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apmcpherson.bsky.social
Professor in Design Engineering and Music, Imperial College London. Researcher, composer, violist, engineer, instrument designer. Leader of the Augmented Instruments Laboratory instrumentslab.org. Co-founder and director of Bela.io.
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Both the threads here are pretty interesting. This idea of disordered discourse captures well the sense of fracturing reality, even mass psychosis, that's been growing all around the world over the past decade or so.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Call for late breaking work at the OHMI Conference on music and disability (Birmingham, UK, 15-16 March). Submit an abstract here by 5 March: forms.office.com/e/fnu6M2HWTp Meanwhile, the programme for the rest of the conference is published: www.ohmirp.org.uk/ohmiconferen...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

At this point, if Vladimir Putin himself were running the White House with the goal of destroying the country as quickly as possible... how much different would that look from the current situation?

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

PhD opportunity: I'm recruiting a PhD student in digital musical instrument design at Imperial College London. Applications now, start date in the autumn. Funding is limited to UK home students. More topic details to follow. Interested? Email me with a CV! [email protected]

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

I got my PhD from Penn (music composition). Future students are having their careers torpedoed because of Trump and Musk's malicious cuts to federal research. Penn was one of the universities quietly dismantling its DEI initiatives. How is that working out for them?

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Exactly. This is why I'm posting about this stuff when music technology research is way more rewarding. Because silence in this moment is also political.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Belfast! Happy to perform at Brilliant Corners festival - not once, but twice. Catch me on March 2nd with @ed-bennett.bsky.social DECIBEL, then on March 4th with saxophonist extraordinaire Franziska Schroeder and the amazing Magnetic Resonator Piano designed by @apmcpherson.bsky.social

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Timothy Snyder, historian and author of "On Tyranny", is worth following. What's happening in the USA is deeply sinister and hugely consequential -- a rapid dismantling of 250 years of constitutional democracy. Next up: Kash Patel turning the FBI into a weapon to persecute critics.

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Scientists are now organizing events, called Stand Up for Science, on 7 March in Washington, D.C., and state capitals. So far, they have attracted more than 100 volunteers from some 30 states who are hoping to rally support for research as a public good. scim.ag/4328LAD

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Highlights from the reading list: Philip Agre's 1998 chapter "Toward a Critical Technical Practice: Lessons Learned in Trying to Reform AI". Agre, an MIT-trained AI researcher, narrates his growing disillusionment with AI discourse in incredibly prescient ways. www.dourish.com/classes/read...

submitted 15 days ago • 1 comment

Our research university leaders are totally failing us in the authoritarian moment. Not even trying to loudly & publicly defend the project of academia or the institutions. Just choosing a combination of “keep our heads down” & anticipatory compliance. Shamefully inadequate to the moment.

submitted 18 days ago • 43 comments

Do I have this story right? Trump installed his personal criminal defense lawyer at DOJ, who then ordered prosecutors to drop the federal corruption case against the NYC mayor, to try to extort the mayor into assisting in Trump's mass deportations. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/n...

submitted 18 days ago • 1 comment

OHMI Conference on Music & Physical Disability -- 15-16 March in Birmingham, UK. OHMI is a charity I work with which helps develop and promote accessible musical instruments. Should be a great event! Early bird registration closes Friday: www.ohmirp.org.uk/ohmiconferen...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

happy international day of women and girls in science, technology, engineering and maths -- i only had 1 woman lecturer in my whole undergrad + master's degrees (5 years, physics & computer science) -- parity is also about representation, you want to study something you can feel part of

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

I set up this account mainly to share research from the Augmented Instruments Lab, but I can't stay silent while the USA careens toward dictatorship. This is both professional and personal. It's a global crisis and given the stakes, I'm honestly surprised how quiet things are out there.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Great analysis by @eryk.bsky.social. "After that, the automated system can fail–but that is a feature, not a bug. Because if the system fails, the Silicon Valley elite that created it will secure their place in a new technical regime."

submitted 24 days ago • 1 comment

Twitter account --> deleted. So long, Elon. Sad to part ways with >10 years of Augmented Instruments Lab history, but time to start building a better Nazi-free future. Future lab updates here, on Mastodon (hci.social/@amcpherson) and Instagram (www.instagram.com/augmentedins...).

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

submitted 29 days ago • 1327 comments

Starting now! www.youtube.com/live/Clr4lnv...

submitted 40 days ago • 0 comments

Join us online this Friday (11am UK) for an Augmented Instruments Lab seminar by Rodrigo Constanzo: "Hitting laptops with drumsticks: approaches to performing with drums and electronics". Live stream link to follow at www.youtube.com/c/AugmentedI...

submitted 43 days ago • 0 comments

Another new Augmented Instruments Lab paper for 2025: "Ways of knowing, ways of writing: technical practice research in new musical instrument design" by @tpelinski.bsky.social, Rebecca Fiebrink and me, just out in JNMR: www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

submitted 44 days ago • 2 comments

First Bsky post, first lab paper of 2025! "On mapping as a technoscientific practice in digital musical instruments" -- a dive on the history and critical implications of mapping theory, with speculation on possible futures. Forthcoming in JNMR: instrumentslab.org/data/andrew/...

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment