Cory Metcalf is a visual and sound artist specializing in the development and exploration of digital instruments for live performance, responsive installations, and generative design. His work focuses on the exploration of complex systems to discover and cultivate novel kernels of the sublime. As the co-founder of NoiseFold, performance, installation, and glass sculptural works have been exhibited extensively in the US and abroad since 2006. Cory currently resides in Montrose, CO and works as an Application Engineer for Cycling '74, makers of the Max programming language.
Metcalf's work explores, among other things, the intersections of human-plant interaction, biological and geological systems, real-time media instruments, responsive installation environments, novel encryption systems, and visualization/sonification of data sets. His interest in physical computing is evidenced in works such as Sensor Swarm (2002). Sensor Swarm is a hybrid interactive performance/installation that senses the presence and state of audience members to shape an auditory environment composed of recorded cicada samples, thus fore-grounding the normally unconscious influence that humans impose on their environment, blurring the distinction between the audience and performer, and creating an unpredictable and improvisational experience for both.
In 2002, Metcalf joined David Stout, then director of the interactive performance group, i2O, where he developed dynamic diffusion sound designs for live acoustics and video performance instruments. Further collaboration between Stout and Metcalf led to the use of real-time 3D data visualization and complex data feed-back programs to model synthetic ecologies based on genetic and behavioral processes found in living systems. These techniques are central to works such as 100 Monkey Garden, a self-generating and self-regulating aesthetic ecology. The two are co-founders of the interactive media-performance group, NoiseFold. Metcalf's more recent work has focused on: expanding traditional uses of the Max/MSP/Jitter programming environment to create large scale software instruments with a broad range of generative possibilities and applications; novel encryption mechanisms; digitally modified sculptural objects; spectral manipulations of sonic materials; and phonography.