CLUB BAND

FORT AWESOME

Fort Awesome has been in the Arizona music scene since 2003. Their music has been described as an eclectic mix of European electronica and 50's surf music with influences of rock, blues, and techno. The band has evolved over the years from a group of three friends wasting time in a rural garage to a veritable menagerie of talent that changes from song to song. The most frequent contributors to the music are Jake Patten (PhD Psychology Student at ASU), Nikki Patten (BS Education Student at ASU), Matt Campbell (JD Student at Washington State University), Cory Stephenson (PhD Physics Student at University of Illinois Urbana Champaign), and David Bernal (MA Computer Science Student at ASU).

Kristopher Jake Patten is a PhD student in Cognitive Psychology at Arizona State University. He specializes in auditory research, neural
processing theories of audition, and applied uses of auditory technology. His first study, The Fleeting Fundamental, refuted
evidence that suggested virtual pitch was a universal phenomenon and supported the theory of the existence of a harmonic detector
pre-processing unit. A follow-up study, Vision vs. Audition, showed that the presence of visual stimuli decreased the effect size shown in
the Fleeting Fundamental and suggests that, in scene analysis, visual stimuli may be more important to the brain than auditory stimuli. His current study, the Harmonics of Hades, seeks to find the 'best' and 'worst' sounds to human ears and proposes evolutionary reasons as to why those sounds are rated as they are. In addition to auditory research, Kristopher is also developing a device to enhance the tactile senses of Braille readers.