About

Benjamin Smith embodies post-disciplinary collaborative ideals, equally comfortable creating and working as a musician, a computer graphics artist, computational creativity researcher and software designer. His work confronts the limits of human-computer interaction and performance, seeking continually to expand the realm of aesthetic potential at the nexus of artistic technological engagement.

Publishing in the field of Computational Creativity, Smith has papers focusing on deep learning machine learning models applied in sound and music published in conference proceedings internationally. His work with Adaptive Resonance Theory neural networks and Constrained-Restricted Bolzman Machines led to public release of a library of machine learning externals for Ableton Live and Max, “ml.*”

Currently Smith is the Principal Data Scientist at Boardable, working to accelerate the company’s growth through experimentation, product, and user behavior analytics. Previously he was an Assistant Professor at Indiana-University Purdue-University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in Music and Arts Technology and Computer Information and Graphics Technology. Smith came to IUPUI from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art where he led a Tele-health and Wellness research group, and taught game development, animation, and sound design. As a Post Doc Smith worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) at the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), researching dynamic machine learning models to support next generation human-computer interactions.

In 2011 he completed his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Composition at UIUC. Active as a composer and violinist, his works have been premiered all across North America, and his ground-breaking Telematic works have joined stages across the US, Australia, South America, and Europe in simultaneous performance. His recent creative work involves interactive, 3D, computer generated environments in combination with real-time music composition/performance systems, and leverages the capabilities of large-format immersive surround environments.

Info

Currently residing in Indianapolis, IN. Frequently found hiking in the woods with his family, or flying kites on windy days.