editor).

Abstraction, reality and the loudspeaker. Elektroakustische Musik – Technologie, Ästhetik Und Theorie Als Herausforderung An Die Musikwissenschaft. (eds. Böhme-Mehner, T., Mehner, K., Wolf, M.) pp83-92. Verlag Die Blaue Eule, Essen. ISBN 978-3-89924-230-0.

Interpretation and musical signification in acousmatic listening. Organised Sound, Volume 12, Issue 02, 2007, pp 113-122. Cambridge University Press.

'The ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS): philosophy, foundation and aspirations¹. (w/ L Landy) Organised Sound, Volume 9, Issue 01, 2004, pp79-85. Cambridge University Press.

About the Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS) Project. (w/ L Landy) Sonic Arts Network Diffusion. November 2003, 4.

Introducing the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site (EARS). International Computer Music Conference 2003 Proceedings. Singapore pp115-118.

Musical composition; electroacoustic music, acousmatic music and experimental electronic music; C20th & contemporary musics; music and technology; sound spatialisation.

Composition and creative projects, aesthetics, theory, history, sound and image.

• PhD (University of Edinburgh) 2000
• BA (Hons) Music (University of East Anglia) 1990

Simon currently leads the following modules within the Music, Technology and Innovation BA (Hons) and Music, Technology and Performance BA (Hons) undergraduate programmes: 

• MUST2005 Sound and Image; 
• MUST2008 Composing with Technology; 
• MUST3021 Advanced Creative Projects.  

He supervises final year Dissertations and Final Projects and contributes to first year modules MUST1008 Creating with Technology and MUST1009 Digital Cultures. He has also contributed to a range of other modules beyond music e.g. Media, Film, Dance, Live Art, Performing Arts, as well as the MA/MSc in Creative Technologies.

• Faculties of Arts, Divinity and Music Scholarship, University of Edinburgh
• Musical composition Nocturne selected at 4e Rencontres Internationale de Compositeurs de Musique Acousmatique, Paris (2001), with subsequent performance, Salle du cinema, UNESCO, Paris.

• Founding member of invisblEARts (Scotland)
• Member of peer review committee for eOREMA, an online journal dedicated to the analysis of electroacoustic music

Visiting Erasmus Scholar, Ionian University, May/June 2011.

Invited talked at University of Edinburgh Music Research Seminar Series, February 2010.

Invited talk at University of East Anglia School of Music Research Seminar Series, February 2009.

'Inscribing Instabilities'.  At the invitation of Elektroakustik Musik i Sverige (EMS), Stockholm, February 2007.

'The Electroacoustic Resource Site (EARS): philosophy, foundation and aspirations'.  A century of innovation involving sound and technology: resources, discourse, analytical tools.  Conference organised and hosted by IRCAM, Paris, in collaboration with Sorbonne, INA/GRM, the Musée de la musique (Paris), and Electronic Music Foundation, October 2003.

• Being Heard, East Midlands Development Agency (linguistic and cultural diversity/citizenship/artistic creative writing and sonic arts project) with John Richards (De Montfort), Phoenix Arts, BBC Radio Leicester and several Leicester City Secondary Schools (2005).
• Electroacoustic Resource Site Project (EARS), co-director: UNESCO 2005; AHRC Resource Enhancement Scheme 2003; AHRB Small Grant Award 2001.

• RIT2: Interactive learning of foundational concepts related to electroacoustic music using the EARS site as its frame of reference w/ Leigh Landy, Rob Weale, John Anderson, 2008.

Simon has acted as reviewer for several ICMC (International Computer Music Conference) and EMS (Electroacoustic Music Studies Network) international conferences, and frequently reviews for the CUP journal, Organised Sound.  In the past he acted as a reviewer the UK Sonic Arts Network, and last year (2011) was committee member for the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology.  He is a member of the peer review committee for the new online journal eOREMA (analysis of electroacoustic music).

Musica Acoustica Festival, Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing; Hilltown New Music Festival, Ireland; International Computer Music Conference 2011; Ionian Academy/Ionian University, Corfu (solo curated concert); Royal College of Music, Stockholm; Conservatorio di Musica Santa Cecilia / CEMAT, Rome; International Digital Arts Week 2010, Xi’an Academy of Music and Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, China; Sibelius-Akatemia, Helsinki; El Centro Mexicano para la Musica/CMMAS, Mexico City; Fylkingen, Stockholm; Paine Concert Hall, Harvard University; Logos Foundation, Ghent; Ninth Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival; EuCue, Salle de Concert Oscar Peterson, Montreal; CIMESP/FASM, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Elektronischer Fruhling Festival, Vienna; International Symposium on Musical Acoustics; International Computer Music Conference, Berlin; Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, Canela; Elektroplex Festival, Vienna; International Festival of Electroacoustic Music, Santa Fe; Musica Verticale, Museum of Modern Art, Rome.