Fred Szymanski is a New York-based electroacoustic composer and sound-and-image artist whose work explores non-linear processes linked to generative systems. Szymanski’s works have been performed at international festivals including, most recently, NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival, New York(2024),, MA/IN (2023), ArteScienza Festival, Rome (2023), and NYU IRCAM Forum Concert, Brooklyn 2022.

His image-sound works have been featured at the Recombinant Media Lab’s Cinechamber (Artistic Director, Naut Humon) at Mutek (Montreal) and CTM.11 Festival (Berlin), SonicLIGHT (Amsterdam), the 9th Biennial of the Moving Image (Geneva), and the European Media Art Festivals (Osnabrück).

Szymanski has been the recipient of several awards, including Premier Prix, Electroacoustique, Concours International de Composition Electroacoustique de Monaco (2015), First Prize, Musica Nova ((2017), and Special Mention, Città di Udine (2018), as well as Honorary Mention, Matera Intermedia Festival (MA/IN, 2016) and the International Destellos Competition (2017).

Under the moniker, A LAMINAR PROJECT, he has released recordings with the labels, Sub Rosa (Belgium), Asphodel Ltd. (San Francisco), JDK Productions (Amsterdam), Soleilmoon (Portland), and Staalplaat (Amsterdam).

His work has been exhibited at the Eyebeam Center for Art and Technology as part of the group show, What Sound Does a Color Make? (2005), at the Whitney Museum of American Art as part of the BitStreams show (2001), and at such venues as the Diapason Gallery for Sound (New York), Artists Space (New York), and the Valencia Biennial’s VideoRom. An early work was part of the Sonorità Prospettiche (Prospective sonorities) program at Suono Ambiente (Rimini, Italy), and travelled to the Venice Biennale, Kulturforum (Bonn), Kulturreferat (Munich), Lugano, Switzerland, and the City of Turin.

Szymanski studied film and video production while pursuing a BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and participated in electronic music classes at MacColl Studios, Providence, RI with Professor Gerald Shapiro (Schep) and Thomas Delio. During that time, he performed multichannel live electronic music in Boston and Providence and New England. After relocating to New York, he continued to perform live electronic music as a member of the electronic/industrial band IKE YARD. The band had releases with Factory America (U.S. offshoot of Factory Records) and Les Disques du Crepuscule (Belgium).

After settling in New York, he continued his studies with summer courses at the Center for Computer Research and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University focusing on Algorithmic Composition and Synthesis using Common Lisp Music (CLM) given by Heinrich Taube. Further studies included workshops in Csound Programing with Professor Jon Christopher Nelson ((CEMI) UNT College of Music Summer Courses. He also attended intensive Max/Jitter Programming Workshop for Real-time 3D, given by Jasch, iMAL, Bruxelles (Belgium) and attended Ircam Spatial Audio Workshops using Wave Field Synthesis and High-Order Ambisonics with Markus Noisternig and Hans Tutschku, EMPAC, Rensselaer, NY.