CARROLL, Nicole L

Nicole L. Carroll is an American composer, electronic musician, performer, sound designer and instrument builder, currently based in Brisbane, Australia. She studied composition at Arkansas State University and Bowling Green State University and subsequently completed postgraduate studies in computer music and multimedia at Brown University, where she received her PhD. She is Senior Lecturer in Music at Queensland University of Technology.
Carroll works primarily in experimental and electroacoustic music. Her creative practice includes sound installations, audiovisual works, improvisation, acousmatic composition, soundscape and noise music. She designs and constructs synthesisers, controllers, wearable sensors and interactive performance systems that combine physical objects with analogue and digital technologies. She performs electronic music under the name n0izmkr.
An important work in her catalogue is Orrery Arcana, an audiovisual system for real-time improvisational performance. It uses a specially constructed hardware controller and custom software to generate and transform sound. The work draws upon astronomical and lunar data, tarot symbolism, numerology and the system of moon phases described by W. B. Yeats in A Vision. Its sound material combines analogue synthesis with environmental field recordings.

Her other works include Vitruvian Cycle (2014) for interactive sound and video, The Oracle Variations (2015), Everything in Its Place (2015–2016) for custom electronic instruments, Not to Touch the Earth (2016), a multichannel audiovisual installation, and Of the Moon, Under the Moon (2016) for trumpet, live electronics and video. She also composed and performed the electronic music for Christine Bonansea’s dance work OnlyHuman. More recent collaborative projects with John R. Ferguson include Hex on Data, Hex on Math, Modular Audiovisual Performance Systems, Octophonic Audiovisual Tessellations and Sonic Amalgamations.
Carroll’s music has been presented in the United States, Mexico, Wales, Germany, Greece, Australia and China, including at international conferences and festivals devoted to electroacoustic music and new musical interfaces. Her work frequently draws inspiration from nature, literature, occult philosophy, astronomical systems and the human psyche.