Garth Paine

Garth Paine (PhD) is a Professor of Digital Sound and Interactive Media at the School of Arts Media and Engineering and Digital Culture program at Arizona State University where he is also a Senior Sustainability Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability

He is internationally regarded as an innovator in the field of interactivity in experimental music and media arts. He gave the Keynote at the 2016 NIME conference

In 2018, Garth was a researcher and artist in residence at IRCAM (Paris and ZKM (Kalshrue) and continues to work with IRCAM on the ActiveListener cell phone music system

Garth's passion for sound as an exhibitable object has given rise to interactive environments where the sonic landscape is generated through gesture, presence and behavior and several music scores for dance works using realtime video tracking and bio-sensing and musical compositions that have been performed in Australia, Europe, Asia, USA, South America and the UK.

Garth’s performance work acts as a platform for research into new interfaces for electronic music performance. He has performed at, ISEA2013, InSpace, Edinburgh, UC Davis, Luxembourg Choreographic Centre, Dance Massive, Melbourne in 2013, Ear to the Earth Festival, - John Cage Centennial Festival - NYC, (2012), SiteWorks, Bundanon (2010),Agora/Résonances Festival, Paris (2006), New York Electronic Arts Festival (2007), Liquid Architecture (2007), Aurora festival (2006, 2008), and The Australian New Music Network concert series (2008). Some of his works can be heard here and his albums are available here

Garth's current research centers on the Listen(n) Project. It focuses on Acoustic Ecology through Field Recording and community building. He has a long history of composing musical works from his field recordings and engaging in environmental work through sound. Recent examples include the Site Works project at Bundanon, Australia for which he composed the work Presence in the Landscape and his work Becoming Desert for the Listen(n) Symposium concert in 2014. He was a founding member of Ear to the Earth and in 2015 Co-Chaired the Balance-Unbalance conference at ASU.

He has been the Australia Council for the Arts - New Media Arts Fellow, Composer in Residence - Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Berlin, Founder, Curator and Director - Sonic Residues Festival - at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and been awarded a Green Room Award for Outstanding Creativity, for Escape Velocity (Company in Space) and was a finalist for the Best new Musical Score for Dance, 2014 Green Room Awards.

His company Activated Space designed and implemented innovative interactive experiential exhibitions for the Melbourne Museum, the Jewish Museum of Australia, the Eureka Stockade Centre amongst others. See his thoughts on museum design.

He is a member of the editorial board for the Organised Sound Journal, Cambridge University Press, an advisor to the UNESCO funded Symposium on the Future and a founding member and advisory panel member of the Electronic Music Foundation, New York and Ear to the Earth. Dr Paine has been a Chief Investigator on several Australian Research Council grants and Australia Council for the Arts projects.



Here is a selection of electroacoustic pieces I have composed and performed in recent years. These works all use the Kyma system from Symbolic Sound as the main digital signal processing engine with several of the works then assembled in Reaper for multichannel ambisonic playback (HOA).
























Here is a small collection of scores - please see SCORES for more details

Surface Texture for ensemble and solo cello. Commissioned by Thomas Landschoot (Cello) for solo cello, ensemble & electronics, performed at the Prisms Festival in 2017


No Stone Unturned for ensemble - the title refers to a search, one of memory, one of re-arranging events to find patterns, literally turning over the stones of time to examine their surface and one of commitment, the day to day caring offered by and given to friends and lovers. Commissioned by the San Diego New Music Ensemble


Glistening Edge for Piccolo Snare Drum and Bass Drum and Live electronic processing (Kyma). Commissioned by Simone Mancuso


Grace Space for Bb Clarinet and live electronic processing (Kyma) - Commissioned by Jason Noble, Ensemble Offspring


Fue Sho for Concert Flute and live electronic processing (Kyma)

Fue Shõ from Garth Paine on Vimeo.

Ant Walk - Movement 1 - score for solo piano