Bio

Jesse Stiles (b. 1978, Boston, MA) is a new media artist, composer/musician, and designer of electronic instruments. Through the adaptive misuse of emerging digital technologies, Stiles creates works that are entertaining, disorienting, immersive, and transformative. Stiles’ performances and generative installation work engage with and deconstruct a number of populist formats including electronic music, cinema, and the “light show” – pushing these mediums into realms both sublime and subliminal.

Stiles has exhibited and performed at nationally and internationally recognized institutions including Carnegie Hall, Ars Electronica, Lincoln Center, Eyebeam, The Park Avenue Armory, and the American Land Museum.  His first solo gallery show, "Automatic Speleology," was at The Warehouse Gallery in Syracuse, NY in 2010.  Stiles has produced a number of site-specific performances in unconventional sites such as “Topics in Advanced Facemelting,” a light and sound performance in one of the United States’ few remaining gasholder buildings (Troy, NY), and “Deja Rendez Vous” a performance on a floating video stage adrift in the Buffalo Bayou (Houston, TX). In 2000, Stiles was awarded the Watson Fellowship, a one year grant, which enabled him to travel around the world creating electronic music, a project which culminated in the album, “Watson Songs.” Stiles' recordings have been published by Conrex Records, Specific Recordings, and Gagarin Records.

Stiles has worked as a sound designer and composer on a wide variety of IMAX films, feature films, touring exhibitions, and experimental video works. He has led courses, lectures and workshops on composition, sound design, and software design at universities and colleges including NYU, Carnegie Mellon University, The New School, Princeton, and the Massachusetts College of Art.  Stiles holds a BA in Cognitive Science from Vassar College and a MFA in Integrated Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

In 2010 Stiles was hired as the Sound Engineer & Music Coordinator for the the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.  Working with the company during their precedent-setting "Legacy Tour," he produced and performed in concerts featuring the works of many leading figures of the 20th and 21st century - including John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, and John Paul Jones.  Stiles' compositions were featured in many of the company's site-specific "Event" performances.  

Jesse Stiles resides in Baltimore, MD.

Jesse Stiles' CV is available here.