Photo by Valerie Booth O.
How much in your life is preprogrammed? Presets, or default settings on technology that condition their use, are everywhere, from microwave popcorn buttons to predictive text and Instagram filters. But while presets facilitate the quick, efficient production of tasks or art, they simultaneously reinforce economic, political, and social norms. In this talk, interdisciplinary scholar Amy Skjerseth asks what presets allow and deny in media, music, and technology. She explores several case studies across media history to show how presets shape our interaction with them and with others, but also how artists re-program presets--using the very tools that have predetermined biases to develop new forms of artistic and cultural expression.
Combining sound and music studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, art history, and more, this talk stems from Skjerseth’s forthcoming book,
Preprogrammed: How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media (UC Press, Fall 2026).
Preprogrammed urgently reconsiders the technologies and cultural and political systems we often take for granted.
Bio
Amy Skjerseth is Assistant Professor of Popular Music at the University of California, Riverside. Her scholarship focuses on intersections of music, media, material culture, and technology. Her coedited volume,
The Routledge Companion to Voice and Identity, and her first monograph,
Preprogrammed: How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media (UC Press), will be out in Summer and Fall 2026. She currently is working on her second monograph,
Walls of Sound. Her work has appeared in journals from
[in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies and
animation to
The Radio Journal and Journal of Popular Music Studies, among others.
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