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Emma Winston

Goldsmiths College
SE14 6NW
London
United Kingdom

web / email

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Education

Graduate Student, PhD

Goldsmiths, University of London

I recently completed a doctoral degree researching the experiences of ukulele players in online and offline communities. The project required me to single-handedly recruit, interview, and manage ongoing working relationships with 26 participants, many of whom struggled with self-esteem and impostor syndrome around their music-making, needing me to respond sensitively and non-judgmentally at all times. It also involved processing and analysing large quantities of interview and survey data, making sure I kept the data I collected well-documented and organised, and keeping up to date with research and scholarship, much of which was from the fields of psychology and psychotherapy.

MA in Music (Popular Music Research) (Distinction)

Goldsmiths, University of London
London, UK

Bachelor of Arts in Music (2:1)

University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK

Publications

Beats to Relax/Study To: Contradiction and Paradox in Lofi Hip Hop

IASPM Journal
- view (open access)

Nightcore and the Virtues of Virtuality

CHASE Brief Encounters
- view (open access)

Employment

Crisis Listener

Shout 85258

I am a listener for Shout's text crisis hotline. I listen to people of all ages and backgrounds, building rapport, exploring the impact of their issues on them, helping them to identify ways they might be able to keep themselves safe and move forward, empowering them to find longer-term sources of support in their everyday lives, and signposting them to resources where necessary.

Associate Lecturer

Goldsmiths, University of London

I was the sole lecturer for the Masters course, New Directions in Popular Music, which varied between discussion seminars and more formally-structured lectures, and acted as first marker for final coursework projects. I also convened, taught, and graded on several undergraduate modules

Associate Editor/Peer Reviewer

Brief Encounters Journal

Associate editor and peer reviewer for the second issue of the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership's open-access journal, Brief Encounters.

Independent Musician

Freelance, London

I have played various keyboard instruments, including synthesiser, harmonium and piano, in live and recorded session contexts for multiple musicians. I also made solo electronic music under the name Deerful, and dabbled in live-coding.

Event Producer

Researching Popular Music Conference, Goldsmiths, University of London

I was one of three producers for the conference Researching Popular Music, helping to produce a podcast to allow those unable to attend the conference to engage with its material. I conducted brief interviews with all speakers, scripted and provided voiceovers to link together segments, and performed an initial edit of the audio before final mixing took place.

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Kings College London

I taught weekly seminar groups for the first-year music course's core Issues and Topics module, Disco Cultures, for two years running, preparing revision materials, leading discussion sessions and elaborating upon topics taught in lectures. I also set and marked mock exams, and double-marked coursework essays.

Workshop Assistant

School of Noise

I worked on an occasional basis for School of Noise, an organisation running workshops for young people and adults aimed at encouraging the exploration of experimental, electronic sound and music.

Creative technologist and front-end developer

Self-employed

While seeking PhD funding I ran a successful small business as a primarily self-taught web designer and front-end developer.

Original music and sound

Deerful

Solo
- view

I write, produce and perform electropop under the name Deerful. I have released two singles and two EPs on independent labels Where It's At Is Where You Are and Gare Du Nord, and released an album, Peach in the spring/summer of 2017, which received praise from the Guardian and Clash Music, amongst others. I also maintain a YouTube channel with a small following focused upon songwriting, production, and live performance.

Production music

Solo/co-writer

I contributed the electropop track 'Break' to major UK charity Centrepoint's digital campaign 'Young and Homeless: Your Phone Tells The Story', which received coverage in the Metro. I have also contributed full albums and individual tracks of bubblegum pop, chiptune and ukulele music to the Ravenwood Music and Clearwave music production libraries.

Independent sound work

Solo
- view

I create and self-release audio collages using found sounds in various locations as abstract documents of spaces, places and events. In January 2016 I also produced and released the EP Browser Pieces, using only web browser-based synthesisers, in a single evening. I also dabble in live-coding in Supercollider and ChucK.

Other projects

Twitter bots

- view

A series of bots using the Twitter framework to automate artistic or humorous content, programmatically generated in the Tracery library or in Python. My primary bot project is Graphic Score Bot, which was premiered in live performances at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Somerset House in April 2016.

Games

- view

A series of games built in Twine, Bitsy, PICO-8, and Game Maker Studio. My hypertext game Cat Simulator 3000 was named one of Rock Paper Shotgun's 'Best free Games of the week'.

|dis|quiÉTUDE by |end| & Annie Goh

Python code
- view

I contributed Python code to sound artists |end| and Annie Goh's installation, |dis|quiÉTUDE, which was shown at St James Hatcham Church in southeast London. The code taps into Twitter streams which can be specified either by retweeted user or by specific search terms or hashtags, extracts numeric data from their associated follower counts, likes, and permalinks, and passes that data to Supercollider via the Open Sound Control protocol.

Random Tone Generator

Web app
- view/code

A simple random tone generator written in Javascript and using the WAD audio library. Intended as a a simplistic oscillator to be run through effects pedals, sampled and otherwise manipulated.

Too Much Not Enough podcast

Presentations

Pathways, Desire Lines (interactive video game presentation)

CHASE Encounters

These Uncertain Times: grassroots ethnography during the COVID-19 pandemic

CHASE Encounters

Tell Me I Can Fix This On My Own: creative coding as a non-programmer

Dorkbot London

Bitter Content: YouTube, the ukulele, and the smokescreen of participatory commodification

Intersectional Gentleness in Early-Stage Fieldwork

CHASE Music Network

Don't Make Me Go Outside: melancholy, recovery, and rejecting resilience

S.E.E. - Sound Education Experience

A Declaration of Openness: intersectionality, idealism, and the politics of gentleness in early-stage research

European Doctoral Seminar - Situations of Knowing

Public Engagement

Web article - 'MusicMakers001: Deerful' - Jamie Halliday

Adafruit
view

Web article - 'Deerful, aka Emma Winston, is a singer-songwriter gone mobile tech' - Peter Kirn

Create Digital Music
view

Radio interview - 'Little Trouble Girls' - Marie Merlet

Soho Radio
hear

Live radio performance - 'HelloGoodbye Show' - DeXter Bentley

Resonance FM
hear

Live presentation - 'Performance of @GraphicScoreBot', Victoria and Albert Museum

Bot Summit 2016
- view

Web interview - 'Emojis Are Art in This Twitter Bot ASCII Gallery' - Robert Barry

Vice Motherboard
- view

Radio interview - 'These bots tweet their own artwork'

Canadian Broadcasting Company - Spark with Nora Young
- view