About

Hello there, I’m Batuhan Bozkurt, a sound artist, computer programmer and performer currently living in Istanbul – Turkey.

Firstly, I prefer to call myself primarily a “sound artist” because I believe that it defines what I feel like doing for the most of my time in an efficient way. It is not a result of an attitude against something, so one can also call me a musician, a composer or “that sound guy”, that doesn’t really matter. I work with sound just like any other artist who works on his base material. Aural arts has its main canvas spread out on time which can be manipulated, skewed, distorted or served as it is with sound and sound itself can be manipulated in the same manner over time. Music (with whatever meaning you put into it) has enormous multidimensional properties (just like “anything” else, if you are paying enough attention) so anyone creating music is doing much more than composing and/or performing.

I have this base as my musical thought and I’m acting with it, that is the way that feels natural to me. To sonificate this way of thinking I mostly live on the digital domain, with computers, mostly programming my own little tools to make things work as a whole. I work with sound on micro level as well as with music and composition on a macro level. I love and am mostly intrigued by chaotic systems and chaotic behavior, non-linear dynamics, physical modelling of non-linear systems, sonification and visualization of stochastic processes and corresponding real life data, I do love systems that exhibit similar properties in micro and macro levels seamlessly just as the way the Universe as we know of works. I build frameworks for performance that allows me (and hopefully others) to improvise within this scope. I strictly prefer improvisation, I prefer to compose “processes” and usually not the sound itself with its direct relationship on/over time. I like to smooth the edges. Intuition and staying “in the moment” in performance is the key of my thought so I try to help myself and others to achieve the joy of that state.

I also play the electric guitar, like improvising and integrating my guitar playing into live processing and electronic performances. I do play fretless electric guitar too, it’s not a very common instrument (or not the most common way of playing that instrument) but starting to gain popularity all around the world. Turkish music does not use 12TET system so going fretless is the only way for me to feel and perform Turkish music “properly”. The concepts derived from my own musical culture is very stimulating and influential in my general way of thinking about sound, music and performance.

I have a B.A. degree on music from Istanbul Bilgi University (graduated with high honours, focusing on composition and music technology), and am working towards obtaining an M.A. and Ph.D.

You may contact me from the sites contact page, I’ll be happy to hear anything you may have in your mind about me or the stuff presented in this site. Thanks for reading.