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Willie Payne

Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill

Interests

Creative Expression • Accessibility • CS Ed

Comics • Coffee • Running • New Music • New Fiction


Reach Me

william [dot] payne [at] unc [dot] edu

Chapel Hill, NC

Skinny Jewish dude with short curly hair and transparent, silver glasses.

About Willie

I am an Assistant Professor of User Experience / Design at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science (SILS).

I study how technology can support creativity and open pathways for individuals to express themselves on their own terms. To this end, I use participatory methods. I work closely with collaborators throughout design and deploy novel systems in their environments. Some results:

  • FiLOrk - Blind youth live coding electronic music!
  • danceON - Teen girls making animations that respond to dance!
  • Cyclops - Improvising music with eye input!

My articles are published mainly at HCI (Human Computer Interaction) conferences including ASSETS (Computers and Accessibility), Creativity & Cognition, and NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression).

I graduated in 2023 with a PhD in Music Technology at NYU where I was advised by Amy Hurst, and mentored by Yoav Bergner, Kayla DesPortes, and R. Luke DuBois. Before that, I earned a BS/MS in Computer Science and a BM in Music Composition from CU Boulder, where I studied with Shaun Kane, Clayton Lewis, and Michael Theodore.

Download my CV.


Selected Projects

FiLOrk

2024 / accessible music technology, creative coding
Teen-led ensemble performing electronic music with live code.

Collaborators

FMDG School, LiveCode.NYC, NYU Ability Project

Links

SoundCells

2022 / accessible music technology
Text-based music notation software for writing braille and print scores.

danceON

2020 / culturally relevent, creative coding, cs ed
Domain specific programming language for building animations that react to movement.

Cyclops

2019 / accessible music technology
Eye controlled synthesizer with sequencing and effects automation.

Single-Input Instruments

2019 / accessible music technology
Series of audio-visual interactives that can be played with one button.

TinkaMOD

2018 / creative coding
Rapid prototyping with Tinkamo blocks and Javascript.

BiSoN

2016 / experimental, iPads
Boulder Image and Sound Network - multimedia performance ensemble.

Electromagnetic Dulcimer

2016 / new instrument for musical expression
Networked, ambient strings. Part of the Solid Noise Robot Ensemble.

Guitar Processor

2015 / guitar effects
Multi-effects patch with standard and experimental sounds. Built in Max.

Publications

Mentorship is important to me. Undergraduate research assistants are marked with † while Masters students I mentored for thesis credit are marked with ‡.

Conference Proceedings

Posters and Demos


Features and Talks

Audio

githubSILSAbility ProjectFMDG Music School
Willie Payne - 2024