Dissolve Music @ MIT is a two-and-a-half-day conference and sound festival, March 7-9, 2018, to bring together musicians, sound creators, and scholars of music and sound studies to discuss the diversity of music and experimental sound. Combining art and scholarship in a spirit of dialogue and controversy, the conference aims to dissolve boundaries between different arenas of sonic engagement to identify paths towards alternative, more inclusive futures.
Keynote Speakers
Diana Deutsch (UC San Diego), pioneer in psychoacoustics research and inventor of musical illusions
Thomas F. DeFrantz, professor, African and African American Studies, Duke University, choreographer, author “Dancing Many Drums.”
Organizers:
Jan St. Werner, musician with Mouse on Mars, prof. Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg
Rekha Malhotra, award-winning music producer and activist; M.S. student in Comparative Media Studies
Ian Condry (MIT), cultural anthropologist of Japan, professor at MIT, author “Hip-Hop Japan.” How do new experiments in music and sound offer possibilities for activating social and political change?
Nicole L’Huilier, sound artist and Ph.D. student at MIT Media Lab, Opera of the Future research group
Walker Downey, writer and Ph.D. student, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (HTC), MIT Architecture
Confirmed Participants:
Geeta Dayal, artist/activist and author of Brian Eno’s Another Green World
Oswald Wiener, musician, activist and curator from Vienna, now living in Berlin
Maren Haffke, researcher in Germany working on a project called “The Sound of Order / The Order of Sound”
Sonya Hofer, musicologist specializing in post-WWII musical avant garde
Toni Lester (Babson College), professor and sound artist. How do issues of author control in music and interpretation help us understand the politics of race, queerness, and free speech
Stefan Helmreich, professor of anthropology, MIT, author “Sounding the Limits of Life”
Nancy Baym, author and researcher in the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, MA
Wayne Marshall, professor at Berklee School of Music, technomusicologist, author & DJ
Patty Tang, ethnomusicologist of Senegalese drumming, and professor in Music and Theater Arts, MIT
Toshiya Ueno, professor Wako U (Japan), author “Urban Tribal Studies,” DJ Toshiya the Tribal
Koichi Sei, sound artist, DJ and owner of Bar Bonobo in Tokyo, Japan, a legendary meeting ground for musicians, sound artists, and DJs
Susanna Bolle, DJ on WZBC and organizer of the Non-Event series of experimental music and sound in the Boston area
Ganavya Doraiswamy, musician and PhD student at Harvard in the Music Department
Rajna Swaminathan, musician an PhD student at Harvard in the Music Department