Professor Federico Reuben
Professor of Music and Creative Technologies

Profile

Biography

I am an internationally recognised composer, live electronics performer and sound artist working in practice research across music and creative technologies. My work brings together composition, improvisation, performance, sound art and technological development, and is strongly cross- and interdisciplinary, connecting music with computer science, interactive media, psychology, philosophy, education and the creative arts.

I have developed an extensive body of original work spanning compositions, improvisations, performances, recordings, scores, installations, new technologies and written publications. My research advances knowledge and practice across contemporary music, improvised and jazz music, intermedia and computational arts, and immersive and interactive media. It addresses complex problems in AI for automatic music generation and live performance; interactive and algorithmic music systems; human–computer co-creativity and improvisation; telematic and distributed performance; and interactive sound and multimedia installation. I am particularly interested in under-explored creative applications of emerging technologies, including neural audio synthesis in live performance, symbolic music generation, data-driven computer-assisted composition, laptop improvisation and live coding, interactive synthesis and processing, and telematic composition in latency-rich environments.

My practice research is grounded in an extensive international career as a composer, live electronics performer and sound artist. I have received commissions for instrumental, vocal and mixed-media works for internationally recognised ensembles and performers including Ensemble MAE, Ensemble Klang, Mark Knoop, Loré Lixenberg, Rei Nakamura, RIAM Percussion Ensemble, Roentgen Connection, Sarah Nicolls and Piano Circus.

I am also a dedicated laptop improviser and live electronics performer, and have played with internationally recognised improvisers including Phil Minton, Elliott Sharp, Ingrid Laubrock, John Edwards, Mark Sanders, Rachel Musson, Alexander Hawkins, Steve Noble, Aleksander Kolkowski and the London Improvisers Orchestra. Recent group projects include Sveið with James Mainwaring and Emil Karlsen; Xatarata with Paulina Owczarek; Perro- chimp with Javier Carmona; Cranky Ego with Carmona and Owczarek; and a quartet with Mark Hanslip, Paul Hession and Dominic Lash.

My work has been presented, performed and broadcast worldwide and featured at leading music and art festivals. My recordings have been released internationally by labels including 577 Records, BEAD, Antenna Non Grata, Birmingham Record Company and Squib-box.

Cross-arts collaboration is also central to my practice. As a sound artist, I have worked with artists including Stelarc, Trisha Donnelly, Rachel Rose and Bruce McLean, with projects presented by the Serpentine Galleries, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum and the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art.

I am also co-founder of squib-box, an artist-led organisation and netlabel promoting avant-garde music and interdisciplinary performance. With squib-box, I have organised and performed at live events around the world with leading musicians, artists and performers from a range of disciplines.

I studied composition at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague with Louis Andriessen, Richard Ayres, Gilius van Bergeijk and Martijn Padding, alongside human–computer interaction, digital signal processing and algorithmic composition at the Institute of Sonology. I completed my PhD in Music Composition and Technology at Brunel University under the supervision of Richard Barrett and Christopher Fox. Before joining the University of York, I was Senior Lecturer and Course Leader in Creative Music Technology at Falmouth University. I joined York in 2015 and was promoted to Professor of Music and Creative Technologies in 2026.

Research

Overview

My research sits at the intersection of practice research and interdisciplinary approaches to music and creative technologies. I am particularly interested in supervising PhD proposals involving:

• Music and Artificial Intelligence
• Composition and live electronics
• Improvisation and human–computer co-creativity
• Interactive and algorithmic music systems
• Neural audio synthesis and AI in live performance
• Symbolic music generation and computer-assisted composition
• Laptop improvisation and live coding
• Telematic and distributed performance
• Sound art and interactive and multimedia installation
• Intermedia, computational and immersive arts
• Cross-arts collaboration

I particularly welcome interdisciplinary research projects combining strong creative practice with technological development, including projects across music, computer science, interactive media, psychology, philosophy and the creative arts.

Other research projects

I was Co-Investigator on the AHRC network Datasounds, Datasets, Datasense: Unboxing the hidden layers between musical data, knowledge and creativity, which brought together international expertise in AI and machine learning, HCI, engineering, psychology, composition and musicology. I was Principal Investigator on a URP Strategic Capital award for the development of York's Music AI and Interaction Lab, and Co-Investigator on a URP Research Priming Fund project that supported the development of the York Music Psychology Lab.

A longstanding strand of my research concerns telematic performance. Through the AHRC-funded Online Orchestra, I developed latency-stabilising technology for distributed large-ensemble music-making that was subsequently patented internationally. The research resulted in compositions, performances, publications and educational and community activity, and formed part of a REF2021 impact case study.

Supervision

Current PhD students

• Alex MacKay (WRoCAH) — contemporary electronic music, DIY cultures and research institutions
• Erin Robinson (iGGi, Computer Science) — AI and interactive installations. Winner of Ars Electronica Award of Distinction 2025.
• Daniel Saleeb (WRoCAH) — analogy and algorithmic strategies in computer-aided composition
• Chenyu Gao (China Scholarship Council) — deep learning and symbolic variation for video game music
• Jethro Bagust — modular synthesis and stochastic compositional processes
• Ben Eyes — mechanical, analogue and digital audio systems

PhD students supervised to completion

• Fintan O’Hare (2026). Human and synthesised speech structures: compositional approaches to analysis, generative methods and musical transformation. Funded by WRoCAH.
• Loré Lixenberg (2025). Opera is dead, long live APPERA!: A portfolio of voice and music-theatre works and experiments. Funded by Sir Jack Lyons Scholarship.
• Mark Hanslip (2023). Applications of Discriminative, Generative and Predictive Deep Learning Processes to Solo Saxophone Practice. Funded by WRoCAH.
• Gaia Blandina (2023). Collages and inventories, patatoilets and tents; a portfolio of sound art works and radiophonic essays.
• Lynette Quek (2023). Interloops in audiovisual works. Visions Award.
• Zongyu Yin (2022). Evaluation of automatic music generation on originality, musical dimensions and correlated features. Funded by China Scholarship Council. Co-supervised with Tom Collins and Susan Stepney. KM Stott Prize, Computer Science.
• Elena Alekseeva (2022). Interdisciplinary Portfolio of Compositions: Exploration of Movement and Modes of Collaboration in Screendance, Games and VR Media. Co-supervised with Timothy Summers, Royal Holloway.
• Jack McNeil Adams (2020). Articulating the Dancefloor: Examining site, interaction, and participation in club culture through interdisciplinary creative practice.
• Shu Yu Lin (2020). Portfolio of compositions and written commentary: Integration of acoustic and computer-generated sounds in mixed-media contemporary concert music through sonic interaction using serial and microsonic techniques. Co-supervised with Roger Marsh. Funded by an Overseas Research Scholarship.
• Richard Evans (2019). Analysing and Designing Dynamic Music Systems for Games. Co-supervised with Martin Suckling.

Publications

Full publications list

View Federico Reuben's full publications list on the York Research Database.