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Hi, I'm Ben Houge, and this is my web site.
Before you read any further, I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend my new blog, Aesthetic Cartography, brimming with ruminations on my own projects, the Shanghai arts scene, other artists I find inspiring, extemporaneous poetry, and such. I'd also like to let you know about my new digital release, 3 Heart-Shaped Cookies, a collaboration with the Seattle band 99 Men, with whom I collaborated on the EndWar theme song. I'm an American audio designer and composer who's been living and working in Shanghai since late 2004. I'm interested in how people make connections in the digital age, finding points of convergence between different kinds of information, between disciplines, and between people. Most of my work is related to videogames in some capacity; I've been a full time audio designer for games since 1996. For seven years I was at Sierra Entertainment in Seattle, and in 2004 I moved to Shanghai to join the French company Ubisoft. The best-known titles to which I've contributed include Leisure Suit Larry 7, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, Half-Life: Opposing Force, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, and Tom Clancy's EndWar. Outside of my day job, I've worked on various projects that revolve around computer-manipulated sound and aleatory processes. These days I mostly write computer music using Max/MSP, but I've also composed acoustic works, many of them open-ended to varying degrees. I've also written a lot of choral music, mostly sacred, which I think is not quite as unrelated as it might seem at first. I'm a strong supporter of composers (or anyone, really) banding together and acting to engage a wider community. Back in Seattle I worked with composer friends to put on concerts as Sound Currents and Seattle School, and I was also active in the Seattle Composers Alliance. Here in Shanghai I've done a couple of shows with NOIShanghai, and I'm also trying to keep Sound Currents running in China. This site has just about all the information a Ben Houge enthusiast might require: there are pictures, sounds, a list of works, scores, press clippings, or, if you still can't find what you need, contact info info. Enjoy! |