From Wax Cylinders to AI: Music Technology in Modern History

Catalog description

This course explores the history and politics of music technologies, from instrument and spatial design to recording technologies and infrastructures. We will aim to understand what music technologies are, how they change and mediate conditions and possibilities of performance, composition, and listening, and how they have led social and political lives alongside those of their creators and users. Our case studies will extend from wax cylinders and historical piano-playing robots to musical programming languages and AI musical games, like Google's Blob Opera. The course will culminate with a speculative design project, where students redesign an existing music technology (or create a new one) that expands its capabilities, reflects on its ethics, enhances its accessibility, and improves its sustainability.