Dr. Stephanie Vasko is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. She works with sound (field recordings, virtual synthesis, hardware synthesis), circuit bending, sculpture, video, photography, and extended reality. Her work explores warping perceptions and creating mashups of cutting-edge and obsolete technologies.
Dr. Vasko was the guest artist for Bleep / Blorp 2022. As guest artist, she delivered the festival’s keynote lecture, “Synthesizing the Sound of Space.” This lecture chronicled Vasko’s digital humanities project of the same name. The project explored how the development of the silicon transistor has shaped the ways in which the sounds of space are recorded and created. Initial work during the pilot year of this project focused on archival and online research, creating a beta version of a website, and developing an open-source lesson plan to teach about how to synthesize your own space sounds. This keynote covered an introduction to this project and deep dive into the sound creation activity, including addressing accessibility concerns, sound samples, and a tools/platforms comparison. Her performance, Layers, at the end of the Bleep/Blorp 2022 featured patches created using VCV Rack, sound samples, and tape loops.
Dr. Vasko was scheduled to perform her work “Ghosts” at Bleep/Blorp 2024. Unfortunately due to an injury she was not able to attend. Hopefully she’ll return for a future Bleep/Blorp. You can check out her work on her Instagram page, as well as by checking out the videos below.
Anxiety: A VCV Rack and Tape Loop Performance:
Bleep / Blorp 2022: Performance Excerpt: