Facilities

The Fine Arts Building, also called the Music Building or Music Wing of the Staller Center for the Arts, is a 5-story building, 4 of which house the Department of Music. There are mixed-used rehearsal spaces, student practice studios, classrooms, performance studios and administrative offices.

Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) is on the forefront of marine research on the east end of Long Island with its new 15,000-square foot, two-story Marine Sciences Center located on its Southampton campus.  Already home to cutting edge and internationally recognized research on harmful algal blooms, ocean acidification, seagrasses, shellfish, and ocean acoustics, this new facility has greatly expand the research capabilities of SoMAS in Southampton.  These expanded abilities ultimately benefit Long Island and its coastal ecosystems as a majority of the research in Southampton focuses on our local bays, harbors, and estuaries.

The central feature of the new facility is a computerized, state-of the-art 2,500-square-foot indoor seawater lab, which is capable of supplying three different seawater scenarios; ambient, temperature control and a closed recirculation system.  The ambient seawater line allows researchers to mimic the seasonal temperature changes of Shinnecock Bay by pulling water directly from the bay to supply various research tanks.  With temperatures fluctuating between approximately 1°C during the winter and 26°C in the summer, a temperature control line is able to instantly heat or chill incoming water to any temperature desired by a researcher.  For research requiring very specific water quality parameters, the closed recirculation system allows for greater control of not only temperature, but salinity and various other aspects of the water chemistry.

In addition to this impressive indoor wet lab, the Marine Sciences Center has an additional 2,400 sq. ft. of outdoor wet lab space that can accommodate larger experimental chambers or those experiments that would benefit from a natural sunlight cycle.

Research and education go hand in hand at the Marine Sciences Center.  A classroom, analytical lab, and a prep lab that supports two teaching laboratories not only enhance one of the nation’s top ranked marine science graduate programs, but strengthens the increased growth of Stony Brook Southampton’s undergraduate Semester by the Sea program.  A large entrance lobby, hallway with a view of the wet lab and conference room allow Stony Brook Southampton to bring awareness of our marine environment to the local community through lectures, tours, and trips aboard our research vessels.

To keep with Stony Brook Southampton’s environmental mission, the Marine Sciences Center was constructed with many “green” features.  Sustainable design innovations such as energy recovery of ventilation air, day lighting of all normally occupied spaces, a low static pressure ductwork system, high-efficiency lighting and a super-insulated exterior wall assembly all work together to bring a silver LEED rating to the Marine Sciences Center.

The Marine Sciences Center is also home to a fleet of research vessels including the R/V Paumanok, a 44-foot ocean-going vessel used for coastal research, the R/V Shinnecock, a 35-foot platform craft used for sampling local bays and estuaries and the R/V Peconic, a 45-foot catamaran, houseboat-style vessel for operation in protected bays and rivers.  Many small, outboard crafts equipped with winches, davits and metering wheels for sampling instruments such as oxygen analyzers, CTD-probes, and trawls.

The Stony Brook Electronic and Computer Music Studios are the nexus of our electroacoustic music community. Continuing the long tradition of electroacoustic music at Stony Brook, we offer state-of-the-art facilities that combine the latest in digital technology with an array of analog equipment, including Buchla, Moog, and ARP synthesizers. Classes held in the studios attract a broad spectrum of students with wide-ranging interests, and emphasize the creation and discussion of new works. On any given evening one might find a an undergraduate computer science major meticulously editing a reel-to-reel tape for his class in analog synthesis, while down the hall a doctoral student in composition is improvising at the computer, playing together with her cellist colleague, using Max/MSP interactive software.

We are advocates for electroacoustic music, and offer regular concerts in which new pieces from Stony Brook students are heard alongside works by established composers. We actively seek opportunities for collaborations with other disciplines, and are frequently seen working in conjunction with visual artists, dancers, poets, filmmakers, and creative people of all stripes. We are teachers and practitioners, and members of our community are active participants in the greater electroacoustic music community.

• Studio A is our analog studio. It contains a wide range of vintage equipment, including oscillators, ring modulators, filters, envelope generators, and a Buchla 200 synthesizer. Users of the studio can edit works on one of four reel-to-reel tape decks or on a computer workstation using Pro Tools.
• Studio B is a high-end, single-user studio with a focus on multichannel audio. It will easily transition from 8-channel ambisonic to standard 5.1 surround sound. The core of the studio will be two Power Mac G5 computers, set up as a linked pair so that one computer can dedicate its full power to audio processing while the other is being used for recording.
• Studio C is our multi-user studio and classroom. Three computer workstations are available, each built around a Power Mac G5 computer running a full suite of audio applications, including Max/MSP, Pro Tools, Logic Audio, and Reason. In addition, each workstation features an arsenal of digital audio hardware, including a Digi002 audio interface and an array of various external synthesizers, effects units, and controllers. For classroom instruction, Studio C has a video projection system to which all computers are connected, allowing for easy demonstration of lesson material, as well as a top-shelf monitoring system with speakers custom-made by our emertius engineer Andy Nittoli.

History
In the 1960s, electronic music pioneer Bülent Arel was director of electronic music at Yale University. In 1971 he founded Stony Brook University’s Electronic Music Studio and taught a course in fundamentals of electronic music. In 1973-4, both Arel and Daria Semegen designed a second analog studio and several editing studios. While teaching and working at Columbia-Princeton’s electronic music center, Semegen developed Stony Brook’s additional electronic music courses and assembled an electronic music library. Stony Brook University was one of the first U.S. universities to offer a comprehensive graduate curriculum in Electronic Music Studies including technical studies, electronic music composition, and history of electronic music and technology with a collection of audio/visual materials and printed literature.

Additional facilities
In addition to the facilities at Stony Brook Studios, our students also have access to the 22 workstations available at the Staller Center SINC site, each of which features a full suite of professional applications, including Logic, Reason, Sibelius, and Final Cut Pro.

Our new Hybrid site has an additional 18 computers available, running Logic, Max/MSP, and Final Cut Pro, along with other applications.