John Matthias is a musician, composer and academic. He is a Principal-Investigator in the 2014 £4.1 Million Euro EU Marie Curie ITN Grant ‘CogNovo’ which explores creativity and novelty in cognition and was Principal Investigator in the 2009 Wellcome Trust Grant ’24 Fragments’. He has also had funding from the Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council UK. He has contributed several book chapters co-authoring with Jane Grant and also written articles for several major Journals including Leonardo, the Leonardo Music Journal and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA (PNAS). In 2008, he won the UK PRS Foundation New Music Award (The 'Turner Prize' for music) with Jane Grant and Nick Ryan for the development of a huge sonic installation entitled 'The Fragmented Orchestra' which won an honorary mention at the Prix Ars Electronica 2009. He has released four music albums; ‘Smalltown, Shining’(2001), ‘Stories from the Watercooler’ (2008), ‘Cortical Songs’ (2009) (with Nick Ryan), which includes remixes by Thom Yorke, Simon Tong and Jem Finer and ‘Geisterfahrer’ (2014). ‘Cortical Songs’ was voted one of the top ten classical albums of 2009 by Time Out (Chicago). John has also won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and the Prix Italia. He has collaborated with many recording artists including Radiohead and Coldcut and has performed extensively internationally including at the Ecstatic Music Festival in New York, The Pompidou Centre in Paris and at the Royal Opera House in London. He has recently been involved in collaborations with the Rambert Dance Company in London, artist, Stanley Donwood in San Francisco and artist, Jane Grant in their large scale sound work, ‘Fathom’. He is Associate Professor in Sonic Arts at Plymouth University, has a Ph.D in Theoretical Physics from Exeter University and is Co-Director of the Art and Sound Research Cluster at Plymouth University.

Composition, Sound Installation, Collaborative Creativity, Complex Systems, Many-Body Systems