I am excited to be collaborating with Colectivo AM (Mexico City) and LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) on “La Pista de Baile.” Below is the description of the event: La Pista de Baile by Colectivo AM organized by Daniela Lieja Quintanar FINAL performance at Hollywood Blvd. & N Hudson Ave. January 20th, 2018, 6 –10PM Living Research Station at LACE Gallery hours from January 10-20, 2018 Banco Universal de Pasos Various Locations – January 10-18, 2018 As part of the Getty initiative PST:LA/LA, LACE presents La Pista de Baile, a participatory performance by Colec ..read more

If you’re in New York, join me for a conversation and listening with Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture) and Alejandro Aviles (Sonido Kumbala) at Union Docs, a non-profit Center for Documentary Art in Brooklyn on December 16th. Cumbia sonidera is Mexico’s bass-heavy, sound-system reinterpretation of Afro-Colombian folk music. During performances, the sonideros (DJs) mix songs and get on the mic to recite fans’ dedications to people and places. These shout-outs (called saludos) trace an auditory archive of memory, migration, and longing across the US-Mexico border. Hosted by Jace C ..read more

Re-posted from “Considering Money Stuff” on Socializing Finance. Money is the most commonly circulating art form. At the same time, payment objects are unstable and excessive, frequently transforming their status from money to trash to art (and back again). Argentinian artist, Máximo González—who I write about—weaves out-of-print Mexican pesos and discarded scraps of currency into fabrics like The World’s Garbage (2012) and creates collages from out-of-circulation currency into Landscapes with Landfill (2003, 2005) transforming the trash of cash into art (potentially convertible to cash). Máx ..read more

This evening at USC Visions and Voices is hosting an interdisciplinary event on seismic  waves, Autotune, and Earthquake Quartets. I heard a version of Jace Clayton‘s discussion of the surprising connection between earthquake science and the pitch correction software at The Golden State Record. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, I highly recommend attending!! Here is their description of the event: The earth hums along to its own soundtrack. If only we could listen to it. When the ground beneath us shifts, as it is prone to do in Los Angeles, it unleashes enormous quantities of energy a ..read more

  Brian Dettmer, Skull 11 (80’s metal), 2007 I am excited for Dave Novak‘s upcoming talk May 26th at UC Davis. I will serve as the discussant for his talk, which is co-sponsored by Science and Technology Studies,  Innovating Communication in Scholarship and Center for Science and Innovation Studies. If you can attend, please RSVP ..read more

As a sociologist of work, my main research focuses on workplace experiences and labor/management relations in media industries. This includes service workers and engineers in the music industry as well as YouTube content creators and routine, “analytic” media workers. In an effort to gain a better understanding of how the digital media industry talks about itself, I took a drive down to Anaheim for the annual VidCon in July 2015. For those of you who don’t follow digital media, VidCon is a cross between an industry conference and a fan convention for digital video platforms (YouTube, Vimeo, et ..read more

If you happen to be in Austin, make sure to visit the exciting–and first ever–Sounding Board collective installation curated by Leonardo Cardoso. The exhibition is the first of its kind for the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual meeting and features many excellent scholar-artists producing sound-based research. Thursday-Sunday, December 3-6 3:00 – 8:00 PM The Companion Gallery 908 E. 5th St., #106 Here is the invitation and exhibition notes: …a structure behind or over a pulpit, rostrum, or platform to give distinctness and sonority to sound  a device or agency that helps propagat ..read more

Josef N. Wieland, an anthropology graduate student at the University of California, Irvine, shares some of his current research tracking global gemstone networks spanning from Brazilian miners to luxury consumers in southern California. This is the first of Josef’s tw0-part series on Sounds of the New Age. I first encountered “singing crystals” at a gem and mineral show at a Holiday Inn in Santa Ana, California several years ago. I was among a group of crystal customers lingering in hotel room that had been converted to a metaphysical shop for the weekend. “Wow, singing crystals,”  a wom ..read more

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