Philart and his love for music

In an interview  with Hatice Sahin as a part of the HCI Oldenburg YouTube seminar series called “Life in Academia”, Myounghoon (Philart) Jeon, describes his circuitous journey from a dream of singing, to a job in sound design then film music scoring, and finally sonification (the presentation of data as sound). He goes by “Philart” which means “love art.”

Jeon is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering with a courtesy affiliation in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, and director of the Mind Music Machine Lab. His research focuses on emotions and sound in the areas of Automotive User Experiences, Assistive Robotics, and Arts in XR Environments. He served as immediate former president of the International Community for Auditory Display (ICAD). He received his MS and PhD in Engineering Psychology and Human-Computer Interaction from Georgia Tech. 

As Jeon summarizes the interview:

This talk is about the dreary story of failure of the little music boy. His longest dream in his life was to be a singer (K-pop star!). Well, he did not make it but instead, he worked as a sound designer for all kinds of electronic products at the company. But he wanted to come back to musical life. So, he studied film scoring to be a music director for film. But instead of beginning a new film scoring startup, he decided to study sonification (making sound from the data), which is what he is still doing. So, this talk is about sublimating passion for music into sonification and music research.” 

The interview is available on YouTube: