About

WSH was founded by artist Wayne Jackson (Later Days) deep in the misty redwoods of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains in 1998, originally taking place annually in his backyard until 2001. In 2002, the festival relocated to the Quarry Amphitheatre at the University of California, Santa Cruz and then the UC Santa Cruz Recital Hall in 2003, before the festival returned to the mountains for the ill-fated, waterlogged and ultimately canceled 2007 show.

After a 15 year hiatus, Woodstockhausen returns resynthesized for its eighth edition of experimental music, synesthetic video and performance! This year resonating in the Western Catskills of New York (not too far from the home of the eponymous festival from which it takes part of its name).

Set on the grounds of a former dairy farm, WSH 2023 will take place on acres of meadows, mountains, wooded areas, organic flower & veggie gardens, streams, ponds, and barns. Artists and the public are invited to enjoy the idyllic landscape via on-site camping from Friday, July 7–Sunday, July 9 allowing for an open and relaxed environment that encourages rewarding exchange.

The festival provides an important showcase for both emerging and established artists from throughout the United States with sound, music, and audiovisual performances taking place all day Saturday, July 8 on our OUTDOOR stage with QUADRAPHONIC sound.

Team

Michael M. Flora, Lead Organizer
Michael is the lead organizer at Woodstockhausen. He is the founder and co-director of Nada, a platform for subversive musics and contemporary sound works. In 2019, he was a co-organizer for the In Situ: Festival for Electronic Music and Sound Art in Minneapolis, MN. Since 2021, Michael has assisted in curation of projects at Indexical in Santa Cruz, CA, including the two day mini-festival of contemporary electronic music Sound, Systems and Psychoacoustics.

S. Wayne Jackson, Co-organizer
Wayne founded Woodstockhausen in 1998 with the gracious collaboration of other engineers and performing artists at E-mu Systems, including Jean-Marc Jot. The first several iterations of this event were held in his Boulder Creek, California backyard, and were a relaxed showcase for new electronic music and video art innovations.  In addition to Woodstockhausen, Wayne was instrumental in organizing Electron Salon, µHausen, and various performance events around the larger Santa Cruz area. Professionally he is an audio software engineer with 20+ years of Pro Audio and embedded development experience, currently a senior software engineer at Google acting as feature lead for future Hearables projects, as well as owner/operator of his own augmented creativity tools company, Darwin Arts.

Agnieszka Roginska, Co-organizer
Agnieszka Roginska is a Professor of Music Technology at New York University. She conducts research in the simulation and applications of immersive and 3D audio including the capture, analysis and synthesis of auditory environments. Applications of her work include AR/VR/XR, gaming, mission critical, and augmented acoustic sensing. She is the author of numerous publications on the topics of acoustics and psychoacoustics of immersive audio. Agnieszka is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and a Past-President of the AES. She is the faculty sponsor of the Society for Women in TeCHnology (SWiTCH) at NYU.

Paul Geluso, Co-organizer
Paul Geluso is a New York based educator, sound engineer, and musician. Frequently collaborating with artists who use sound as a creative medium, he has performed, and composed electro-acoustic music as well as designed unique 3D sound systems that have been exhibited at major art institutions and performance venues internationally. He has worked professionally in many areas of sound and music production being credited as engineer, producer, composer, and musician on hundreds of commercial releases including Grammy and Latin Grammy nominated recordings.  Geluso holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music Technology and is currently the program director for the  Music Technology program at New York University and is also the studio director at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts.

Jean-Marc Jot, Co-organizer
Jean-Marc is based in the Santa Cruz area and a long-time co-conspirator in local experimental music performance events and initiatives, most recently as a member of the Board of Directors for the non-profit Indexical.  He has been active in the audio and music technology industry as a research and development organization and project leader in the US, and previously in Paris where he created the initial incarnation of IRCAM’s sound spatialization software suite Spat~.  Recently, he founded Virtuel Works to help accelerate the development and deployment of audio and music technologies that will power our future immersive experiences.