Eric Somers received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Michigan State University where he principally studied media production, theatrical design and directing, mathematical logic and music.

Always interested in fine arts and especially in the relationship of sound to visual experience, he worked as a fine arts television producer, especially for classical music broadcasts and art documentaries, on programs shown regionally and nationally.  His M.A. thesis dealt with the problems of showing paintings effectively on television.

Because of his logic background he also became a pioneer in computer and electronic arts, first working with electronic animation in 1969 and electronic music in 1972.  His early work was exhibited widely and ultimately led also to a career in advertising where he won thirteen regional and national awards. He became interested in interactive media in 1978 and worked as a commercial software developer in the early 1980s.

Eric Somers has also spent a considerable portion of his life as an educator, principally at Creighton University, The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, Valdosta State University, and currently at Dutchess Community College of the State University of New York where he chaired the Department of Performing and Visual Arts for 15 years. 

He has also presented workshops and master classes at the Banff Centre for the Arts,  The University of Glasgow (Scotland), The Juilliard School (New York), the University of Illinois, The Storm King Music Festival, The University of Iowa, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and other venues.  He has authored and presented papers at conferences held at a variety of institutions including Dartmouth College, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the Georgia Centers for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT), the Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) center (Kyoto, Japan), the Royal Swedish Academy of Music (Stockholm), etc.

Actively involved in research and scholarship related to both sound and the visual arts, Professor Somers has served as President of the International Community for Auditory Display, Senior Newsletter Editor for the Society for Electronic Music in the United States, President of the Museum for Preservation of Illustrative Art, Chair of the New York Section of the Audio Engineering Society, and as a board member of a number of arts and technology organizations.

At Dutchess Professor Somers teaches courses in sound recording, digital and traditional photography, electronic music composition, video production, interactive media, and animation.

He also runs a small media design practice, The Sandbook Studio, which specializes in media production for the fine arts: classical music sound recording, video documentation of dance and theatre, sound design for theatre and dance, and digital photographic imaging.

artist's statement

For my entire career I have been concerned with the relationship of sound experience to visual experience. This began with my college education in cinema/video/audio design. MY MA thesis dealt with the problems of showing paintings on television and showed how sound could be used to create an atmosphere of visual understanding. Later, as a classical music producer for network television I was faced with the opposite situation, making music more understandable through skillful visualization.

Much of my graduate work was in the area of scene design, essentially a visual art, though my special interest was in design for opera. As a designer I had greater interest in abstract staging than in naturalistic staging. I believed that the designer should provide a “skeleton” which would be “filled out” as it were by actors, music and script. This philosophy is carried out in my sound art. What I produce is neither music, in a structured sense, nor “sound effects” in the literal sense, but an abstract sound environment.

In the 1970s I worked at a university that had a television studio, but not good cameras. I thought that if one could produce television with cameras I would be fine. This led me into the fields of video art and computer animation. I received a grant to do an experimental project at the Computer Image Corporation in Denver, CO. I went on to develop equipment of my own to create abstract visual imagery on videotape. At the same time I began to explore electronic music as a way of creating abstract sound structures for video art.

My work in designing electronic sound and image led to exhibitions and guest lecturing throughout the US and Canada and resulted in teaching what may have been the first college level course in video art, “Television and Abstract Art,” at Creighton University.

My current style of sound art evolved from an experience I had in 1980. I was a speaker at the National Computer Conference in Anaheim, CA. After the conference my wife and I drove to Beverly Hills. On the way we stopped at Marina Del Ray for lunch. It was a windy day and as I stepped out of the car I heard an incredible sound engulfing me. There were hundreds of sailboats moored, each with an aluminum mast. The lines hitting the masts produced an incredible sound - - part random, very minimal, and completely engaging. I said to my wife, “Theatre should sound like this.”

I did not initially know where to take my new found ideas and experience, but in a few years music technology caught up with the computers and that led me into MIDI sequencing, digital synthesis and, most important, algorithmic sound composition. Most music is through-composed, meaning that the composer has dictated all of the notes for all of the parts, In algorithmic composition, a process is created on the computer. That process is used to generate sonic (quasi musical) structures. This sound art tends to be more abstract and leads less to “tunes” which often shift the focus of the sound from environment to music.

Once I acquired the tools and training for algorithmic composition (having taken master classes in electro-acoustic composition from Joel Chadabe, Pierre Boulez, and Luciano Berio) I realized that my focus on scene design should shift from visual scene design to sonic scene design. Thus I began creating algorithmic sound composition for theatre pieces (with Ann Wilson, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and others), videos (“The Awakened Eye,” “Agnes Martin at 90,” and others), and art installations (“Stag in a Boat,” “Patinae of Memory,” etc.).

My work from 1990 to the present has led me to four core beliefs in sound for visual environments:

1. Sound should be abstract so that the content is emotional, not literal.
2. Abstract sound is best produced by creating sound from “electricity” (synthesized sound) rather than by using real life sounds.
3. Sound for theatre must work with the spoken voice.
4. Sound permits simultaneity not possible in visual art.

The technique I use in creating my sound art is non-architectonic and algorithmic.

Traditional classical music, in the tradition of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Bartok, et. Al., is architectonic in nature. It is a complex formal structure not unlike that used in constructing a building. Each component has been designed by the composer to fit into the total structure in a way that each component of a building is designed by the architect to fit into the overall structure in a certain way.

Starting in the 20th century, some composers shifted away from architectonic music. John Cage used the random numbers generated by the I-Ching to select notes for his compositions. Karlheinz Stockhausen and others started adding aleatoric elements in music, like the ones I heard in Marina Del Rey. This kind of sound is more related to the sounds of the natural world and thus better suited, in my view, to creating sonic environments for visual experience.

The technique I use is to create a structure on the computer to generate the controlled randomness of the final composition. I synthesize sounds to use as content (like the sailboat and lines at Marina Del Rey) and create computer structures to act as the “wind” to activate the sound objects in a controlled random way.

After the basic sound structures are created, I edit, mix and modify the sounds using multi-track sound mixing software.

In the submitted piece, “Entrance to the Cave,” I created sound objects that might reflect, in an abstracted way, the sounds and feeling one may encounter on entering an ancient cave. Some sounds suggest (in an abstract way) “dripping” and “wind,” while others seem to represent one’s internal fears and the “ghosts” of early inhabitants of the cave who might have left cave drawings or other signs.

The text composition, written by the performance artist, Ann Wilson (who is also the female reader), provides the literal framework which the abstract sound composition supports.