Immersive sound art for science communication and public outreach

Founding Partners

Tremology Lab is the collaborative partnership of procedural and spatial music composer, software and sound designer Kristin Miltner and serial innovator, animation systems designer, musical tinkerer and project manager Ken Pearce. Kristin contributes as a composer, installation artist, sound designer and creative coder. Ken adds his talents as an innovator in systems design, as well as algorithmic creation and manipulation of sound and video. 


  • Sound Designer, Cofounder

    Kristin Miltner is a professional sound designer, composer, and multimedia artist. After pursuing a masters degree at Mills College in Oakland, she began her career in interactive sound design at Leapfrog in 2001, back when Leapster, the first handheld educational gaming device, was brand new. She then went on to create music and design sound for many games on various platforms, including Sim Animals, Sims 3, Magic the Gathering Online, the Pokemon TCG, Magic Fuel Games’ Fort Stars, Crowdstar’s Happy Aquarium, and most recently, music for a Yakuza/Streets of Rage II mashup, where she created SEGA Genesis chip tune versions of Yakuza 0 themes.

    She has released music under Asthmatic Kitty, Hypnos, Praemedia and sfSound labels. Much of the material was created using homemade granular synth and filter sequencer patches created in Max/MSP.

    She is also a member of the San Francisco Tape Music Collective, helping to program, produce and perform an annual festival of multichannel audio compositions, from 1940s Musique Concrete to contemporary ambisonics and multichannel works spatialized live from a mixing station in the center of the theater.

  • Cofounder

    Most of my career has been in computer animation. I loved being able to construct something new and apparently miraculous that no one had ever experienced before, and watch how people were affected by it in surprisingly emotional ways. When I began working with immersive sound it became clear to me what audio aficionados have known all along — that the power of sound to achieve the same effect is probably even greater.

    So, we’re trying to use that power for good, making the wonders and circumstances of the natural world more tangible, and prodding people to care for what is rapidly disappearing.

    For street cred on the visual side: I received a Primetime Emmy Award for television animation, and a Scientific and Technical Achievement Award from the Motion Picture Academy for my contributions to a facial motion capture system used in over 20 major motion pictures. I was Director of Research and Development at PDI/Dreamworks for 8 years during the production of “Shrek” and other animated films, and my work in procedural animation received awards from the Broadcast Designers’ Association, Imagina, the National Computer Graphics Association and Prix Ars Electronica.

Team credits:

  • Immersive audio for “Once Upon a Climb”, Mount Everest exhibit, National Geographic Society Museum, Washington DC

  • Spatialized audio and lighting integration for Meow Wolf “Islands”, SXSW San Antonio

  • Immersive audio and control systems for “Spatial Holodeck”, SXSW San Antonio

  • Control framework for “Huddle Game Day”, immersive educational environment, Melbourne Australia

  • Nature-themed immersive audio for large indoor / outdoor residential installation with more than two hundred speakers, Marin County CA

  • Co-founder and composer, San Francisco Tape Music Festival, annual event where multi-channel audio compositions are spatialized live for a theater audience

  • Immersive audio and control systems for staff wellness rooms, Atlanta’s WellStar hospital chain

  • Interactive immersive audio / video experience responding to biofeedback from a heart rate monitor, as a tool for stress management

  • App-controlled spatialized audio experience for PTSD graded exposure therapy