Ali Momeni

Ali Momeni is a builder, composer and performer interested in the poetics of gesture, affect and timing.  His work makes use all manners of technology to explore the social lives of objects and their embedded performative qualities.  His creative output ranges from kinetic sculptures and sound installations, to urban interventions and music theater performance.    

Momeni was born in Isfahan, Iran and emigrated to the United States at the age of twelve. He studied physics and music at Swarthmore College and completed his doctoral degree in music composition, improvisation and performance with computers from the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies in UC Berkeley. He spent three years in Paris where he collaborated with performers and researchers from La Kitchen, IRCAM, Sony CSL and CIRM. Between 2007 and 2011, Momeni was an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where he directed the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, and founded the urban projection collective called the MAW. Momeni currently teaches in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and oversees CMU ArtFab.