Biography

To understand Johnson's obsession with music and blending genres, one needs only to look to his past. As a child Johnson suffered with countless ear infections, four eardrum ruptures, and seven ear surgeries. A period of substantial conductive hearing loss changed Johnsons life when he had to read lips to understand his parents. When surgeries re-introduced Johnson to the auditory world, he became determined to never be exiled from it again. Johnson played viola in grades 4-10 then switched to electric guitar almost exclusively for two years. The syncopated harmony lines practiced for years on viola complemented the guitars melodic role. Johnson began arranging and recording guitar and synthesizer compositions when he started college in 1999, taking a few music theory classes along the way. He picked up electric 5-string violin in 2004 to expand his tonal palette and bring strings back into focus. Rustcycle has been described as a blend of Moby, Joe Satriani, Nine Inch Nails, and Yanni for good reason. Johnson's influences are varied, including those named and others who have innovated in order to push their genres boundaries. Johnsons music is first and foremost an avenue for personal expression, but there are other motivations. Rustcycle is a means of encouraging others to get up and create something new. Johnson has presented at the University of Colorado to inspire musicians to look at math and sciences tools in new ways and for technologists to respect the communicativeness of art and music. Through the VJ content, Rustcycle is a means of getting public exposure for computational neuroscience work. The public will be introduced to more of whats happening behind the scenes as Johnson gets closer to publishing work relating to his thesis (MS Computer Science - December 2006). Johnson is a software engineer and researcher at a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) and aspires to continue interdisciplinary work in the vein of inventor / musician / engineer / futurist Kurzweil.