Biography:

Travis West is a multidisciplinary programmer, composer-performer, and musical instrument designer. His research explores the design of gestural interfaces, sound synthesis algorithms, and the mappings made between the two. These inquiries culminate in the creation of new digital musical instruments and interactive systems such as the body:suit:score, a full-body wearable vibrotactile musical score, and the mubone, a trombone-enabled digital-acoustic musical instrument made in collaboration with trombonist Kalun Leung. Travis completed his Bachelor in Electroacoustic Music Composition at Concordia University in 2017, and his M.A. in Music Technology at McGill University in 2020.

Since September 2020 he is a Ph.D. candidate in Music Technology in a co-tutelle with the Université de Lille, and in collaboration with Inria Lille-Nord Europe, France. Supervisors: Marcelo M. Wanderley, Stéphane Huot (Inria Lille – Nord Europe, France)

Research Areas:

• Embedded Systems
• Haptics: Tactile and Force-Feedback
• Interface Design
• Mapping
• Sensors
• Software Development

Projects

Publications:

• Travis West, Baptiste Caramiaux, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2020-07-21). Making Mappings: Examining the Design Process. In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2020). Birmingham, UK.
• Travis West (2020-08-01). Making Mappings: Examining the Design Process with Libmapper and the T-Stick. In M.A. Thesis, McGill University (pp. 78). Montreal, Canada.
• Travis West, Baptiste Caramiaux, Stéphane Huot, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2021-06-14). Making Mappings: Design Criteria for Live Performance. In Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2021). Shanghai, China.
• Takuto Fukuda, Eduardo Meneses, Travis J. West, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2021-06-14). The T-Stick Music Creation Project: An approach to building a creative community around a DMI. In Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2021). Shanghai, China.
• Marcelo M. Wanderley, Travis West, Josh Rohs, Eduardo A. L. Meneses, Christian Frisson (2021-09-01). The IDMIL Digital Audio Workbench: An interactive online application for teaching digital audio concepts. In Audio Mostly 2021 Conference. Trento, Italy.
• Luca Turchet, Travis West, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2020-03-24). Touching the Audience: Musical Haptic Wearables for augmented and participatory live music performances. In Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. Springer.
• Travis J. West, Alexandra Bachmayer, Sandeep Bhagwati, Joanna Berzowska, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2019-06-01). The Design of the Body:Suit:Score, a Full-Body Vibrotactile Musical Score. In Proc. of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCII). Orlando, FL, USA.
• Travis J. West (2022-06-16). Pitch Fingering Systems and the Search for Perfection. In Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).
• Travis J. West, Stephane Huot, Marcelo M. Wanderley (2024-09-02). Sygaldry: DMI Components First and Foremost. In Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME2024). Utrecht, NL.
• Travis West (2025-03-21). SYGALDRY: Reusable Software for Making Digital Musical Instruments. In PhD Thesis, McGill University/Université de Lille (pp. 187). McGill University/Université de Lille.Montreal, Qc, Canada/Lille, France.
• Ninad Puranik, Travis West, Marcelo Wanderley, Gary Scavone (2025-04-11). Thoughts on Mapping and Interface Design of a Keyboard to Perform Continuous Pitch Ornamentations in Hindustani Music. In Workshop on Indian Music Analysis and Generative Applications (WIMAGA), IEEE ICASSP. Hyderabad, India.

Contacts:

• Email: travis.west@mail.mcgill.ca