Tina Blaine

Tina Blaine (also known by her stage name “bean”) taught at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center for five years, developing collective experiences that integrate game design, sonic discovery and interactive media. Before joining CMU, she worked at Interval Research as a musical interactivist, leading a development team in the creation of the Jam-O-Drum, a collaborative audiovisual instrument on permanent exhibit at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Blaine’s research and projects with ETC students have been featured at SIGGRAPH's Emerging Technologies, Zeum's Children’s Museum in San Francisco, Give Kids the World Resort in Orlando, Ars Electronica's Museum of the Future in Linz, Austria and Laboral in Gijon, Spain. Blaine curated the exhibition “Technology for the Benefit of Humanity” at the Tech Museum in San Jose and is currently the executive director of Rhythmix Cultural Works, a non-profit community theater/art space in the SF Bay area where people come together to perform, inspire, teach and interact.

Blaine’s exploration of musical interaction techniques began in the 1980s, building electronic MIDI controller instruments and large-scale audience participation devices for live performance with the multimedia ensemble D’Cuckoo. She has written music for NPR, video games, TV and documentary soundtracks, and has performed/recorded with Brian Eno, Mickey Hart, Haunted by Waters, Maze Daiko, Pandemonaeon, University of Pittsburgh Gamelan and others lured by the muse. Blaine has written for numerous publications including Electronic Musician and the Journal for New Music Research, and was a co-founder of the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference. In 2008, she served as co-artistic director for the Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam and has also been honored for her inspiring, innovative work in the sciences by the Women and Girls Foundation of Southwestern Pennsylvania and the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA.