MISSION


ABOUT CNMAT:

The Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (CNMAT) houses a dynamic group of educational, performance, and research programs focused on multidisciplinary research and the creative use of sound. CNMAT combines technical and science-based research with a humanistic critical-making perspective that focus on practical investigations into new music creation, sound, and data applications for music. The Center merges the laboratory and the stage to extend the boundaries of present-day music-making.

CNMAT invites diverse communities of composers, artists, researchers, engineers, scientists, faculty, students, staff, and the public to participate in the activities at the center. Our legacy, emerging digital tools, and publications are freely shared with composers, musicians, and researchers throughout the world. CNMAT produces numerous concerts, lectures, and symposia open to the public. The ECO Ensemble, a leading Bay Area new music ensemble is in permanent residence at the CNMAT.

CNMAT partners closely with the Department of Music and provides free and open software that fuels the current undergraduate music and technology curriculum. CNMAT further collaborates with several affiliate departments, presenters, and units on campus, including the Department of Art Practice, the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, the Department of Film and Media, the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, the College of Environmental Design, the Arts Research Center, the School of Information, the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Berkeley Institute of Design, Berkeley Arts and Design, the Berkeley Center for New Media, BAM/PFA, Cal Performances, and the Magness Collection of Jewish Art and Life. In 2024, CNMAT initiated a new program in Undergraduate Research that invites students who have completed several courses to join in active research at CNMAT.

Since accepting the Directorship of CNMAT in 2014, Professor Campion has focused on inclusion and the broadening of relationships between people, machines, and all the arts. Regarding the general working model at CNMAT Professor Campion explains, “We explore and create emerging technologies in parallel with the creation and performance of new music. This approach reveals technical issues and new ways of thinking about technology in direct relation to music-making. Concurrently, Professor Carmine Cella, a composer, and mathematician, oversees music sciences at CNMAT as the Lead Researcher, facilitating science-oriented research endeavors and assisting in the publication of technical research papers. The results are always shared on GitHub or in the Max Packages Manager. Recent advances include the visual metronome by the Technical Director at CNMAT, Jeremy Wagner.”

HISTORY:

The UC Berkeley Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) was conceived and established by composer and Professor Emeritus Richard Felciano in the late 1980s. Professor David Wessel (1942-2014) served as Director of CNMAT from 1988 until 2005 where CNMAT established its international reputation including several hundred juried publications and widely used digital tools and protocols. In 2005.

Adrian Freed served as Research Director from 1989 until 2016 where he organized an ambitious research agenda that produced concrete, practical developments in music-related technologies, including widely adopted innovations such as Open Sound Control (OSC), the Sound Description Interchange Format (SDIF), the CNMAT tools for Max/MSP, and the cross-platform odot programming objects.

Richard Andrews served as Associate Director from 1996 to 2021 where he managed key industrial affiliate relationships including a long-standing partnership with Gibson Guitar.

In the mid-’90s, the team expanded to include Musical Applications Programmer Matthew Wright, and Professor Edmund Campion was appointed the Co-Director at CNMAT in 2005 and assumed the directorship in 2014. Over the years, CNMAT staff including John MacCallum, Jeff Lubow, and Jeremy Wagner have continued to contribute important and lasting contributions. 

In 2018, the Department of Music and CNMAT welcomed Professor Carmine Cella who is now lead for the Music Sciences at CNMAT.


DIRECTORSHIP AND STAFF (2023)

  • Edmund Campion, Faculty Director, Professor, Department of Music  <campion(at)berkeley(dot)edu>
  • Carmine Emanuele Cella, Lead Researcher, Assistant Professor, Department of Music  <carmine.cella(at)berkeley(dot)edu>
  • Jeremy Wagner, Technical Director, Researcher, Composer, Lecturer and Audio Engineer <jeremy.wagner(at)berkeley(dot)edu>
  • Jeremy Hunt, Acting Associate Director <manager-cnmat(at)berkeley(dot)edu>

  • OUTREACH

    CNMAT's events program offers a range of concerts, lectures and workshops informed by our research and pedagogical efforts. In our Sound Spatialization Theater, we present concerts that cross cultural and musical barriers and provide a forum for diverse lectures and demonstrations for students, faculty and the community.


    PEDAGOGY

    CNMAT supports the Department of Music with a full curriculum in Music and Technology based on over twenty-five years of research and development.  We also offer an ongoing series of workshops and residencies open to the public.  CNMAT does not offer any specific degree program, either undergraduate or graduate, in the area of music and technology -- prospective graduate students apply directly to the music composition program in the Department of Music.


    Students interested in joining with research teams at CNMAT begin by taking the course Music 158A or Music 159.

    Full list of CNMAT-related courses and descriptions


    VISITING SCHOLARS AND RESEARCHERS

    CNMAT accepts proposals from visiting scholars, composers, and researchers at any time during the year. 


    CNMAT INDUSTRIAL AFFILIATES PROGRAM

    Industrial and organizational support plays an important role in maintaining
    the quality of research at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies
    (CNMAT) at the University of California at Berkeley.


    LINK TO THE CNMAT INDUSTRIAL AFFILIATES PROGRAM


    Address

    1750 Arch Street
    Berkeley, California
    94720
    U.S.A


    Phone Number

     +1 (510) 643-9990


    Coordinates


     -122.264213, 37.876795



    Administrative Contact


    Jeremy Hunt <manager-cnmat(at)berkeley(dot)edu>



    Directions to CNMAT: