Brian O’Reilly
- MA Fine Arts, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
- MA Media Arts and Technology, Electronic Music & Sound Design,
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA - Certificate in Electroacoustic Composition, Les Ateliers UPIC, Alfortville, France
- BFA Sound & Video, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA
Brian O'Reilly is Senior Lecturer in Electronic Music, working within the fields of electroacoustic composition, sound installations, moving images and noise music. He is also a contrabassist focusing on uncovering the inaudible textures and hidden acoustic microsounds of his instrument by integrating electronic treatments and extended playing techniques.
O’Reilly’s formative education took place at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied sonic art, kinetic sculpture, and analogue video synthesis, most notably in Sound and Video department using the Sandin Image Processor. His parallel interests in improvisation, composition and synthesis informed a distinctive interdisciplinary approach.
In the late 1990s, he relocated to Paris to undertake research into the graphic sound synthesis methods of composer and architect Iannis Xenakis, working extensively with the UPIC system. During this period, he was appointed musical assistant at Les Ateliers UPIC, collaborating closely with pioneering figures such as Luc Ferrari on his Cycle Des Souvenirs and Eliane Radigue’s L'Ile Re-sonante.
He later pursued graduate studies in electronic music composition at the Media Arts and Technology program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. There, he began his long-standing collaboration with Curtis Roads, contributing to the seminal project Point Line Cloud, recipient of an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica in 2002. Following this, he joined Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco as operations manager, contributing to projects with the Asphodel record label and further expanding his reach within experimental media.
His Masters in Arts Fine Arts titled Excavation Index set out to build an “archive of forms” by repeatedly layering, eroding, and reworking mixed-media drawings so that buried marks re-emerge as new strata. Originally conceived as an interconnected ecosystem, an “index of directives” in which each generative stage informs the next. The project treated every addition or abrasion as data that reshapes subsequent arrangements, gradually exposing the gestural history embedded in the work. In parallel, these excavated images have converged with his long-standing use of graphic musical notation: shifting visual elements now operate as a score that both shapes and responds to sound. By decoding and reordering entire archives of drawings rather than single notational sheets, the process forged a flexible visual/sonic language.
His work has been supported through international residencies and commissions at institutions and festivals such as Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM, Germany); SH Festival (Shanghai); KLEX - Kuala Lumpur Experimental Film, LUFF - Lausanne Underground Film, Mozarteumm (Salzburg), Ionian University (Corfu), All Tomorrow’s Parties (curated by Autechre, UK), and Signal Culture (New York) amongst others.
At LASALLE, O’Reilly lectures on electronic music history, composition, and performance while pursuing research into electronic music practice, visual music and creative music-making techniques through improvisation. His artistic output spans solo audiovisual works, mixed media drawings, music for films, modular synth and live video performances with the group Black Zenith, as well as contrabass and electronics contributions to the noise-jazz ensemble Game of Patience.