Shaping Sound Worlds

Shaping Sound Worlds is a series of free online workshops + work shares organized and facilitated by Alexa Dexa offering joy-centered space for being in community, learning from each other, and cheering each other on as we tune into our creative power to shape and be shaped by sound.

Over the course of eight sessions, we’ll explore:

1. Sounds! + Where to Find Them
2. Words! + Ways to Form Them
3. Making + Reading Graphic Scores
4. Recording Audio Here + Now
5. Algorithmic Music-Making
6. Describing Our Sounds as a Form of Accessibility
7. Reimagining Sharing Live Sound in the Digital Realm
8. Sharing Our Sound Worlds – A Party!

Structured as both a Workshop + a Work Share, each session will hold space for us to be in process together as we delve into creative concepts and methodologies and share our resulting experimentations. By the end of the series, we will all have a new sound world to cozy on up into, new friends to share it with, and the radical imaginaries, technologies, and agency to continue shaping many more sound worlds to come.

If you’re wanting to make friends without leaving your bed and make sounds to lull yourself into sweet dreams with, this series is for you!

Never touched an instrument in your life and feeling unqualified to make music? Hogwash! Come join us! We’ll use the found sounds you have in your immediate surroundings and a connection to experimentation + play to shape sound worlds that proudly defy hierarchies of “good” and “bad” for the joy we experience in making.

Shaping Sound Worlds is designed for nonmusicians and musicians alike and operates from a queer crip positionality that honors the principles of Disability Justice. Everyone is welcome, no prior musical experience needed. For more information about each individual session, check out our Participation Guide.

Access features for this series include self-descriptions each speaker will give, ASL interpretation, and Zoom’s auto-generated captioning. An access doula offering technological assistance will be present for all tech-based sessions. A recording and transcript of each session will be made available to all who register to attend.

Shaping Sound Worlds is organized and facilitated by Alexa Dexa in collaboration with Experiments in Opera as part of the Creatives Rebuild New York Artist Employment Program.

Sessions take place Thursdays bi-monthly from 6:30pm to 8:00pm Eastern Time over Zoom starting March 30th and ongoing through July 20th, 2023.

To share + connect between sessions, we welcome you to use the hashtag #ShapingSoundWorlds on social media.