"Decentered Listening is an immersive sound installation created with seismic data collected from Antarctica. This project was made in collaboration with Peter Bromirski, an ice seismologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who studies the speed and patterns of ocean wave impact on the ice to determine the ice shelves' integrity over a period of... Continue Reading →
Throughout 2017 I worked with a team under the guidance of Jon Paden to explore Augmented Reality and its interactive and artistic potential. One of the main projects we focused on was recreating a scene from the science fiction novel Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge. The scene was a virtual battle between factions whose avatars... Continue Reading →
Birds of North America was an original play that premiered at the Wagner New Play Festival in the La Jolla Playhouse. It focused on the relationship between a father and daughter who watch birds together ever year; it used this to tell a larger story about the modern world, intimacy, and the environment. In Spring of 2017, I worked closely with writer Anna Moench and Director Jennifer Chang, to compose the music and sound for Birds of North America. I aimed to create a warm soundscape that invited the audience into the intimacy of the father and daughter's relationship. It was important for me that sounds were accurately placed in space and could precisely move across the room; speakers surrounded the room, and this allowed for the sensatation of a flocks of birds to circle the audience before flying off into the distance. The play was built entirely out of the dialogue between a father and daughter, so I decided to form the soundtrack primarily out of duets between guitars. With that being said, I didn't want the soundtrack to become two guitars reciting monologues next to each other or one merely becoming a harmony to the other. I really wanted the melodies to form out of the interactions between the guitar parts. I spent the month of May copiously writing and recording the soundtrack, meticulously drafting the songs until they became synonymous with the emotions the writer had imagined. Linked below is a brief write-up about Birds of North America and the complete soundtrack. http://theatre.ucsd.edu/season/WNPF2017/Birds.htm
In the spring term of my sophmore year at UCSD, I got the opportunity to work on a project with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography and the Birch Aquariam; the goal was to work with a team to build a super computer that would analyze large files of data from Scripps and develop it into... Continue Reading →
In the beggining of my sophmore year, I began composing and recording the original sound track for the virtual reality game Topiary. Throughout this process, I worked closely with the director to develop creative strategies for implementing music into the virtual world. "Topiary Store is a meditative HTC Vive game where the player engages in... Continue Reading →
Humming Birds Don't Sing for Bees is an independent film that came out the Art Institute of Chicago. I worked closely alongside the director, Allison Ramirez to develop the score while the film was in early stages of production. Over the course of a few months I recorded the songs that became the complete original soundtrack.
James Forest Reid 