Ron Kuivila is an artist and composer who pioneered the use of ultrasound and sound sampling in live performance. More of his recent pieces have explored compositional algorithms, speech synthesis and high voltage phenomena. Kuivila has collaborated with composers, artists, and choreographers including Anthony Braxton, Rudy Burckhardt, Nikolas Collins, Merce Cunningham, Hugh Davies, Douglas Dunn, Susan Foster, and Larry Johnson. He has performed and exhibited installations throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Kuivila studied with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University and with Robert Ashley and David Behrman at Mills College. He has been an NEA Fellow at Creative Associates and an artist-in-residence at Media Study/Buffalo (1979-80). He was a 1980 CAPS recipient. He has given concerts at the Kitchen, P.S. 1, PASS, The Experimental Intermedia Foundation and the Bilhaud Gallery in New York. Other concerts have been presented at 80 Langton Street and Mills College in the San Francisco area, at Media Study and SUNY in Buffalo, the "Third Coast New Music Festival" in Houston, Real Art Ways in Hartford, and Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Installations have been shown at the San Francisco Institute, the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Media Study/Buffalo, 80 Langton Street and P.S. 1. Kuivila is a Professor of Musicology at Wesleyan University and has curated Rock's Role (After Ryoanji) at Art in General in 2004- a group exhibition of sound works by artists responding to John Cage's musical transliterations of the famed Japanese Zen rock garden, Ryoanji.