Ben Houge
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| Ben Houge |
About
Ben Houge is an internationally active American artist operating at the nexus of music composition, video games, live performance, sound installation, digital art, and gastronomy.
Since 1996, Ben has been developing audio for [games.html video games], and challenges posed by this inherently indeterminate medium have provided constant fodder for his work in and out of the industry. In seven years at ">Sierra On-Line, he contributed to titles including King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, Leisure Suit Larry 7: Love for Sail!, several Half-Life games, andArcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, for which he composed a string quartet soundtrack performed by members of the Seattle Symphony, praised by the Seattle Times as, “sophisticated enough to pass muster on its own as an extended string quartet,” and ranked in Forbes as one of the 12 best video game soundtracks of all time. In 2004 he moved to Shanghai to take a job with French developer Ubisoft, and most of his four years at the company were spent heading up audio for ">Tom Clancy’s EndWar (the “fantastic audio” of which “puts you in the thick of the action,” according to GameSpot), for which he devised an innovative, cell-based music deployment system. In addition to his in-house work at various game companies, he has consulted on game audio for companies including Harmonix Music Systems,Hidden Path Entertainment, [www.redrocketgames.com Red Rocket Games], and ">ArenaNet. Ben currently works as a Senior Audio Lead at Bungie, heading up audio on a new project and also contributing to Bungie's flagship title">Destiny 2.
Since relocating from Shanghai to the Boston area in 2010, his projects have included an ">asparagus opera, a six-channel sound installation based on live subway sounds, ">algorithmic choral music, and a real-time video piece visualizing data from the Boston Harbor Islands. Recent work has been presented in collaboration with groups such as Boston Cyberarts, the ILLUMINUS Festival,Non-event, Studio Z in Saint Paul, Chapel Performance Space in Seattle, and the San Diego Museum of Art. In 2012, he was a visiting artist at MIT, working with the Media Lab’s Responsive Environments group on the sonification of real-time data from ubiquitous sensor networks.
Ben has been teaching music technology in various forms at Berklee College of Music since the Fall 2011 semester. In the summer of 2013, Ben relocated to Valencia, Spain, to help develop and teach in theMusic Production, Technology, and Innovation master's program at Berklee's new campus in Valencia. In the fall of 2015, he returned to Boston and is now a full professor in Berklee'sElectronic Production and Design department.
From 2004 to 2010, Ben lived in Shanghai, China, where he was an active participant in the sound and art scenes, performing alongside artists including Yan Jun 颜峻, ">Torturing Nurse, Li Jianhong 李剑鸿, Yao Dajuin 姚大钧, and Wang Changcun 王长存, as well as visiting artists like Elliott Sharp, Nosaj Thing, Safety Scissors, and Owl City. He has presented his work at the Shanghai eArts Festival, the ">2pi Festival in Hangzhou, the Mini MIDI Festival, Beijing’s Today Art Museum, Suzhou’s True Color Museum, the Zendai Museum of Modern Art, OV Gallery in Shanghai, Art+Shanghai Gallery, ">Dorkbot Shanghai, XinCheJian 新车间, D-22, XP, Yu Yin Tang 育音堂, Brainwave Communication, RESO, and ">Noishanghai. For two years he served as a contributing music editor for That's Shanghai magazine, writing articles and conducting interviews with artists including Tan Dun 谭盾, Kronos Quartet, Wu Man 吴蛮, Linkin Park, and Uzodinma Iweala.
Prior to moving to China, Ben lived in Seattle, where he founded the Sound Currents concert series and was a member of Stranger Genius Award-winning composer collective Seattle School from its inception. He was active in the Seattle Composers Alliance, serving on the board and as vice president, and in the Washington Composers Forum. For a time, Ben co-fronted the quirky nerd-pop ensemble Subpoenaed Lemur. Ben's work in Seattle benefitted from two ">Meet the Composer grants.
While living in Seattle, Ben sang with the adventuresome choral ensemble Esoterics, and for five years was composer-in-residence at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Mercer Island, where he developed a significant body of music for choral and ecclesiastical use, some of which has been published by ">Augsburg Fortress. He has composed music for the Minnesota Compline Choir, the Northwest Girlchoir, and the Esoterics, and twice has been commissioned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The first performance of his setting of Yang Haisong 杨海松’s poem "Lao Zhang 老张" was conducted by Dale Warland at the 2012Chorus America Conference in Minneapolis, as part of theAmerican Composers Forum’s ChoralConnections program.
Ben holds degrees in music composition from ">St. Olaf College, where he studied with ">Peter Hamlin, and the University of Washington, where he studied composition with Juan Pampin and Richard Karpen and digital art with ">Bret Battey. He grew up in the American Midwest, in Southern California, and in the West African countries of Liberia and Ivory Coast, and to date he has spent about one third of his life abroad. His younger brother Nate Houge is a musician, baker, and co-proprietor of the acclaimed">Brake Bread bakery and bicycle-powered bread delivery service in St. Paul, MN.
Home Page
- http://www.audiogustatory.com/ www.benhouge.com/ www.audiogustatory.com/
- Ben Houge on Facebook
- Ben Houge on Twitter
- ben@benhouge.com
Contributions by Ben Houge
Title Year Credits King's Quest: Mask of Eternity 1998 DREAMS Software Hoyle Casino Empire 2002 Additional Compositions Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura 2001 Sound Ground Control 2000 Dialogue Recording (Sierra Studios) Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned 1999 Additional Sound Effects Half-Life: Opposing Force 1999 Sound Designer, Voice Recording Specialist King's Quest: Mask of Eternity 1998 Music Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! 1996 SFX & Additional Music Half-Life 2001 Special Thanks SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle - Elite Edition 2000 Special Thanks to TRISTAN SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle 1999 Special Thanks Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura 2001 Post Processing Leisure Suit Larry's Casino 1998 DREAMS Design & Development
