Three members of the Bowdoin music faculty, each of them with distinct areas of specialization, traveled to South Korea earlier this summer to perform, teach, and record together at an electronic music and arts symposium
Assistant Professor of Digital Music Badie Khaleghian, Assistant Professor of Music Aruna Kharod, and Director of Jazz Ensembles and Lecturer in Music Kate Campbell Strauss attended the International Symposium on Electronic/ Emerging Art in Seoul.
The theme of this year’s gathering involved exploring “a new worldview that transcends the recurring theme of posthumanism in contemporary art, as well as the divisions between East and West, art and science, materiality and spirituality, and technology and humanity,” according to the ISEA website.
“At the symposium, we gave an interactive workshop and performed live,” said Khaleghian, “highlighting our approach to intercultural improvisation, blending elements of Hindustani music, jazz, and electronic music.” During the workshop, Khaleghian and his colleagues introduced ZAVA, a browser-based, touch-responsive instrument Khaleghian developed using a multimedia programming language called MaxMSP, allowing participants to play along in real time using their smartphones or any other internet-connected device.
Khaleghian is an accomplished composer and multimedia artist, while Campbell Strauss is a jazz saxophonist and composer/arranger and Kharod is an ethnomusicologist who plays sitar. Their visit to Seoul also marked the beginning of a new recording project aimed at collaborating with global musicians.
"We co-composed and recorded a piece with Korean artist Hyeyoung Hwang, who plays a traditional Korean zither called the geomungo," said Campbell Strauss, who met and collaborated with Hyeyoung last spring at an international artist residency called OneBeat. (Click here to learn about Hyeyoung’s involvement with the pioneering Seoul-based music duo DAL:UM, which redefines how traditional string instruments are used.)
Check out this video of the May 2025 performance by Campbell Strauss, Khaleghian, and Kharod at the ISEA25 symposium:
