Genelec Inc. has announced the recipients of its annual scholarships awarded in association with the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation (AESEF). Reaffirming the company’s commitment to audio education, Genelec Inc. congratulates this year’s recipients: graduate student Miles Scharff of Columbia University has received a grant as beneficiary of the Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship; and Logan Kibler of Stanford University has been named the recipient of the Genelec Mike Chafee Audio Pioneering Scholarship for the second year in a row.
Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship:
The Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship was established in 2018 in honor of Genelec’s late founder Dr. Ilpo Martikainen. For many years Dr. Martikainen was involved in the Audio Engineering Society, including being presented with the AES Fellowship Award for significant contributions in the field of loudspeaker development in 1993, and in 2015 delivering the Richard C. Heyser Memorial Lecture at the 138th AES International Convention in Warsaw, Poland.
This year’s Martikainen Scholarship recipient, Miles Scharff, a graduate student at Columbia University, is a sound artist and improviser who works in radio electronics, sound sculpture, spatial audio, and performance. His current research investigates the ways in which physical objects can be unintentional sites of reception and transmission for electromagnetic and acoustic signals, and how we can have unexpected listening experiences at these sites.
“Unintentional” points to the fact that these sites are in some transitive space between the sender and the receiver of an electromagnetic signal, or signals produced as a byproduct of technological infrastructure.
Miles’ work seeks to document or fabricate these interactions between physical objects and invisible signals as a way of witnessing, listening to, this electromagnetic ecology. The want to witness is effectively a want to explore how our awareness of pervasive acoustic and electromagnetic signals, whether we are experiencing them audibly or non-audibly, affects our relationship to our environment and our bodies.
Miles has designed and built wave field synthesis arrays for installations and experiences for The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and the Rube Goldberg Foundation. He has exhibited sound sculptures at the Fridman Gallery and the Wallach Gallery in New York City, as well as Alice Holt Forest for Sensing the Forest in the United Kingdom.
He has received the Dean’s Travel grant from Columbia University to record natural radio signals in Iceland using receivers he has designed and built. Miles performs freely improvised music with his trio, TGH Hiss Ensemble, who just released their debut album. Miles received his bachelors in Physics and Music Technology from Carnegie Mellon University, and is currently an MFA candidate for Columbia’s Sound Art program.
Genelec Mike Chafee Audio Pioneering Scholarship:
The Genelec Mike Chafee Audio Pioneering Scholarship was established to promote the advancement of women in the audio industry while paying tribute to noted long-time Genelec manufacturer’s representative, audiophile, sound designer, acoustician, audio evangelist and supporter of women in audio, Michael Chafee.
The scholarship is offered annually to U.S. female graduate students in the field of audio engineering who are members of the Audio Engineering Society (AES). Chafee Scholarship recipient Logan Kibler is a student at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, having studied as an undergrad at University of Michigan, earning a BSE in Computer Engineering and a BS in Sound Engineering. She graduated with high honors from the School of Music and Magna Cum Laude from the College of Engineering. During her studies, she held several positions on the board of the UM Student Chapter of the Audio Engineering Society, including chair for a year and a half.
In the summer of 2020, she was a student assistant for the Girls in Music and Technology high school summer camp put on at UM. During the following summers, she interned with Dolby Laboratories as the Audio Software Engineering Intern working on the professional audio encoder, and Subaru R&D as the Sound Engineering Intern researching new methods of sound and system design for vehicles. She also participated in an Audio System Design Professional Internship with Disney Live Entertainment, where she learned about designing systems for new theme park offerings ranging from small one-off events to permanent installs in park expansions.
She continues to write and record songs as part of the duo Madelyn & Logan, which she has done since 7th grade and which she credits as the foundation of her love of music and audio technologies. Kibler is currently at Walt Disney Imagineering in California as an A/V Engineering Intern working on audio and video systems for rides and area development.
About the Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship:
The Genelec Dr. Ilpo Martikainen Audio Visionary Scholarship is awarded annually to U.S. graduate students in the field of audio engineering who are members of the Audio Engineering Society (AES). The scholarship, in the amount of $5000, is being offered in association with the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation to students who have a passion of advancing audio through innovation and technology development.
About the Genelec Mike Chafee Audio Pioneering Scholarship:
The Genelec Mike Chafee Audio Pioneering Scholarship, in the amount of $5000, is being presented in association with the Audio Engineering Society Educational Foundation to female students who have a passion of advancing audio through innovation and technology development.
To learn more, please visit http://www.aes.org/education/foundation/.
