Ben Houge

Ben Houge is an artist working at the nexus of sound installation, music composition, video games, digital art, and performance. A fifteen year veteran of the video game industry (Tom Clancy’s EndWar, Arcanum, and titles in the King’s Queset, Leisure Suit Larry, and Half-Life series), his work explores questions of real-time non-linear structure. Prior to moving to the Boston area in November 2010, Ben spent six years living in Shanghai, where he was active in the underground music and art scene, performing and exhibiting alongside artists including Yan Jun, Yao Dajuin, Torturing Nurse, and Wang Changcun, in venues including the Shanghai eArts Festival, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, the 2Pi Festival, the Zendai Museum, the Today Art Museum, and the True Color Museum.  Previously in Seattle he founded the Sound Currents concert series and contributed to the Seattle School composers’ collective from its inception, garnering a Genius Award from alternative weekly The Stranger and a Best Experimental Music Award from Seattle Weekly.  His work has been exhibited at Boston Cyberarts, the AxiomCenter for New and Experimental Media, e4c in Seattle, and his video Shanghai Traces was shortlisted for the Guggenheim’s YouTube Play Biennial of Creative Video.  Ben holds music degrees from St. Olaf College (BA) and the University of Washington (MM) and currently teaches video game audio at the Berklee College of Music and Boston University Center for Digital Imaging Arts.