Dr. Badie Khaleghian is a composer and multimedia artist whose work bridges music, technology, visual art, and neuroscience. At Bowdoin College, he directs the Center for Experimental Multimedia Art (CEMA) and leads the Bowdoin Electroacoustic Ensemble, fostering collaborative and interdisciplinary projects across the arts and sciences. He teaches courses on electronic music, interactive immersive multimedia art, and music theory and composition, guiding students to approach sound as both an artistic and experimental practice. His research explores immersive media, brain–computer interfaces, AI-driven sonification, and interactive performance systems.
Khaleghian’s research is deeply interdisciplinary, involving collaborations with scientists and artists at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University, University of Houston, and University of Georgia.
Research Topics
Electroacoustic and intermedia composition
Interactive and immersive performance systems
Music cognition, brain–computer interfacing, and sonification
Cross-disciplinary collaboration among music, visual art, dance, and technology
Interested in doing research with Prof. Khaleghian? Students should contact him at b.khaleghian@bowdoin.edu.
Dr. Badie Khaleghian designed the live data visualizations that translated performers’ brain-wave activity into projected imagery during the interdisciplinary “Meeting of Minds” performance blending neuroscience, music, and dance. He collaborated with researchers at Rice University, University of Houston and other institutions to enable real-time brain-computer interfaces in a stage context.
The project led by Dr. Khaleghian and student Jintae Park explores the intersection of music and neuroscience by using EEG brain-wave data to drive a self-playing piano, to create a brain-computer feedback loop that might help people with neurological conditions such as anxiety or dementia. They collaborated with researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center and a medical-device company to connect brain-wave frequency bands to musical motifs. The work is still in early stages, but it highlights the highly interdisciplinary nature of combining music, technology, neuroscience and health.
Assistant Professor Badie Khaleghian’s Introduction to Electronic Music course reignited Hayden Mann ’27’s interest and gave him the practical grounding in sound design and track building that propelled his recent momentum toward a record deal.
Phantom Reach is a seven-movement multimedia composition for solo violin, piano, fixed/interactive electronics, and two-dimensional projections. The piece integrates live performance with electronic processing to blur the boundaries between real and mediated sound. It explores the notion of “absence” in contemporary life through the metaphor of a body reaching for what is no longer present. Musically, the piece constructs a dialectic between sonic states: electronically distorted textures juxtaposed with acoustic clarity; unpulsed instability contrasted against metronomic regularity, and dense spectral layers pared down to clear melodic gestures. The violin and piano introduce lyrical motifs and rhythmic patterns that are paired with fragmented, transformed electronic sound. These dichotomies generate a structural tension that attempts to trigger a listener’s oppositional sense of familiarity and disorientation, creating a musical analogue to the work’s core thematic preoccupation with longing and ephemerality.
Dr. Badie Khaleghian served as the projection designer for Free Rein, part of the ExxonMobil Discovery Series at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts (Zilkha Hall, Houston, TX). In this educational performance, he designed the interactive computer–brain interface that visualized performers’ real-time neural activity through dynamic projection mapping, merging neuroscience, music, and dance into a live experience for young audiences. The work will premiere on January 22, 2026, as part of the Hobby Center’s outreach to engage 5th-grade students in the creative connections between art and science.
The Violinist’s Memory Map
Premiering at Artechouse Houston, 2026–27 Season
The Violinist’s Memory Map is an immersive, hour-long experience that unites solo violin, spatialized sound, and visual media to explore how music evokes and reshapes memory. The work unfolds in three parts: a meditative opening installation inviting reflection, a live performance traversing emotional and cultural terrains, and a closing interactive segment where the audience engages with the residual echoes of sound and memory.
