Ivica Ico Bukvic, D.M.A.
Composition, Music Technology
Director, DISIS Interactive Sound & Intermedia Studio
Assistant Co-Director, CCTAD
CHCI, CS, and Art (by courtesy)
Virginia Tech
Department of Music
Blacksburg, VA 24061-0240
(540) 231-6139
(540) 231-5034 (fax)
ico.bukvic.net*

So, here you are, sitting in front of a noisy box of transistors surfing the Net and then, as if things could not get any more suspensful, you stumble across this page. Awesome! Now what? Well, if you are here to learn more about me and my work, this is your lucky day...

About me
I like to think of myself as a composer, intermedia sculptor, researcher, and performer. My creations draw upon synergies among aural and visual, acoustic and electronic, interactive works and installations, while my research focuses on scientific exploration of pragmatic and artistic potential of new multimedia technologies in a pursuit of the overall betterment of quality of life. If I had to name one thing that ties all of my ostensibly eclectic creations and research vectors together, it would have to be the ubiquitous interactivity. I am currently working at Virginia Tech (VT) as an assistant professor in music composition & technology, founder and director of the new Digital Interactive Sound and Intermedia Studio (DISIS) and world's first Linux Laptop Orchestra (L2Ork), co-director and faculty in the new Collaborative for Creative Technologies in the Arts and Design (CCTAD) interdisciplinary program, as the first non-CS member of VT's Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI), and as a faculty (by courtesy) in departments of Computer Science and Art & Art History. Unless all this tongue-twisting verbiage has already put you to sleep, please feel free to investigate some of my creations and/or services below.

So what do I have to offer?
• Interactive multimedia art and electroacoustic composition (performance-based, installations)
• Interactive systems, interfaces, modules, information frameworks
• Interactive technology research and development
• Soundtracks and Sound Effects

Philosophy
My portfolio suggests a jack-of-all-trades approach. Well, isn't that a bad idea?

The recent proliferation of affordable technologies has generated a momentum challenging the very walls that have divided artistic genres for centuries. A contemporary multimedia artist simply cannot afford to overlook these exciting opportunities for growth. More so, by facilitating literacy in utilizing the newfound technologies while maintaining awareness of the ongoing advances in the arts and sciences, one can expand their vocabulary into other domains and by doing so attain greater sensitivity to mapping of gestures and variables across mediums. This is especially important as such an approach trains indviduals to be more receptive, open-minded, sensitive to other mediums, and ultimately easier to collaborate with.

How many times did you encounter a beautiful visual work of art that has absolutely horrendous loopy tune or an engaging musical performance with distracting visuals? Why is this so? Consider for a moment an artist and a scientist. Their approaches to creative process are in effect diametrically opposed (not that either of them is better or worse). An artist imagines a set of abstract rules that guide creation of a shape and ultimately a structure we refer to as art. This art is judged in many different ways, most commonly through individual taste, and as a result its impact is unique to each individual. A scientist uses concrete and/or reproducible rules to study a particular phenomenon while their creative process consists of mathematically and/or statistically predescribed steps. These steps are critical in producing a study that can stand the scrutiny of peers and therefore deliver for the most part uniform impact on every individual. Because students are commonly trained to stick closely to these approaches, we often find science students who have a hard time understanding arts, and artists who dread math. With the jack-of-all-trades approach coupled by an appropriate foundation, we are now able to marry these and other professions within a reasonable span of time and without sacrificing their depth, thus producing scientists and engineers who can engage in abstract creative endeavors with ease as well as artists capable of generating compelling interactive multimedia art.

So, is jack-of-all-trades the way of the 21st century? I am obviously not in position to make such claims, but I sure hope so.

All right, talk is cheap. So, let us do some walking...

Portfolio
My Art (and some more here and here). DISIS YouTube channel with footage of performances, installations, and tech demos, including works of my students.

My blog/board/whatever junkyard (WARNING: orange barrel bonanza area**). Here you'll also find info on various goodies, including Max & Pd goodies, RTMix, Soundmesh, SPiDSiG, Borealis sound and superkaramba themes, Shaders Ahoy! GLSL collection, latest research developments and papers, conference slides etc.

My cumulative CV (last updated January 2010) and VT-formatted CV (January 2006-present).

Additional goodies in PDF format (grants, publications, syllabi, conference slides, descriptions of works) available here.

What would an artist be without a critic?

My "official" VT faculty page with a bio, and more good ole' links'n'stuff.

Contact me.

*This hyperlink has been redundantly stated here as an example of a benign infinite recursion in the world o' wide web.
**As of 4-23-06 message board has been updated and tested to be up to 99.9% functional, which I guess would in effect make it a "perpetual Beta" according to Google, "SP4" according to Microsoft, "Cheetuh" or some other misspelled furry cat according to Apple, or simply "1337" according to Linux ;-).

Last updated on 03/05/2010 03:53:23.