
He has written six operas, over 50 works for dance, chamber and electronic works, concertos, and three symphonies, performed by the Detroit Symphony and the Warsaw National Symphony. Stephen Rush has had premieres on five continentsand has released many publications of his musical compositions. Modality: In-person (interested in the project but unable to be on campus? Contact us to inquire !) Sonification of data has been utilized for decades in the medical field but although we can hear the representation of patient data rather ubiquitously in the operating room or intensive care unit (think beeps from EKG and ventilators), sonification as a field of medical research is relatively unexplored in most other specialties. The results sounded like “glitch” meets “Brian Eno/ambient music.” The goal is to create interested music with data that is inherently rather dull and does not change much, but highlight anomalies, such as snoring (or worse), in order to diagnose sleep patients more accurately and efficiently. It is her life’s vision to create an “audio approach” for sleep study data and using MAX/MSP, our team has already concatenated EEG, EKG, EMG and RespNatal data using EDF formatted files introduced into MAX/MSP and Ableton live. Kara is an alumnus of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and had an established career in Punk band before returning to Michigan to complete her studies in Medicine.

Introductory experiments, working with CoE alumnus Greg Syrjala (from ORMEC in Rochester, NY) have been conducted, in collaboration with Dr. Sonification data has already been shown to increase the speed and accuracy of interpretation of medical data and we aim to expand that principle to the world of sleep diagnostics.


The goal is to convert sleep data into interesting music to enable sleep diagnostics that would be accurate and fun–for the world. Working with doctors at the Mayo Clinic Center for Sleep Medicine, this UARTS Faculty Engineering/Arts Student Team (FEAST) will explore the possibilities of creating techno tracks from up to, at least, four data points from raw polysomnogram data (EEG/Pulse/Oxygenation).
