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INSIGHT 006

ANA ROMAN


Our latest Insight delves into the boundary-pushing mind of Ana Roman – an NYC-based artist, producer, educator, and DJ dedicated to testing the limits of creative exploration through technology. With a background in dance, classical music, and underground club culture, Ana fuses global perspectives and technological experimentation into a distinctively multi-faceted practice. Between teaching Sonic Cyberfeminism workshops at MIT, producing mind-bending rhythms as skulptor, and touring as a sought-after DJ, Ana creates incisive multimedia art designed to challenge systemic biases embedded in the tools we use. Fresh off her residency with the Futures Factory AI Summit, Ana talks with us about her artistic journey, the future of machine learning in music, and her mission to decolonize the sonic landscape.

MFA: So let’s start at the beginning. What inspired you to start producing music? And how has your creative journey evolved since then?
AR: The first generation New Mexican American answer: I was in ballet at 4, in flamenco by 5, and at the piano by 6. By the time I was 10 I was pretty tired of being told what to do. I graduated early at 17 and finally had the balls to quit the western canon. I was either going to be a mad scientist, Major Kusanagi, an artist or a racecar driver. Mozart, Bartok, and Grieg couldn’t keep up with me after that. A few summers in Spain and Argentina from 17 to 20 hit my frontal lobe with Underworld, Chemical Brothers, Ryuichi Sakamoto and underage clubbing (oops). Then a scholarship brought me to New York where I saw my first Nam Jun Paik exhibit, followed by a Laurie Anderson workshop and lecture, followed by my first drum machine – and Limewire cracks of Fruity Loops and (Sonic Foundry’s) Acid. Been a complete turbo-driven fruit cake since then and doing just fine.

That’s quite the origin story – a wealth of influences, and a few concurrent trajectories I think a lot of us can probably relate to one way or the other. So let’s fast-forward a bit: can you walk us through your creative process when starting a new project? How do you find and develop your ideas?
The first thing: percussive, generative embodiment applied in all areas of the mental, spiritual, physical. That's the holy trinity. It manifests as a synthesis of global beats, deconstructed Latin rhythms, sampled surveillance, networked noise, and visualization. The process is also cinematic - there’s always a movie in my head; there’s always him/they/ze/she: skulptor.

It’s extremely post-human. I have zero interest in the act of creating unless I’m high on technological kinship – it's a strange extasis that I’ve come to love.

However this question is a reminder to me that I’ve never had a formula or single process. I’m out here well aware that I’m living in complex times, which motivates me to go beyond “process.” Why not quantum? Also, if there’s too much of a process it freaks me out; it means I’m not learning, it means plaque is growing on synapses. All too often people mistake processes or formulas with “mastery” — a very dangerous mode of thinking. Gotta stay agile.

Yes — nimble avoidance of routine seems key to staying fresh. So how do you balance technical skills with creativity in your productions? Are there any specific techniques, tools, or processes that you rely on?
Never reliant. Never dependent. Never balanced. And if the goal is “balanced,” then it's boring: it won’t build muscle. I have to work in reverse and crawl through the happy accidents. Stay away from the main muscles and build the accessory muscles — that’s a ninja's secret. That’s where the stamina and innovation gets stronger. But the process must always embody technological kinship with my tools. It hits that fluid, quantum universal where you just feel it. In terms of tools I ask myself is it Max today that helps me get that feeling out? Is it something I recorded from my contact mic in a tide pool two years ago? Is it an accident or a loop that came out of my Evolver or Tasty Chips granular? Did something amazing happen when I didn’t have the MIDI sync’d up at the same BPM as my Serge module? What movie is in my head today? What do I want to learn? What’s the assignment?

I love this concept of “technological kinship.” I think I’ve experienced something like this — when boundaries between self and tools, creator and output, begin to blur (or subside completely). But so on the opposite end of that equation: what happens when you hit a wall in the studio? What are your strategies for getting unstuck?
My wall is a double edged sword. One side is what happens when my body-mind energy is stuck. The second: perfection — that’s my nemesis — my spinning rainbow wheel of death. It’s gross. It’s messy. The strategy: I have to go full fascist on myself and just finish the thing. It's life or death. Okay, and sometimes it's pilates or the gym. Movement gets me unstuck — I have a lot of frenetic energy and if it doesn’t come out it fans the flames of perfection — I blame this on my dance background.

