Douglas McCausland is a composer / performer, sound designer, and digital artist fascinated with new aesthetic and technological domains, and whose visceral and often chaotic works explore the extremes of sound, technology, and the digital medium.

 

As an artist, he researches and leverages the intersections of numerous technologies and creative practices, such as real-time electronic music performance, purpose-built performance interfaces, spatial audio, interactive systems, intermedia art, musical applications of machine-learning, experimental sound design, and hardware-hacking.

 

Described as “Tremendously powerful, dark, and sometimes terrifying…” (SEAMUS) and “Ruthlessly visceral…” (The Wire), his works have been performed internationally, including features at Gray Area Festival, Sonorities Festival, WeSA Festival, SONDA Festival, the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, SEAMUS, ISMIR, MISE-EN Music Festival, Klingt Gut!, Sounds Like THIS!, NYCEMF, Sonicscape, and Ars Electronica.  Notable collaborations include bassist Aleksander Gabryś, cellist Seth Parker Woods, the Quasar Saxophone Quartet, the TAK Ensemble, and vocal ensemble Variant 6.  His work is available through various online platforms, on New Focus Recordings, Plyta Z Audiomatu, Jikken Records, and ex_log.records.

 

Notable honors include an award of distinction in the 2021 Prix Ars Electronica for his piece “Convergence”, winning 1st-Prize in the 2021 ASCAP/SEAMUS commission competition, the gold-prize award for “contemporary computer music” in the Verband Deutscher Tonmeister 3D Audio Production Competition, and being awarded an honorable mention for the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music's 2019 CIME Prix. 

 

Douglas is currently the Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) studio manager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  In addition he serves as a faculty lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and manages a small record label: ex_log.records.  He holds a DMA in music composition from Stanford University, where he studied with Chris Chafe, Patricia Alessandrini, Jaroslaw Kapuscinski, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, and Mark Applebaum.  He additionally holds a MSc in Digital Composition and Performance from the University of Edinburgh, a MM in Music Composition from Michigan State University, and a BM in Music Composition, Saxophone Performance, and Music Education from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.