Rachel Devorah Wood Rome, Ph.D. is a sonic artist and feminist technologist. She is employed as an Assistant Professor of Electronic Production and Design | Creative Coding at the Berklee College of Music; and as a Councilor for AFT-MA Local 4412, AFL-CIO.
Her work has received support from the Adrian Piper Foundation (Berlin), EMS (Stockholm), GRM (Paris), MassMoCA [U.S.], the New Museum (New York), New Music USA, and STEIM (Amsterdam). It has been heard in twelve countries on four continents performed by/with artists such as Laurel Jay Carpenter, JACK quartet, Robbie Lee, Ava Mendoza, Roscoe Mitchell, Lydia Moyer, Ryan Muncy, Liew Niyomkarn, orkest de ereprijs, Yarn|Wire, and the William Winant Ensemble. Her installation revontulet at Sound Music Computing - Helsinki won the Ruth Anderson Prize from the International Alliance of Women in Music.
She practices improvisation with bespoke electronics (both analog and digital) and with French horn (her mother tongue) to create immersive structures which reveal and reframe habits of autoecholocation. She is interested in superhuman prolongation; opaque complexity; the resignification of archaic tools and materials; and parallels between the physical properties and social meanings of spaces. She values machines for their patience.
Her research and teaching practices amplify critical agency in the use and design of sonic media. She studied sound, technology, and gender at the City University of New York (Queens College); San José State University; Mills College; and the University of Virginia.
Her community affiliations include: Sonic Cyberfeminisms; Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts (ILSSA); Feminist Bird Club - Boston; Berkeley Community Garden; Beacon Hill Friends Meeting; South End Baseball.
She lives in Boston with her spouse, Carl, and their daughter, Wendy.
contact at rrome at berklee dot edu