BIO

Dr. Ricardo Arbiza is a Uruguayan trombonist, composer, sound artist, music technologist, and researcher working at the intersection of music performance, human-computer interaction (HCI), music technology, intelligent music systems, and artistic research. His work explores how computational systems, digital musical instruments, and new forms of interaction can extend musical performance, considering the physical, expressive, and social dimensions of music-making.

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As a performer, Arbiza has worked across orchestral, contemporary, popular, and experimental music. He has performed with ensembles including the American Composers Orchestra, the Montevideo Symphonic Band, Uruguay’s National Symphony Orchestra (OSSODRE), and the United Nations Symphony Orchestra, as well as with salsa bands, big bands, military bands, and touring popular-music ensembles throughout Latin America. In 2013, he co-founded the Urubrass International Brass Festival in Uruguay. Across eight editions, the festival has brought together international performers, educators, and students while providing free workshops, masterclasses, and concerts to the public.

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As a composer, he has had his music performed in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Spain, and the United States. His work has received awards, including First Prize at the 2023 Uruguayan National Composition Competition and at the 2015 Trombonanza Festival Composition Competition in Argentina. His creative practice spans instrumental and electroacoustic composition, experimental music, interactive performance, sound art, digital musical instruments, and human-computer interaction.

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Arbiza’s research focuses on embodied musical interaction, non-intrusive human-computer interfaces, multimodal performance, co-creative and intelligent music systems, and accessible musical technologies. He is the creator and developer of MIDImyFACE, a browser-based facial-gesture interface for music and media interaction. MIDImyFACE translates facial movement into real-time control data and supports in-browser sound, MIDI output, and networked performance sessions, allowing musicians to perform and interact locally or remotely without specialized hardware or software installation.

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He also co-leads Sonic Time Machine, a long-term sound-art and research project investigating sonic heritage, collective memory, and site-specific listening. Its first permanent installation was developed at the former Fray Bentos Industrial Landscape in Uruguay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, where a distributed computational system reconstructs and reinterprets sounds associated with the site's industrial and social history.

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His research and artistic work have been published or presented through Computer Music Journal (MIT Press), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), SEAMUS, LINKs, IRCAM Forum, and the International Trombone Festival. He has undertaken artistic and research residencies and projects in Portugal, Germany, France, China, South Korea, the United States, Finland, and Uruguay, including an artist residency at Binaural Nodar in Portugal and workshops at the Asia Art Center in South Korea.

 

Arbiza is a former grantee of the Fulbright Program and the Organization of American States (OAS/OEA). He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Music Composition from Universidad de la República–Escuela Universitaria de Música (Uruguay), a Master’s degree in Music Performance from Mannes School of Music at The New School, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Music Performance and Composition from New York University (NYU Steinhardt).

His doctoral research, completed under the supervision of Dr. Robert Rowe, developed a framework for non-intrusive human-computer interfaces (NIHCI) for musical instruments, using the trombone as a case study. The research combined empirical studies with professional musicians, interface design, artistic experimentation, and composition to investigate how interactive technologies can augment instrumental performance without disrupting established performer-instrument relationships.