| |
BIOGRAPHY Mika was born in San Francisco California in 1955, he ws raised in California and Nevada, has lived in Amsterdam and Helsinki. While living just outside of a small desert town in Nevada, he began his sound explorations: first playing with his grandfather's shortwave radios and, then, later on, in his early teens, playing a number of home made string and wind instruments, a sitar, and experimenting with prepared electric guitar using gum-wrappers and played with a violin bow and an electric razor.
From these early experiments Mika's improvisational/compositional reach was extended in the early to mid-1970s employing a modular synthesizer and tape loop echo machines in live electronic treatment of acoustic instruments (soprano saxophone, flute, voice, prepared fender-rhodes piano, and acoustic guitar primarily.)
He studied composition in university under Professor Vladimir Ussachevsky, and helped teach a graduate level electronic music composition seminar series and under-graduate computer music courses, while completing a Computer Science Degree. During this time Mika developed a probabilistic simulation of piano improvisation as the basis of an algorithmic composition system.
His current musical/sonic efforts center on emergent structures of improvisation from interactions between an ensemble of musicians and generative sound architectures and systems he constructs in MAX/MSP, PD (PureData) and other hardware/software elements .
In his bands Cartoon Justice, Bridge of Crows, v'Maa (Voi! Maa!), Feral Luggage, the Lingua Incognita Sessions and in other collaborative projects Mika melds free improv with structured song and experimental noise processes, and extra musical elements (including his own generative video sculptures.)
His new creative systems draw on his software research and development in Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Environment Simulations, and Complex Adaptive Systems. Mika has worked as a research scientist, a software developer, and a technical director and consultant on Interactive Television and A-Life Game products/projects.
|
|
