Profs at the Pub with Professor Andrew Watts
**Events may have been canceled or postponed. Please contact the venue to confirm the event.
Date & Time
Wed, Mar 11 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Address (map)
3435 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93105
Venue (website)
Lama Dog UPTOWN Taproom + Bottleshop
Profs at the Pub: Music Composition & Glitch in the Age of AI with Professor Andrew Watts
Wednesday, March 11th, 2026
6:30 PM at Lama Dog (Uptown)
Join the UCSB Affiliates and composer Andrew A. Watts as he discusses the creative process in his recent video work in a talk covering topics including data sonification, glitch, and multimedia applications of artificial intelligence (AI). For more information about his compositional practice please visit his website here!
Andrew A. Watts is a composer of chamber, symphonic, and multimedia works performed worldwide. His compositions have been featured at cultural events like Burning Man (Corpus Clock) and venues such as The Kitchen (NYC). He has been commissioned by leading new music groups including Ensemble Dal Niente, Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble, and Splinter Reeds, with support from organizations like New Music USA. Watts’s music mines the ramifications of technology and the post-human, exploring extremes of freedom and restriction, purity and distortion, or the very distinction between musical signal and noise. He often incorporates invented instruments and AI-generated media, recently premiering large-scale works like AI and the Heat Death of the Universe. He holds degrees from Stanford University (DMA), Oxford University (MSt), and the New England Conservatory (BM). Watts is on the Music Composition faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies, where he is an affiliate in the Mind & Machine Intelligence initiative and was a finalist for the Distinguished Teaching Award. He has been a featured composer at renowned international festivals, including the Darmstadt Summer Courses, MATA Festival, and impuls Academy, and has given guest lectures at institutions like IRCAM and Harvard.
The UCSB Affiliates is led by a volunteer board of community members and campus representatives passionate about creating innovative and community- centered programming. The goal of the UCSB Affiliates is to build and celebrate connections between UC Santa Barbara and the greater Santa Barbara community. We provide a pathway for community members to learn more about UC Santa Barbara and participate in campus activities. Through our events and newsletters, we highlight exciting campus-community partnerships and initiatives.
Learn more at communityrelations.ucsb.edu/ucsb-affiliates
