Ryan Page Image

Image by Matthew Galvin

Ryan Page

Assistant Professor

For media inquiries, please contact Media Relations

Ryan Page is an electronic music composer. He holds a Ph.D. in digital media (UCSC), an M.F.A. in electronic music (Mills College) and a B.A. in new media (University of Maine). Their work focuses on human interaction with technology, particularly the limitations and biases of communications media and the simulation of these qualities in music production tools. He has performed with and assisted composers such as Laetitia Sonami, David Dunn, Trimpin, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Joel Chadabe, Rhys Chatham, Ikue Mori, Anna Friz, and many others. His M.F.A. thesis, "Ideology as Material Force received the Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award," and his Ph.D. dissertation, "Simulated Mediation: A Sonic History of Mediation, Affect and Digital Aesthetics," earned him the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Scholarship.

In 2017 they created Repairer of Reputations, a project aimed at exploring the relationship between deprecated communications technologies and electronic music. Repairer of Reputations has produced film scores, video game soundtracks, short films, and a modular synthesizer. In 2019, he founded the software and hardware synthesis company Magus Instrumentalis with David Kant, Madison Heying, and Mustafa Walker. More recently, his composition "Pressing My Ear Against the Fourth Wall" was featured in the exhibition What Is an Image? hosted by the International Visual Sociology Association.

Career Highlights
  • Lecturer in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Performed with, engineered for, or assisted sound artists and composers such as David Dunn, Laetitia Sonami, Alvin Lucier, Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Trimpin, Anna Friz, Rhys Chatham, Ikue Mori, and many others
  • Founder and principle member of Repairer of Reputations
  • Audio artist for The Sims 4: Get Famous expansion pack for Electronic Arts/Maxis
  • Engineer of audio/visual interactive exhibits for the Color of Life exhibit, among others, at the California Academy of Sciences
  • Prototype instrument construction and testing for Keith McMillen Instruments
Awards
  • Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Scholarship
  • Santa Cruz Arts Council Grant "Call for Scores/Fall Program Series"
  • Frog Peak Collective Experimental Music Award
In Their Own Words

"I would like my students to better understand why they are using a particular technique, or employing a particular technology, rather than simply learning how to use it. An understanding of the philosophy, social conditions, and personalities that produce technology, especially musical technologies, can help students gain a greater insight into how musicians have brought these technologies into musical use. I want to provide my students with a solid foundation of the technical underpinnings of various software and hardware, so that they can work creatively with the limitations of a given technology or push beyond them."