What can an eighteenth-century flute-playing android tell us about today’s anxieties around AI? Why did the piano become an object of mourning? How have musicians used technology to reimagine the human voice, and what does their reception reveal about conceptions of the human?

I give talks that move between centuries and across disciplines, treating music technology as cultural history to deepen our understanding of creativity, humanity, and cultural change. Whether you’re planning an academic conference, curating a festival on technology and the arts, organizing a public humanities event, or hosting a conversation on AI and culture, I’d be delighted to contribute.

Contact: d.loughridge@northeastern.edu

Recent talk topics

Rethinking artificial intelligence through the history of music machines

Music and Machine conference keynote at Accademia Musical Chigiana, Siena Italy; Beyond Human: AI, Opera and the Art of Machine Expression symposium at University of Michigan; AI, Music and Creativity symposium at University of Hong Kong

What 18th-century automata and 21st-century vocal processing tell us about being human

Music and Science from Pythagoras to the Synthesizer series at Hamilton College; Pop Conference at Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle

Music and cybernetics

American Comparative Literature Association; Society for Literature, Science and the Arts; Recursions: Music and Cybernetics conference at University of Edinburgh

Music at the intersection of humanities and sciences

Harvard Countway Library Author Series

Media Appearances

The New York Times has featured my research on AI and artistic expression and the evolution of loudness in classical music. I discussed what makes music human in the age of machines on CBC Radio’s Spark, and Northeastern Global News profiled my innovative course covering 40,000 years of music technology.