Home — 1970 -- 1979 — 1975 – CCRMA is Founded

The arts have enjoyed a vital and dynamic presence on the Stanford campus since the University was founded, together with the Stanford Museum, over a century ago. Chronicled here is the history of that presence ─ a compelling story of permanent change and growth. At the same time, the assembled information and documents bring to light an underlying commitment to an education in and through the arts that has guided and informed the institution’s evolution throughout. Tradition and transformation go hand in hand.

Visitors to this site will find answers to a variety of questions:
What kinds of activities developed and increased as the various units and groups connected to the arts came into being and continued to evolve? How have those activities shifted their focus, and sometimes even their departmental affiliation, from one part of the university to another? When were the campus arts facilities constructed and how have they been used? Who have been the key personalities and groups involved?

What have been the landmark achievements? What are the broader themes and tendencies that are common to the myriad pursuits, constituting a Stanford tradition?

The Stanford Arts Initiative, which began in 2006, has energized the arts on campus in transformative ways: new buildings for the arts are being constructed, faculty positions and student stipends added, and curricular reforms enacted.

The Initiative formed part of the five-year campaign called The Stanford Challenge, a cross-disciplinary vision for the 21st century. The Initiative’s momentum is being sustained across campus, in particular through the work of the Stanford Arts Institute. By promoting collaboration and further integrating the arts into the fabric of university life, the university will continue to establish new connections among arts disciplines at the same time as it blurs the boundaries between the curricular and the extracurricular.

Discover here an enduring legacy in higher education: a mix of idealism and pragmatism, theory and practice, knowledge and invention, community service and individual discovery, excellence and innovation.

Denning Family Director of the Stanford Arts Institute

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The Arts Timeline was funded, created, and produced by the Stanford Arts Institute. Additional funding was generously provided by The Ben and A. Jess Shenson Funds at Stanford University.

Timeline team: Kathryn Dickason, Toni Gauthier, Stephen Hinton, Ashley Kennedy, Heidi Lee, Stav Ziv

We are grateful to the Special Collections and University Archives Department of Stanford University Libraries for permission to reproduce images from various collections, in particular the Historical Photograph Collection.

PRELUDE +

CCRMA

41 years ago Catergory: 1970 -- 1979, Milestones, Music

FALL 1975 CCRMA is Founded

CCRMA was formed initially for the purpose of administering a $600,000 grant proposal that Chowning and Leland Smith made to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The Center grew rapidly into the multi-disciplinary facility it is today, where composers and researchers work together using computer-based technology both as an artistic medium and as a research tool. The patent established after Chowning’s discovery of FM synthesis in 1967, the second most lucrative licensing agreement in Stanford’s history, became the principal source of the Center’s current endowment.

In recent years, CCRMA faculty and students have devised nuanced ways of bridging music and technology. The Mobile Phone Orchestra (a.k.a MoPhO), a student organization established and currently directed in 2007 by CCRMA Professor Ge Wang, explores the interactive processes of musical composition using the technological capabilities of hardware and software, multi-touch screens, built-in accelerometers, gyroscopes, microphones, cameras, data networks, etc. Wang explained the significance of fusing phones and music in a 2009 interview with Stanford News: “mobile phones are becoming so powerful that we cannot ignore them anymore as platforms for creativity…[we are on the brink of ] a mobile renaissance, maybe a new mobile revolution.” In 2008, Wang further amplified musical innovation by starting the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (or SLOrk), a computer-based collective that appropriates new technologies in order to renovate traditional music. As described by members of SLOrk, this ensemble “fuses a powerful sea of sound with the immediacy of human music-making, capturing the irreplaceable energy of a live ensemble performance as well as its sonic intimacy and grandeur. At the same time, it leverages the computer’s precision, possibilities for new sounds, and potential for fantastical automation to provide a boundary-less sonic canvas on which to experiment, create, and perform music.”

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