Michael Century

Michael Century, pianist and composer, is Professor of New Media and Music in the Arts Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which he joined in 2002. Prior to joining Rensselaer, he worked as a new media researcher, inter-arts producer, and arts and technology policy advisor at Banff Centre for the Arts (1979-93), McGill University (1998-2002), and Government of Canada (1993-98).

Century’s monograph Northern Sparks: Innovation, Technology Policy and the Arts in Canada from Expo 67 to the Internet Age is available through MIT Press. Other scholarly articles are Telidon, Another Panacea That Failed. Acoustic Space, The Future of Interdisciplinary Music Studies. College Music Society-NAMM Generation Next Program, Virtuosity as Creative Freedom in The Emergence of Video Processing Tools, and Encoding Motion in the Early Computer: Knowledge Transfers Between Studio and Lab, in Place Studies in Art, Media, Science and Technology: Historical Investigations on the Sites and the Migration of Knowledge.

With Shawn Lawson, he founded the audio-visual performance duo Liveware, combining live-coded computer animation with instrumental and electronic music performance. Other recently completed musical creations include a The Isle is Full of Noises, a generative soundscape based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and series of new works for keyboards and accordion with and electronics: Small Infinities, Within and Without, and the Triple Duo for Accordion and Disklavier Piano. Century directed The Rensselaer Contemporary Music Ensemble from 2008–13, which performed a wide repertoire of works from the 20th and 21st centuries..