Amy Skjerseth

[...] algorithmic technologies; and cultural trope remixing in performance and media art. Particularly welcome are investigations of how marginalized artists rework technological presets to circulate new meaning and expose latent power structures.

We invite papers that address presets in any medium. Topics could include: the politics of AI-generated imagery; race, gender and accessibility in default design; musical or sonic sampling; exploitation of aesthetic defaults in photography and screen-based art; [...]

We are asking: what kinds of agency exist within pre-coded environments? Can presets be thought beyond a poverty of expression to become sites of aesthetic and political experimentation?

Beyond technological settings, presets encompass cultural defaults including gender normativity and Western privilege. These often invisible norms shape artistic production within today's technological networks, establishing constraints that artists variously adopt, modify, or subvert.

Originally technical features "set or adjusted beforehand to facilitate use" (OED), presets have evolved from photography & music production shortcuts into pervasive aesthetic & ideological defaults across media: from synthesizer patches and Instagram filters to narrative tropes and user interfaces.

Session Description: This panel explores presets—default configurations embedded in tools, platforms, and cultural forms—that shape contemporary art while raising critical questions about labor, originality, and automation.

Art history+ colleagues, Susan Laxton and I invite you to submit an abstract for consideration in our College Art Association (Chicago, 2/18–21/26) session, "Artistic Presets: Technology, Labor, and Innovation." See caa.confex.com/caa/2026/web... to submit; we'll let you know by 9/16. Details below!

What a brilliant idea! I would love that (what a flavor combo too)

New special issue from JPMS!! This was one of the last things that @ehphd.bsky.social, @ericdharvey.com and I started before finishing our terms. Congratulations to Alisha Lola Jones, @burrata.bsky.social, Matthew Jones for their work with Georgina Born and @anthroposound.bsky.social on this!!

Congrats, @askjerseth.bsky.social! This SIG is in "sure" hands.

Alyx! This is the first time my name has been made into a pun, surprisingly. I love it, and thank you so much for your support and encouragement, as always!

Thank you so much, SIG community, Arzu and Seth, and of course Landon, for serving the SIG so brilliantly! As a side note too, @landonpalmer.bsky.social was my assigned mentor while on the job market a few years ago and was absolutely incredible. I learned so much from his mentorship and leadership!

Though it's been done before, we're doing it here again! Celebrating these black OG's of punk and rock in honor of Juneteenth. Taking time today to read and learn more about these legendary pioneers. We know we can count on you to remind us who's been left off this list. What else ya got?!

Thinking of you and sending all of the speedy healing and good food and safety and care. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

Thank you so much--yes, will do! Great to be in touch and all the best for this amazing project!

You're so welcome, Sherri! I love the idea--I'm a popular music + audiovisual media scholar (Yoko Ono got me into it all)--and will be following news of this project!

A former student, Lola de la Mata, is a composer/installation artist probing sonic and visual representations of tinnitus; brief gloss of work here: www.loladelamata.com/pcst-tinnitu.... The super smart multimedia operas of www.loladelamata.com/pcst-tinnitu.... The animator Jodie Mack's soundtracks.

the industrial design on the OG walkman goes crazy

Please RT! Radio/sound scholars: June 15 is LAST CALL to sign up for the
@rptf.bsky.social
/BEA/RAMP SIG mentorship program.

Senior scholars looking to mentor grad students/ECRs for a 1 year term are especially encouraged to join.

Sign up at the BEA website:
bea.memberclicks.net/login#/login

I guess that means I’m going to cancel my audible membership. I was only keeping it for the “only on audible” books and the more thoughtful podcasts that aren’t available elsewhere. Libro.fm is great. Libby and Everand too.

The Invention of Close Reading By transforming quotations into evidence, close reading served as way to turn postwar criticism into a specialized knowledge. But what if we treated it more as an art form?

"We should practice close reading because it is good to read for truth and beauty, and even better without the pressure to instrumentalize this goal for economic ends—a criterion [...] that becomes more difficult for students to recognize with each passing year."
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Craig Mod on the Creative Power of Walking This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. The fullest day I know of begins with taking a portrait of a stranger in the middle of nowhere by 10 a.m. I do this while …

"When I’m... walking[,] I try to cultivate the most bored state of mind imaginable. A total void of stimulation beyond the immediate environment... now believe with all my heart that it’s only in the crushing silences of boredom... that you can access your deepest creative wells."

Eric wins the Internet today

Thanks so much, Andy! That's so kind--I really appreciate you taking the time to listen. And yes, hooray for keeping media interfaces as weird as possible!

Me too--hopefully they go back to all of them!

Writing about push-button car radio presets has made me yearn for push-button tuning… and push-button everything again in cars.

YouTube video by Eric Weisbard Amy Skjerseth with Catherine Provenzano, Instrumental Presets: The Visible Past of Music Technology

@akstuhl.bsky.social, so sorry, belatedly sending the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGdv.... Would love your thoughts if you get a chance to watch in the future!

Have had many great conversations with @jimbuhler.bsky.social about this that are also informing my book--lucky to have Jim as a series editor!

He loved the indigenous circuits work so much, Lisa! That work made an impression on all of us in that 2016 seminar, so much so that it's in my book's introduction. The way he built connections in everything he did is ever an inspiration and validation of interdisciplinary work.