Clay Chaplin is a composer, improvisor, and video artist from Los Angeles who explores audio visual improvisation with computer instruments and networked systems. He uses computers and custom electronics as musical and visual instruments which can of capture, process, play back, or generate sounds and images in real-time. Clay is continuing development of his wireless, interactive instrument named 'Stupid Thing' which, through a connection with the body provides mobility and physicality to his performances.

During his career, Clay has worked on many projects involving experimental music, video, dance, computers, and related technology. His works have been performed internationally including performances at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival, the Line Space Line concert series, the Detritus concert series, the Sonic Circuits Festivals, the Piano Spheres concert series, the Santa Fe Electronic Music Festival, UCSB's Cultural Turn Conference, UCSD's Time-Forms Media Festival, the Ex-Static Concerts in Sydney, the Korean Electro-Acoustic Society concerts in Seoul, the Fringe Festival of Independent Dance Artists in Toronto, the Olympia Experimental Music Festival, the International Computer Music Conference in Hong Kong, the Baltimore Composers Forum concerts, the CEAIT Electronic Music Festivals, and the Electronic Music Threshold concerts.

Clay received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts where he studied composition and computer media at the Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology (CEAIT) with Morton Subotnick, Mark Trayle, Sara Roberts, and Tom Erbe. After receiving his MFA, Clay worked as an Assistant Professor of Composition at CEAIT from 1998 through 2002. He taught in the Composition New Media and Integrated Media programs and also served as the Technical Director for the School of music in 2000. Clay has been composer in residence at STEIM in Amsterdam and the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in San Francisco. He has given talks on new media for the American Composer's Forum, the Baltimore Composer's Forum, the Center for Research in the Computing Arts (CRCA) at UCSD, and the Sonic Circuits Festival. Clay's latest CD of new works will be released in the summer of 2003 on the Artifact Recording label.