Creative Interventions: Catherine Provenzano

Since the shift to predominantly digital audio recording, manufacturers of software tools have stepped in claiming to make production work faster and easier while unlocking the artist/producer’s creative potential. In 2016, artist Justin Bieber explained to the New York Times Magazine that the way producers Diplo and Skrillex were able to manipulate Ableton on his hit Where Are Ü Now resulted in what he affirmatively coined as “expensive-sounding sounds.” More recent messaging around sounds that “stand out” is surging as most major music software outfits roll out new AI tools meant to do everything from automate the engineer’s vocal chain to help the artist quickly find and tailor samples.

Refusing to take these claims at face value, this talk will consider several songs, advertisements, and demonstration videos from the last 25 years and ask, what makes a technology “creative” in practice? And under what conditions?

This presentation is an interactive listening exercise that brings together conceptions of creative musical production and interrogates the ways software designers lay claim to and promise creativity. Participants are encouraged to assemble examples from their own listening and creative lives and present them for group discussion.

This event is presented as part of the Creative Interventions (CI) Series and is co-sponsored by the Arts Division’s Creative Technologies program and Porter College at UC Santa Cruz.
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ADMISSION
– Free and open to UCSC affiliates.
– This is an online event.
– Registration is required here.
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ADVISORIES
– Participants are encouraged to assemble examples from their own listening and creative lives and be prepared to present them for group discussion during this interactive online event.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
– Event dates to be announced throughout the 2025-26 academic year.
– Learn more about the Creative Intervention Series here.
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ABOUT THE SERIES
Creative Interventions addresses the interconnected work of artists, designers, activists, and knowledge workers—and the intrinsic and transformative capacity of that work to cultivate a just society. More information about the Creative Technologies program.
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This program is open to all UC Santa Cruz affiliates consistent with state and federal law.