Yeah, I can imagine — dance is a notoriously unforgiving field. But escalating self-discipline to “full fascism” seems a bit intense! I hope you don’t get too hard on yourself, but if you do, as you mention, physical outlets are always good for a mental reset. So can you share a particular project or track that challenged you creatively, and how you overcame those challenges?
It’s happening right now — I’m sitting on mastered tracks I’m so scared to release. My booking agent is so pissed. Anyways. Listen, I don’t mean to be ungrateful but this year I’ve been wonderfully reviewed in so many places — mostly for my visual works. But I also got visibility in the music press for my tracks and that will forever give me a pit in my stomach. I get in this negative feedback loop of “How am I going to follow that?” “What if these new tracks aren’t as good as the other ones?” “What if no one pays attention?” I know it’s so messed up — this is where the creative habits of Miles Davis, Laurie Anderson, and Suzanne Ciani come in for me. We share birthdays believe it or not.

The only way I overcome this is by being prolific. Because that’s how all my success ever starts — its sequential, and sometimes I forget that. Producing tracks, releasing it into the world, I have to see it as a sequential meditation — like breathework. Let. The. Result. Go.

Yeah, I think so many of us get overly attached to outcomes, or results, or the pieces themselves, to a stifling degree. At some point you have to let these things, these creations of ours, live their own lives in the world. So back to beginnings — how do you stay inspired these days? What fuels your creative appetite?
The cowardice of neutrality, reading about the frequency of bombs, vaporization, quantum computing, sonic solidarity, sonic cyberfeminism, interface intifidas, networked noise, and post-humanity. Heartbreak. Duende.

That sounds like enough to keep anyone going. You’re clearly well-read, and keep on top of current tech and events. So how do you integrate new technologies and software into your workflow? How do they impact your creative output?
The movie — how do they help me produce the movie? And I don’t even mean in the visual sense, it goes beyond ocular. How are these tools helping me? Are they guiding me or triggering me? As a music technologist who also lectures on ableism and learning styles in big Music Tech, I can’t help but look for the flaw in the design. Lest we forget that Integrating anything new means system updates to the creative process — for better or worse. That, and my workflow always involves some type of touch — new technologies that make sound have to — at some point — manifest as audio-reactive in live performance. Any coding exercise I do in my studio with new technologies has to allow for the interactive. No one-sided conversations! The workflow also has to solve problems for me, problems that come from my creative process growing. The workflow also has to answer the following: Will this new technology or software tool birth a track that inspires a sonic world in the listener? Is it techno-emotional with healing frequencies? Does this software encourage an iterative conversation where I can enhance it? And how will that sound in my track? This is the short answer. The rest might be a secret.

I think it’s so vital to interrogate our tools like this. Using tools to do the interrogation, you created some multimedia art using our Sonification Tools for this summer’s Temporal Tide exposition at Sónar — what was that process like? Can you tell us about your experience with sonification?
Eye-opening. I never worked that way before. It ended up altering the way I think of applying my sounds. It also helped me update my percussive process in terms of generative positioning of sounds, rhythms, atmospheres.

Another fear is that I thought the data would come out sounding generic and cold. It ended up being a warm blanket for my sounds and my learning process. I am such a visual learner and Temporal Tides really came to life with the sounds I generated. The subject matter was also very close to my heart; forced conversion therapies — my goal, my challenge was to create a piece that emitted urgency, inspired attention, and created a frequency of hope. Not sure I could have achieved that with anything other than the Sonification Tools.

That’s amazing. I think your piece definitely achieves that goal. So between your multimedia work, teaching, and production, it’s clear you’re positioned at the forefront of digital technologies, incorporating machine learning into your work for some time now. What role do machine learning and other emerging technologies find in your creative practice?
I see machine learning as both a creative medium and a tool for immediate and critical intervention in my practice. My goal is to develop custom ML models trained on intentionally curated datasets that challenge mainstream biases — in the form of Sonic Intifadas.

With Max for Live, even with TouchDesigner, I’m lately inspired to build out ML-augmented performance systems that enable dynamic interactions between performers and AI while questioning established power structures. Queering AI and exposing the practice of Unwilling Avatars and Deep Fakes generated by the big tech gamer male gaze are power structures I aim to dismantle. I want these tools, sounds and performances to reveal and subvert technological biases embedded in deep fakery while challenging contemporary music production. This is being developed for a piece entitled: Binary/Unbound.

