Hello from a New Fellow
Hi, I’m Chris McGuinness.
I am thrilled to join the Futures Initiative as a 2022 fellow with the role of Director of Web Development and Digital Strategies. As I learn more about HASTAC and Futures Initiative projects, I find myself in the company of peers who are doing important and inspiring work. In my role, I am responsible for the full stack of futuresinitiative.org and am part of the team responsible for hastac.org. There are exciting developments in store this year for HASTAC!
I am a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology and my dissertation deals with electronic music production in India. Some of my scholarly research encompasses music and sound in social movements, digital sampling practices in music, the transduction of sound, and musical analysis based on the temporality of musical labor. Here are some recent writings – about a well-known sample of a lesser-known voice from Punjab, India and musical creativity in India during the Covid-19 lockdown.
During my time teaching music at City College and Brooklyn College, I learned that music education has some special attributes. Music classes can provide a haven in which students have time and mental space to develop in ways they might not have thought are possible. Music can operate prediscursively (e.g., through listening, entrainment, and embodied activities), fostering feelings that charge ideas and interpersonal relations. This is helpful toward generating critical discussions around myriad topics that span time and place, while also offering powerful vantage points to the present. I am especially interested in developing digital tools to help facilitate musical engagement for students – in the form of visualizations, maps, and interactive music-making tools.
I look forward to contributing to, collaborating with, and growing from HASTAC and the Futures Initiative this year.