AES Show 2024 NY

Short Abstract:
This presentation explores Black, Indigenous, Afro-Asian, and Afro-Indigenous cross-cultural collaboration leading to influential innovations in sonic creative technology. Centering on the soundsystem as a form of self-determination and as a contemporary art form rooted in survival and resistance, the presentation aims to illuminate meaningful connections between ancestral and state-of-the-art sound technologies through the lens of critical decolonization theory. Highlighting innovations ranging from parametric EQ, radio, and the sound system as both cultural and analog technologies, the presentation shows how these could only exist through mutual influence and the building of nations and kinship across cultures bound by mutual experiences of oppression. These artistic traditions in music, gathering, and engineering emerged and continue to act as dynamic tools of survivance within Black and globally Indigenous communities. By skillfully using these tools, practitioners of these electronic and sonic art forms destabilize racialized boundaries and empower the collective ownership of cultural narratives—a fearless pursuit reflecting a shared vision of Black and Indigenous self-determination, liberation, and futurity for kin past, present, and future.

Extension:
The presentation’s audiovisual materials will comprise two aspects: archival materials from music and resistance movements in the featured locations and contemporary artworks dealing with identity politics and protest in connection with music. Featured locations will include, but are not limited to: Indian Country, USA & Canada; Kingston, Jamaica; Notting Hill, UK; and Detroit, MI. Timeline of technological innovation will center audio advancements in amplification and transmission within the post-transistor era (1947 - present), with a historical focus primarily from 1947 to 1996. Featured BIPOC artists and innovators in electrical engineering in the sonic arts will include and are not limited to: Hedley Jones, Tom Wong, and Don Lewis. Featured entrepreneurial artists in audio engineering, radio, recording, music and storytelling will include, but are not limited to: Vy Higgenson, Kemistry & Storm, Jeff Mills, K-Hand, and Patricia Chin. Featured Black, Asian and Indigenous owned radio stations and music labels that function as both mutual aid and community spaces will include, but are not limited to: Bvlbancha Liberation Radio, Cool Runnings Music, KTNN, VP Records, and the Sound System Futures Programme.

The objective of this session is to provide a brief overview mapping sound histories to the BIPOC innovators of origin with the aim of sparking generative discussion on Black and Indigenous creative technologies as both a cultural and computational history valuable and critical to the healing of community and dismantling of hegemonic societal structures. The session is structured largely in response to a critical lack of representation regarding BIPOC engineering history and legacy, and approaches this topic as a celebration of cross-cultural collaboration in a historical paradigm that often centers cross-cultural interactions as conflict-oriented. At the presentation’s conclusion participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own cross-cultural legacies as sources of innovation, as well as reflect on the unactivated dreams they may hold from their ancestors and how they might activate these dreams through sound, collective action, and community gathering.