Derek Hoffend is a visual and audio artist who creates interactive sound-sculpture installations and electronic music, exploring sound as a medium intersecting with physical forms, structures, bodies, and spaces to create immersive and participatory experiences for viewers. Fusing elements of sonic, electronic, digital and physical media, his work combines acoustic, recorded, and generative audio processes with objects and environments, and emphasizes relationships between sensory phenomena and perception.
Ongoing themes of interest include explorations in immersive audio, multi-channel arrangements, geometric architectural forms, tactile interfaces, vibro-acoustics, viewer participation, resonant objects and amplified spaces. Recent work additionally explores an interest in biometric sensing, and therapeutic potentials of audio frequencies, rhythmic entrainment, and colored light. Hoffend also maintains an active music practice, recording and performing electronic music under the moniker Aether Chroma as well as his own name.
Recent shows include music performances at the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science (Boston, MA), Mayday (Providence, RI), the New England Synthesizer Festival (Burlington, MA), and Modular on the Spot (Somerville, MA), and art installations at the New Bedford Art Museum (New Bedford, MA), the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA), Boston Cyberarts (Boston, MA), and The Sprinkler Factory (Worcester, MA).
Aether Chroma music is released at www.aetherchroma.com
Derek holds an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2004), an MA in Studio Art from New York University (2001), and a BFA dual-major in Sculpture and Photography from Fredonia University (1997). He is currently Director and Professor of the Game Design & Immersive Technologies program at Lesley University (Cambridge, MA), and Adjunct Faculty in Animation the Massachusetts College of Art & Design (Boston, MA).