Rachel Devorah Wood Rome

Assistant Professor

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Rachel Devorah Wood Rome practices improvisation with bespoke electronics, both analog and digital, and with French horn, her mother tongue. Sometimes she puts notes on a page.

She is interested in superhuman prolongation, opaque complexity, the re-signification of archaic tools and materials, and parallels between the physical properties and social meanings of spaces. She creates aural, and sometimes also visual, structures that seek to reveal and reframe habits of auto-echolocation, situating one’s self with/in/among sound/space/time. She values machines for their patience. Her research and teaching practices amplify critical agency in the use and design of sonic media.

Career Highlights
  • Collaborations with JACK quartet, Robbie Lee, Roscoe Mitchell, Liew Niyomkarn, Yarn/Wire, and the William Winant Ensemble.
  • Published writings on art and social power in Emergency Index, Feminist Media Histories, and Parallax.
Awards
  • Recipient of the Ruth Anderson Installation Prize from the International Alliance of Women in Music
  • Recipient of the New Music USA grant
  • Recipient of fellowships from the Adrian Piper Foundation in Berlin, Germany; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenDocLab in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia; Ina GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris, France; and the New Museum in New York, New York
  • Residencies at EMS, Stockholm; STEIM, Amsterdam; and MassMoCA
     
In Their Own Words

"Technology is magic, but it is not mysterious or scary."

"New media for sonic expression are constantly emerging in the 21st century. An education in creative technologies should give you more than specific technical skills; it should give you an imagination for the new."