Techne was founded in 2010 by Suzanne Thorpe and Bonnie Jones, educators and musicians active in electronic music communities in the US and abroad.

SUZANNE THORPE

Suzanne Thorpe is a composer, performer, researcher and educator. She composes site-oriented sound installations and performances that use a variety of media and technology, and performs on the electroacoustic flute, expanded with digital and analog tools. She is also a Deep Listening instructor, having studied in depth with American Composer and Deep Listening Founder Pauline Oliveros. Thorpe draws upon traditions of acoustic ecology, soundscape, land art, and improvisation, as well as research in phenomenology, systems theory, and critical theory. For the last several years Thorpe has positioned listening as the primary building block of her musicking.The result has yielded a dynamic series of pieces that work in conjunction with environments and their behaviors, and evolve with their surroundings.

Thorpe’s work has been shown and performed internationally at venues such as The New Museum, Exit Art, and Issue Project Room in New York, and at festivals such as the Lollapalooza, Reading Festival, Roskilde Festival, and All Tomorrow’s Parties in Europe. As an improviser and performer she has worked with a wide array of artists, from Pauline Oliveros to J Mascis. Her discography features over 20 recordings on labels such as Sony, V2, Beggars Banquet, Geffen, Specific Recordings, and Tape Drift, and she was a founding member of critically acclaimed Mercury Rev, with whom she performed, recorded and toured from 1989 – 2001, earning a gold record for 1998’s Deserter’s Songs.

Thorpe has received residencies and fellowships from Harvestworks Digital Media Foundation, Meet the Composer, New Music USA and the MAP Fund. Having earned her MFA at Mills College, she is currently a PhD candidate in Music/Integrative Studies at University of California San Diego, and Co-Director of TECHNE, an organization that endeavors to close the gender gap in technology initiatives by teaching young female-identified women to technology focused endeavors via electronic instrument building, improvisation, and contemplative practices. http://www.suzannethorpe.com/

BONNIE JONES

Bonnie Jones is a Korean-American improvising musician, poet, and performer working with electronic sound and text. She performs solo and in numerous collaborative music, film, and visual art projects. Bonnie’s work explores the fluidity and function of electronic noise (field recordings, circuit bending) and text (poetry, found, spoken, visual). Her art seeks opportunities within different mediums to expose the fluid nature of individual identity, history, form, and meaning.

As an arts organizer, Bonnie was a founding member of the Transmodern Festival and CHELA Gallery and is currently a member of the High Zero Festival collective. In 2010, she co-founded TECHNE https://technesound.org/, an organization that introduces young female-identified women to technology-focused art making, improvisation, and community collaboration. TECHNE’s programs are delivered through partnerships with grassroots organizations that share an aligned commitment to racial and gender equity.

Bonnie received her MFA at Bard College where she studied with Laetitia Sonami, Miya Masaoka, and Marina Rosenfeld. She has received commissions from the London ICA and Walters Art Museum and has presented her work extensively at institutions in the US, Mexico, Europe and Asia, including the LA MOCA, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, and REDCAT. Her collaborative sound works have been shown at the Swiss Institute, Whitney Museum, and Hunter College. Bonnie was a 2018 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.

Born in 1977 in South Korea she was raised on a dairy farm in New Jersey, and currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. http://bonniejones.wordpress.com/