Ross Wightman is a sound and media artist from New Jersey. Currently, he serves as a Technical Manager at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) and Curator of the CCAM Sound Art Series. At Yale and the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, he teaches a variety of media studies, computer music and composition courses, and leads electroacoustic improvisation ensembles.

As a sound artist and composer, his work incorporates microtonality, electro-acoustic multimedia composition and instrument building. In his electroacoustic instruments building practice, Ross repurposes and deconstructs found instruments, combining 3D printing, robotics, and machine learning to investigate themes related to performance practice, virtuosity, timbre and resonance.  

As a visual artist, Ross’ work spans video, 3D modeling, mixed reality, graphic design and other media. Drawing often on a deep love of film, his video art practice subverts the intended functionality of consumer electronics to concoct amalgamations of glitched and distorted vintage media via digital sampling and circuit bending analog A/V equipment.

As a double bassist, Ross focuses on the performance of contemporary music, specifically microtonal music and seeks to bring this rarely performed music to wider audiences as well as commission new works. Ross has premiered works for the double bass by Alvin Lucier and Anthony Coleman and has had the pleasure of performing with contemporary music ensembles such as The Ever-Present Orchestra, Ghost Ensemble, Ensemble Mise-en, Callithumpian Consort and at international festivals including the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, The Lucerne Festival, Ambient Festival Köln, The New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival and the Bang on a Can Summer Festival. 

Clash Magazine has cited his work as among the “best of the American experimental underground.”