About me¶
Hello! My name is Abby Aresty and I am Technical Director and Lecturer for the Technology in Music and Related Arts Department at Oberlin College and Conservatory. My formal training is in music composition and music technology, but when I completed my doctoral studies at the University of Washington from 2008-2012, one of my favorite courses was mechatronics. I was at a point where I was feeling a bit burnt out on composing music for the concert hall and I really enjoyed the freedom the class gave me to explore different contexts and modes of interaction in creative projects. My ‘dissertation’ was a site-specific, solar-powered sound installation in Seattle’s Washington Park Arboretum exploring the intersection of the different layers of natural and manmade sounds in the Arboretum.
Recent Projects¶
Here at Oberlin, I have a small undergraduate research lab, the Crafting Sound Lab, that develops hybrid technologies for community-engaged projects. Projects take the form of workshops, installations, exhibits, performances, and new interfaces for creative expression.
Recent collaborations include the Girls Electronic Arts Retreat, the ArtiFACT Project, Gratitude Showers, the Crafting Sound Symposium, the Crafting Change Symposium, and the Crafting Technology, Crafting History Oral History Archive , among others.
Fun fact: before the pandemic, I helped organize and run the 4D Liberal Arts Initiative, a collaboration between LCCC and Oberlin exploring connections between making and the liberal arts funded by Bringing Theory to Practice.
Below are a few photos of recent projects…
Photos by Julie Gulenko.
The ArtiFACT Project Team includes myself, Larissa Fekete, Abe Reshad, Al Evangelista, and current and former research assistants: Lucas Brecher, Ivy Fu, Helen He, Maya McCollum, Joy Musgrove, Sarah Goodstein, and Olivia Lu. The project is generously funded by Oberlin College and Conservatory and by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to Oberlin College for the Oberlin Center for Languages and Cultures.
Photo by Abby Aresty
Photo by Julie Gulenko
The Gratitude Showers team includes members of the Crafting Sound Lab and students enrolled in the 2020 Sonic Arts in Society Winter Term and spring semester course. The project is generously funded by Oberlin College and Conservatory and the Bonner Center for Community-Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Research.
You can find more projects on my personal website.
Why Fab Academy?¶
I was absolutely delighted when, by chance, I discovered that I live only 30-minutes away from the Fab Lab at the Campana Center at Lorain County Community College. I love visiting LCCC and am excited to have an excuse to visit the Fab Lab more often.
- It has been almost a decade since I completed the mechatronics course at UW and I have not worked much with CAD in the intervening years. I similarly have worked in areas adjacent to many of the other topics addressed in the course but am either self taught or out of date in many of these areas and I am eager to update my knowledge and skill set.
- I find it really helpful to be a student again to help me think about ways in which I can improve my own teaching.
- In a lot of my recent projects, I have been gotten away from physical making: I develop project ideas and plans, write grants, and work with my students in the design phase. However, most of the fabrication is done by my students. I love working with my students but I also want to stay current and expand my skill set by making things myself.