Biography
Cinema Volta consists of John Maxwell Hobbs, a stack of electronic equipment, musical instruments in various states of disrepair and occasional collaborators that have included David Azarch, the DJ from the Mudd Club and David Gamper of See Hear Now and The Deep Listening Band.
John Maxwell Hobbs is an electronic musician based in Stockholm and Glasgow who has been working with computer multimedia and telecommunications for more than eighteen years.
His contributions to the early days of music on the web have been documented in the book "Virtual Music" by William Duckworth.
From the book:
"In a review of his interactive online instrument, Web Phases, Kyle Gann of the Village Voice described it as being 'on a noticeably higher artistic level' than the earliest tape-music and computer-music pieces, concluding that 'the potential for social reorientation is even more incredible,' and predicting 'we'll look back and say 1998 was the year our relationship to music entered a new era.'"
For much of the '90s he was the Producing Director of The Kitchen in New York where he produced the work of Philip Glass, La Monte Young, DJ Spooky, David Hykes and many others.
He spent most of the winter of '89 - '90 traveling across America as one of the "four Johns" mixing sound for They Might Be Giants. Around that time he worked as a sound engineer on concerts by John Lee Hooker, Wendy O. Williams, Bo Diddly, Johnny Thunders, and others.
He is currently the Head of Technology for BBC Scotland and is the Vice President of the board of directors of Vanguard Visions, an organization dedicated to fostering the work of artists experimenting with technology and also served on the Digital Arts subcommittee of the Mayor's Council on New Media in New York City. His interactive composition Web Phases was one of the winners of ASCI's Digital '98 competition. He has collaborated with artist/programmer Mark Napier on Ripple, an interactive musical instrument.
John Maxwell Hobbs can be reached at:jmax@cinemavolta.com
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