About
Although trained as a composer, Jacob Sundstrom’s work has branched out into several mediums and fields including new media, installation, and data-driven art. He is interested in exploiting idiosyncratic properties of mediums as a way to expose hidden and latent layers of meaning. His work focuses on the friction between and among medium, performer(s), and process: using the process against the performers, the process against the medium, the medium against the performers, and vice versa and so on. Out of this friction arises fascinating, beautiful, and often surprising results.
Sundstrom’s musical work has been performed by ensembles including Inverted Space, the JACK Quartet, and the Seattle Chamber Players. It has been performed or played in places as diverse as Radiophrenia in Scotland, art galleries and underground venues in Seattle, and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C). His visual work has been showcased by the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle, WA) and he was a featured artist at the Georgetown Art Attack Special Events at CoCA Un[contained] at Equinox Studios. His work has also been shown at the Behind the Static glitch art show at Erickson Clock (Atlanta, GA), the Daegu Art Factory (Daegu, South Korea), Piksel17 (Bergen, Norway), San Diego Art Institute (San Diego, CA), and at Common AREA Maintenance (Seattle, WA). As a visual artist, Sundstrom was profiled in the June 2016 issue of the Not Random Art Contemporary Art Review magazine.
As a researcher, he has helped develop brain-computer musical interfaces for use in performance settings and novel spatialization algorithms. His work has been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience and his spatial work in IEEE. For what it’s worth, he studied music and philosophy at the University of California, San Diego and music at the University of Washington. He is currently a PhD candidate in computer music at the University of California, San Diego and holds a studio at and is a board member of Space4Art. Outside of his creative pursuits, Jacob enjoys economics/finance (he is also a Data Scientist and Cryptoeconomic Researcher at Thrackle), going to bullfights on acid, and Type II fun.