About

Table of Contents

Artist Info
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Mattias Petersson is a composer and performer based in Stockholm. He is part of the vibrant computer music scene with a personal take on live coding and modular synthesis. His music has been performed worldwide and released on labels like Hallow Ground, Moving Furniture Records, CO-DEPENDENT, IDEAL Recordings and Fylkingen records. He works primarily with electronic music but has also written chamber music, a number of operas and music for dance performances. He moves seamlessly between electroacoustic music, drone and noise with a rhythmically driven pulse.

Academic Info
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Mattias is also a senior lecturer and director of subject at the electroacoustic composition department at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He holds a PhD in Music Performance, and as an artistic researcher he is part of GEMM))) – a research cluster at Luleå University of Technology, focusing on Gesture, Embodiment and Machines in Music.

Petersson has been working with various computer music tools and analog modular systems since 1999. His research focuses on how the instrument can manifest as a composition in itself, and how digital and analog technology can aid in realtime explorations of such compositions.

Sonic Practices
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Since 2025 he runs the Sonic Practices Working Group together with Ludvig Elblaus (KTH/KMH) and Ida Lundén (Konstfack).

Sonic Practices organizes activities open for anyone interested in the big variety of sonic practices present in the community of artists and makers in Stockholm. The group’s goal is to share knowledge and resources, open up academic spaces to independent artists, and to create new opportunities for collaboration. Sonic Practices is organized as a working group at the NAVET Centre for Research in Art, Technology and Design.

Doctoral Thesis
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In June 2025 Petersson defended his doctoral thesis The Act of Patching: Musicking with modular systems at the Piteå School of Music at Luleå University of Technology. The dissertation focuses on a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as metastable, modular musicking systems. In applying such an understanding, it seeks to gain knowledge in the transformative process found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems. At the core of the practice lies how instruments can be designed and customised to fit aesthetic and technological aims as well as how existing tools and mindsets inform the musician’s agenda. Utilising traditional patching techniques in combination with live coding, both as concepts and actual practices, the research aims for a deeper understanding of when, how and why instrumental setups change and co-evolve together with him as a composer-performer.