Melissa Dyne is an artist, musician, synthesist and sound designer.
She works across genres and media, creating compositions, performances, sound design, and installation works exploring the emotional and performative properties of sound and light.
Melissa is also initiator of “WOMANPRODUCER”, a multi-dimensional archive of sonic innovators. Looking both backward and forward, the project highlights frequently untold histories of female, trans and non-binary sonic innovators and encourages the generation of more materials by and about these producers and technologists. The project began in 2014 as a web-based archive and has perpetually expanded in time and space, first with a series of live events held in Brooklyn, New York in the fall of 2016, which brought together artists from across genres and eras for conversations, performances and in the form of a record label. As a label, WOMANPRODUCER acts as a funnel through which producers can self-release their work, a sort of ephemeral water cooler around which artists can gather and share the endeavor of producing sounds and sending them out into the world. WOMANPRODUCER is the project of Khaela Maricich and Melissa Dyne, of the NYC-based electronic duo The Blow.
Classically trained on the cello as a child, she went on to study physics and fine arts at The College of Santa Fe, NM, and audio engineering and acoustics at SAE Institute NYC. Since 2007 she has been one half of the experimental-electronic-pop band The Blow, releasing numerous recordings and touring their performance-art works nationally and internationally. Her site-specific installations have been exhibited at Museum of the City of Mexico City; Ex Teresa, Mexico City; Para Site, Hong Kong; Portland Museum of Contemporary Craft; and Yerba Buena Center for The Arts, San Francisco, among other locations. She lives and works in New York City.
As a synthesis programmer Melissa has an extensive experience designing and implementing multi-instrumental audio processing systems for studio as well as live performance. Incorporating both hardware and software, she creates a unique signal flow for the realization of each project. She has worked for years as head engineer and synthesist for world-renowned percussionist Bashiri Johnson, utilizing creative mic placement, sampling, and processing techniques on recordings for mainstream pop artists. She engineers, produces, arranges, and mixes, and was initially trained in recording to tape and traditional analogue sound creation and manipulation.
Open Studios TBA