Seth Cluett Joins Columbia’s Composition Faculty as Lecturer in Discipline

Seth Cluett

The Department of Music at Columbia welcomes Seth Cluett as Lecturer in Computer Music and Sound Studies starting in the Fall of 2020. Continuing in the role of Assistant Director of the Computer Music Center and Sound Art Program, Cluett will teach graduate and undergraduate courses in the history and practice of sound and music technology. His research interests include auditory memory, augmented and virtual reality sound, the documentation of sound in art practice, organology, and the media history of the loudspeaker.

Seth Cluett is a composer and visual artist creating work that explores everyday actions at extreme magnification, examines minutae by amplifying impossible tasks, and tries to understand the working of memory in forms that rethink the role of the senses in an increasingly technologized society. Ranging from photography and drawing to installation, concert music, and critical writing, his “subtle…seductive, immersive” (Artforum) sound work has been characterized as “rigorously focused and full of detail” (e/i) and “dramatic, powerful, and at one with nature” (The Wire). The recipient of grants from Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Fund and Meet the Composer, his work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Whitney Museum, MoMA/PS1, Moving Image Art Fair, CONTEXT Art Miami, GRM, and STEIM. His concert work has been commissioned by ensembles ranging from the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and the International Contemporary Ensemble to So Percussion, Catch Guitar Quartet, and Clogs and is documented on Line, Sedimental, Notice, and Winds Measure recordings. Cluett is Artist-in-Residence with Experiments in Art and Technology at Nokia Bell Labs where he maintains a studio and is active in acoustic communications research.