DISCUSSION: Wed Oct 22th, 6PM @ Greene 101 >

“BLAST-OFF with Carla Leitao and Jonas Braasch”_

Professors Carla Leitao  and Dr. Jonas Braasch  will present information on their career paths, opportunities, outlook for the future, etc., in an informal setting (pizza will be served). There will be opportunities for discussion with a following question-answer session.

About the Participants

Carla Leitao is an architect and writer that lives and works in New York, USA and Lisbon, Portugal. She is the co-founder, with Ed Keller, of AUM Studio in NY and Umasideia in Lisbon. She has taught architecture studios and seminars in UPenn, Philadelphia, Pratt Institute, Cornell University and City College, NY; she has also co-taught at Columbia University, NY. Practice and academic endeavors focus on convergences of Urban Phenomena, Ubiquitous Cultures, Digital Communication and generation of political and cultural innovation. Publications include “4 Lines” (Akademie Schloss Solitude) and “City Fragments” (CBA). Projects include built and ongoing residential and institutional projects. Exhibitions and installations include “Suture” (SCI Arc and Tellic Gallery, LA), “True Romance” (Stuttgart, Germany) and Young Blood in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dr. Jonas Braasch is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he teaches in the Graduate Program in Architectural Acoustics. His research interests span binaural hearing, auditory modeling, multimodal integration, sensory substitution devices, aural architecture and creative processes in music improvisation. At RPI, he directs the Communication Acoustics and Aural Architecture Research Laboratory (CA^3 RL). He obtained a master’s degree from Dortmund University (Germany, 1998) in Physics and two PhD degrees from Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany (2001, 2004) in Electrical Engineering/Information Science and Musicology. His research interests include Binaural Hearing, Multi-channel Audio Technology, Telematic Music Systems, Perceptual Audio/Visual Integration, Intelligent Systems, and Musical Acoustics. For his work, he has received funding from NSF, NSERC, DFG (German Science Foundation), and NYSCA. As a soprano saxophonist and sound artist, he has worked with Curtis Bahn, Chris Chafe, Michael Century, Mark Dresser, Francisco Lopez, Pauline Oliveros, and Doug van Nort – among others. Jonas Braasch is an affiliated faculty member of RPI’s Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) and Board Member of the Deep Listening Institute (Kingston, NY).