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FACULTY & STAFF DIRECTORY

Stewart Blackwood

Assistant Professor of Composition and Sound Design


Stewart Blackwood is a composer, sound designer, and creative coder. He holds an MFA in Theatrical Sound Design and Technology from UC San Diego.


Stewart was an Audio Experience Engineer at the spatial audio tech startup, Boomcloud360, for one and half years. During his tenure, he developed a bespoke spectral analysis toolset, tuned the audio profiles of various consumer devices, and created novel headphone-based spatial audio filter generation technology.

​His work utilizes spatial & immersive audio, video game engines in unconventional ways, live coding, and interactivity in performance.

In his compositions he blends digital synthesis, studio and field recording, and effect processing to evoke original tonalities and specific emotions. He often experiments with different modalities of composing, thinking that the starting point is often the driving factor in a composition.

In his sound scores, he creates atmospheric soundscapes, interactive elements, and delicate audio spatialization. Often using bespoke software created in Max/MSP, Pure Data, or the JUCE SDK. Some of this software is free on the internet, and can be found under the tools & research tab.

Places his sound, music, creative code has been experienced: Center Theatre Group, Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State, Cleveland Play House, Island Shakespeare FestivalCygnet Theater, Hangar Theatre, Black Lives Black Words, Kent State University, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, Factory of Terror, Rubber City Theater, Black Squirrel Radio, UC San Diego.