Anthony Jay Ptak was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1970. His artistic career began in 1987 when he was selected to participate in the New York State Summer School for the Arts for his creative sound work. It was here that he was first exposed to electro-acoustic music and theremin. He premiered his composition Consolation at Katharine Cornell Theatre. He also wrote music for Dryrot on Long Island. He was offered a scholarship for his painting at South Hampton College of Art in 1988. He chose to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo. He devised a program of study that combined the areas of the Center for Media Study, which included film, video, film history, video analysis, and digital arts along with study in art history, critical theory, and performing arts. He was a student of film artist Paul Sharits, video artist and composer Tony Conrad, and digital artist Henry Jesionka. He spent time with John Cage during the North American New Music Festival in 1991. He assisted with electronic art and sound installations at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center. His film work was screened at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His research in media art gained him access to the SUNY video archive where he studied work by Nam Jun Paik. He was invited to the Anthology Film Archives by Gerald O'Grady (Director, Center for Media Study) where he met Jonas Mekas and Woody and Steina Vasulka. He graduated summa cum laude with a specialized BA in Media Studies/ Cultural Criticism with honors in 1992. He applied for an NEH grant with a proposal Electronic Media Art in Relation to Postmodernism. He directed a documentary Second Generation Vietnam. He studied film and communication arts at the New York Institute of Technology. Prompted by early NYSSMA lessons on organ and saxophone, he studied music as an auditor during summers at SUNY Stony Brook. At NYIT he made several short films, and worked for independent film maker Robert Withers in New York City. He entered his work in exhibitions including the Sound Basis Visual Art Festival in Wroclaw Poland and Techno Seduction at Cooper Union. In 1994 he attended the New York screening of Theremin an Electronic Odyssey where he met film maker Steven Martin and played a Series 91 Moog theremin on stage for the first time. He did several live theremin performances and performed in New York City at CBGB's Gallery. He also recorded with The Butterflies of Love (Secret7/ Fortuna Pop) on their debut CD release and performed theremin at Yale University, Tune Inn, Toad's Place, and Bar in New Haven, CT. In 1996 he met musicologist Olivia Mattis who introduced him to Russian thereminist Lydia Kavina. She encouraged his attendance at the First International Theremin Festival where he performed with Kavina. A live performance was broadcast in 1997 on public radio in Portland, and received Associated Press coverage on CNN.com. In addition to lessons with Kavina, he had technical consultations with Robert Moog, and theremin improvisor Eric Ross. Shortly thereafter he was invited to give a lecture at UMass Dartmouth. He worked in television sales and freelanced as a technical consultant for local artists. He built musical instruments including a copper reed instrument. In 1998 he moved to Urbana-Champaign where he worked as technical director at WILL public radio. During a concert tour of the US he worked as Lydia Kavina's personal assistant for appearances and attended Mode recording sessions in New York. Lydia Kavina introduced him to Chicago composer Gene Coleman with whom he collaborated on a soundtrack for the silent film Aelita Queen of Mars. He did a series of performances at Chicago Cultural Center, and the St. Louis Art Museum. He appeared on Chicago public television for Painting Revolution Playing Revolution. Since 1999 Anthony has been a guest in the historic Experimental Music Studios (EMS) at Urbana-Champaign under director Scott Wyatt. He organized a theremin event and performance with Dutch artist Wilco Botermans at the Krannert Art Museum. He studied with emeritus composer Herbert Brün in his Seminar in Experimental Composition. He presented at School for Designing a Society, the MAVerick Festival, and at the Independent Media Center. He experimented with building electronics and did several public performance art projects in Bilbao, Barcelona, and Madrid. He accepted an invitation by sound artist Nicolas Collins to present a lecture at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2000 he began work in the laboratory of the Computer Music Project under the direction of Sever Tipei. He also studied Music 4C with emeritus computer music pioneer James Beauchamp. In 2001 he was invited to participate in the School of Architecture's Computing for the Arts rehearsal studio initiative. His work Antenna Music was performed at SEAMUS (Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States) in 2002. He began work with Common Music programming for diskclavier under Heinrich Taube. He collaborated with composer Warren Burt on a minimalist event Piano No.305 at Krannert Art Museum. In addition he has worked with improviser Jason Finkelman (Director, Pauline Oliveros Foundation Midwest), and assisted in an interview of Christian Wolff for radio. In 2003 he completed a tape restoration project of recordings by Buckminster Fuller. His recent visual art appeared in the Election Show of 2004 at Southern Illinois University, and in the GCAP Artists Against AIDS exhibit in Champaign, IL. His Ekphoneticasulponticello was displayed at STAC The Art of Music in St. James, New York. Anthony Ptak performed theremin at Princeton University's FFMUP concert series in 2005. Most recently he gave a theremin performance at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, New York working with Stephan Moore (Sound Supervisor, Merce Cunningham Dance) to diffuse through a multichannel hemispheric grid sound system. Also in Fall 2005 Ptak presented at Institute for Advanced Study in the Time and Silence interdisciplinary colloquium, and performed theremin at the Institute's Wolfensohn Hall in Princeton, New Jersey. His work Axoxnxs is featured on the EMS Wavefields CD. Anthony Ptak continues his visiting research in computer assisted art, composition, and electro-acoustics at EMS. His affiliation with UIUC School of Art and Design started 2006. He currently teaches sound for artists and collaborated with students in his sound art installation entitled Phonologistic Auralities in April 2006. Contact: anthonyptak (at) axoxnxs.com