From 1960 to 1971, the FBI's Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), collected files on more than 250 African American writers, artists, politicians, and activists who they perceived as domestic threats. Among the non-consensual participants of this illegal surveillance program were Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Marion Stokes -- three key figures whose...
In Coded Bias, a new documentary about Big Tech's infiltration into every corner of our lives, MIT Media Lab algorithms scholar and digital activist Joy Buolamwini makes a bold claim: "The progress of civil rights could be rolled back under the guise of machine neutrality." Buolamwini's prediction is then fleshed out...
LA-based musician and visual artist Vinyl Williams -- born Lionel Williams -- explores ontological realities and connecting nexuses of sound, harmony, digital world-building, and higher consciousness. Tapping into Aldous Huxley’s realm of “mystical insight,” Williams puts it succinctly that, “If you have a vision of the music you love, you...
It wasn’t until the age of 22 that New York artist Matthew Craven enrolled in art school. Being untrained for years allowed him to create an artistic world of his own — and when Craven thinks back to his childhood, the message is clear. Like the great intangible mysteries which...
An imposing wall of rotary dials, turreted by oscilloscopes, draped in spaghettied cables, emitting a series of creaks, groans, and unearthly bubbles, is one of the most iconic images of electronic music. These monolithic machines -- known as modular synthesizers -- have had an enormous impact on how we visualize...
It’s tempting to think of SXSW Eco as the weird hippie brother of the massive music-film-interactive-free-vodka-was-that-Bill-Murray-and-RZA? festival. In reality, SXSW Eco is South By Southwest’s chic sister, just back from Les Ateliers and looking for ways to change the world while classing the joint up a bit. The conference, now...
In a world where our gadgets and devices open us up to an endless stream of novel sounds from around the globe and throughout history, it makes sense that there is sometimes more love and attachment for the machines than the people that made the music in the first place....
"I suppose with the video for 'World War Pt. 2', we were going for cheap thrills on one level, but maintaining cognizance of what a funny looking little dude could communicate under these conditions in a human and emotionally salient way. Maybe I’m trying to be honest about what I...
Jax Deluca and Kyle Marler of Flatsitter discovered one another years ago on an Amtrak train, in what one might call an act of divine timing, or a perfect illustration of the "right place, right time" adage. What emerged from this meeting is a male-female powerhouse duo, who use an...
“Language is the quintessential blueprint that can bridge between the senses. The more I attempt to describe music in visual terms, and the visual in musical terms, the more I’m training toward synesthesia. It’s not an ability that I naturally have, but I’ve developed it through language. It constantly informs...
Out of all the inventions to have contributed to the increasingly relevant history of electronic music, the TR-808 from Roland likely has the strongest legacy. From Brian Eno to Marvin Gaye to Kanye West, the unique sounds of the TR-808 have dominated the electronic-sonic vocabulary since its invention in 1980,...