Sound artist, software engineer, and the Rails expert your AI can't be.
I'm Julian Rubisch — a software engineer, sound artist, and Fractional Rails CTO. I studied media computing before training as an electroacoustic composer at MDW Vienna, where I learned “reduced listening” — a perceptual technique for hearing what's actually there, not what you expect to hear. These two paths have always been complementary, not sequential.
I believe art and software engineering share more guiding principles than people realize — signal vs. noise, structure vs. entropy, the judgment to know what holds and what will break. I apply that dual perspective to every Rails codebase I review. It's a way of seeing software that neither pure engineers nor AI can replicate.
I've spent nearly two decades at the intersection of art, computation, and generative systems. Today I help maintain StimulusReflex, one of the foundational Rails real-time libraries, and I work with founders and small teams building with AI — async, through GitHub, no judgment.
Three threads, one perspective
Sound & Composition
Certificate program in electroacoustic composition at MDW Vienna. Trained in reduced listening — the perceptual discipline of separating what you hear from where it comes from. Performed at ZKM Karlsruhe, Ars Electronica, and ORF Ö1 Kunstradio. Art and engineering aren’t separate tracks — they share the same guiding principles.
Generative AI Research
Published a book on algorithmic creativity in 2008. Research associate at the Institute for Creative Media Technologies, FH St. Pölten (2007–2014). 16+ years of working with generative systems — long before the current AI wave.
Rails Engineering
StimulusReflex maintainer. Dozens of Rails codebases reviewed. 24+ published articles across AppSignal, Cloud66, and RoRvsWild. Technical editor at AppSignal. The deep Rails expertise that comes from years of deliberate, repeated practice.
24+ articles across three platforms
AppSignal
18 articles + technical editor
Long-running series on Rails performance, Hotwire, and testing
Cloud66
3 articles
Including a guide to building Hotwire + LLM applications
RoRvsWild
3 articles
300x PostgreSQL full-text search speedup
Generative Music and Media
Applications of algorithmic composition and generative approaches — published 2008
Performances & exhibitions
Selected venues and festivals where I've performed or exhibited electroacoustic and generative work:
julianrubisch.at — full artistic profile, recordings, and performance archive.
Want to work together?
A 30-minute intro call to understand your codebase and see if we're a good fit. No pitch, no pressure.