Roger Thornton Dean

Roles:
Author, Reviewer

Affiliation:
MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, University of Western Sydney

Country:
Australia

Biography

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Roger Dean is a composer/improviser, and since 2007 a research professor in music cognition/ computation at the MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University. His research folds into his creative work, currently particularly by means of deep learning computational models. He founded and directs the ensemble austraLYSIS, which has appeared in 30 countries. He has performed as bassist, pianist, piano accompanist and laptop computer artist in many contexts, from the Academy of Ancient Music to the London Sinfonietta, and from Graham Collier Music (leading European jazz group) to duetting with Derek Bailey and Evan Parker. About 70 commercial recordings and numerous online digital intermedia pieces represent his creative work, and he has published more than 300 journal articles. Current research concerns improvisation and computational creativity, affect, roles of acoustic intensity and timbre, and rhythm generation and perception. With Hazel Smith and Will Luers, he won the 2018 international Robert Coover prize for a work of electronic literature. Currently austraLYSIS is preparing a duo album, of sound and intermedia, featuring diverse pairings: such as human/computer, human/environment, text/improviser, image/improviser.  Prior to 2007, he was a full professor of biochemistry in the UK, foundation CEO/Director of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, researching on atherosclerosis, and then Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra.