Jake Metz

Jake Metz is a sound engineer, musician, video artist, multimedia technologist and producer. Professionally, he designs studio spaces, teaches media production and consults on multimedia technology for the University of Illinois and runs a freelance audio/video production business which includes a professional sound studio. For the past 6 years, Jake has been pursuing spatial sound design, hosting the Immersion Festival in 2019 for which he designed and constructed a 18.2 channel spatial sound dome, a 14-channel spatial sound show as part of Boneyard Arts Festival 2019, and eight quadraphonic events in the Champaign-Urbana area. In the same timeframe he has also attended conferences and specialized venues around the world pertaining to sound design/performance for high-density loudspeaker arrays. While pursuing the above sound arts, he has also participated in increasingly complex live video art performances/exhibitions: the most recent a summit on modern Video Art in Phoenix, AZ which drew artists from around the US and internationally and for which acted as Technical Director. Most recently in Urbana, Jake was the primary design engineer behind all of the audiovisual technology at Gallery Art Bar, He is also interested in interactive installation design and its potential to draw people into discussions about emerging, experimental art forms. Video feedback walls, live sound-processing using contact mics on percussion instruments, hands-on audio synthesis exhibits and audience participative live-looping have all found their way into his artistic practice. No matter what medium he is working in, Jake seeks to inject a sense of magic, subvert ordinary perceptions and tease the line of the surreal in order to inspire curiosity within others.