cs.washington.eduI am Associate Teaching Professor Emeritus in the Allen School where I have taught CSE/ECE 474, Introduction to Embedded Systems; CSE 466, Software for Embedded Systems; CSE 481i, Audio & Media Capstone; CSE 490s, Digital Sound Engineering; CSE 370, Introduction to Digital Design; CSE 467, Advanced Digital Design; CSE/ECE 475, Embedded Systems Capstone; and CSE 131, The Science and Art of Digital Photography.
I also supported digital design and embedded systems courses in CSE. These courses cover a wide range of integrated system design topics and include the use of hardware design and test equipment, computer-aided design (CAD) tools, and embedded systems development tools.
My current interests include:
--Exploring the relationship between audio and visual composition as a combined means of creative expression.
--The development of autonomous computer-music generators that will sense my mood from physiological indicators and produce music that I increasingly like.
Current musical compositions (post retirement)
Swarms Installation with Hugo Solis
The Blob controller from CSE 481i
2013 version of CSE 481i sound capstone
2014 version of CSE 481i sound capstone
My formal training was in music and philosophy, after which, as a lecturer and conductor at a midwestern university, I mystified undergraduates in music history, electronic music, and orchestra. After discovering that computers in the context of music performance don't play out of tune unless programmed to do so, I soon realized that computer programming and design was not only fun but could be made to pay. So, I left the hallowed halls of academe for a position with a consulting engineering firm, where I gained valuable experience on projects such as: a giant digital squirt gun used for injecting tenderizing enzymes into sides of beef; a digital flow-meter for the sewage-treatment industry, and a computerized poultry feeder designed to produce plump birds without feeding them to death.
Marriage and a migration to Seattle brought a position as Director of Research for a telecommunications firm, where I was responsible for the design of a computerized voice-recognition-based automatic telephone dialer for telemarketing use, thereby creating an unprecedented number of junk phone calls -- precisely timed to arrive during the evening meal. (There is no truth in the rumor that this was merely to create demand for my invention, heretofore undeveloped, of a device to block junk telemarketing calls.)
Realizing that the above telecommunications firm now needed blue-suited types instead of my type, I quit -- dumping my stock options -- and once again became a consultant. After a series of digital signal processing projects for various audio companies, I decided that the world really did need yet another audio company, so I co-founded a Seattle high-end digital audio firm in 1993. After pushing digital audio bits through DSPs for nine years and manufacturing audio gear for Hollywood, I decided enough really was enough and left to pursue other interests. That brought me back to mystifying undergraduates again.