What does that look like? When the AI tries to “correct” my Latin rhythms to Western patterns, the visuals become more mechanical and rigid. When the organic patterns break through, the forms flow into more fluid, hybrid shapes. The particle systems would fragment and reassemble based on my live audio input, creating a direct visual connection between the performance and the struggle against algorithmic bias — whether that’s through unwilling avatarization or decolonizing our DAWS and sound banks has yet to be determined. But it's coming along.

I think this kind of synaesthetic representation is really fascinating. We’re clearly at a point of rapidly accelerating innovation. Where do you see things headed in the general sphere of media, the arts, and music?
Decentralized, artist owned. More specifically — we need to update and re-do the current business model. I foresee cooperative, co-op models that are decentralized, but also operate as self-sustaining enterprises that are collectively owned and democratically controlled by the artists and creatives themselves. I love Subvert’s model and Metalabel’s too for example — both I will be utilizing to release phy-gital skulptor projects soon.

Yes — I’m very excited about what Subvert is putting together. Do you have any advice for staying on top of new technologies and incorporating them into your practice meaningfully, while ideally avoiding overwhelm? It seems like there’s so many new tools coming out every day.
I tap into my body-mind. How do these new technologies embody and disembody me? I always tell my students, and those who attend my ethical AI workshops and Sonic Cyberfeminism workshops: are you in technological kinship with your tools? Is this an iterative conversation? Does the interface overwhelm you? Does it nurture your learning style? All of this matters!

Indeed. So, can you tell us how you arrived at Sonic Cyberfeminism? How can this concept help creators in politically-charged times?
As a fluid, LATM and Spanish non-binary artist and technologist, I arrived at Sonic Cyberfeminism through recognizing how sound and music technology consistently perpetuate colonial and patriarchal power structures. And I was done just “accepting” the universal standard. “Universal Design for All” in music tech is a farce in 2024. The dick swaggering RTFMism is extremely toxic and the big tech bro cowboys need to step aside and start answering the phone ‘cause they got a lot of explaining to do. We demand explanations and iterative conversations.

From a very young age — even as a pianist — I saw how standard music production software and AI models were built on Western musical assumptions, economic access and institutional or academic access. Okay. How about the rest of us, huh? I also witnessed first-hand how electronic music spaces marginalize voices like mine. So Sonic Cyberfeminism first came about in 2014 — but it stopped. I decided to wake that conversation up and push it forward as both a measured and applied theoretical framework and as a practical methodology to challenge these systems.

In politically charged times, Sonic Cyberfeminism is a vehicle that offers creators powerful toolkits for resistance. It pushes us to ask critical questions: Who built our music tools? What biases are embedded in our DAWs and algorithms? How can we turn music production into a form of political action? For me, Sonic Cyberfeminism isn’t just about making music differently; it's about understanding sound as a medium for challenging power structures.

I’d like to think Ableton’s integration of non-Western tuning options in Live 12 at least begins to gesture in a positive direction here — but I hear you: these kinds of options are long overdue. Meanwhile, instrumental electronic music has clear roots in countercultural movements, but seems to have been increasingly co-opted by capital as a primarily escapist pastime. How can instrumental electronic music stay relevant and carry political weight without resorting to tropes?
The commodification of electronic music isn't an accident. It's a deliberate erasure of radical histories. Abuse of power comes as no surprise in these spaces.

You can even hear it in the music: capital has completely stripped primal human beats of their revolutionary context. It’s sterile, antiseptic, and homogenized at the moment. And it's not just an escapist playground — it's a sonic prison of standardized workflows, quantized grids, and AI systems that actively suppress individuals who don’t have access, economic privilege, and, dare I say — it shuns non-Western musical traditions.

Ask any non-English speaking person — even a person from the Middle East — and they will tell you that the architecture of electronic music production is a mental battleground. I see it in my student’s faces at times.

I can’t speak for others in terms of how to stay relevant without resorting to tropes. I can only speak for myself in the hopes that it inspires others. When I perform, when I DJ, when I produce, every unquantized Latin rhythm that defies the grid is an act of resistance. Every time I force an AI to learn from indigenous patterns instead of correcting them, I'm decolonizing my (and their) tools. The political weight of instrumental electronic music isn't in what we add to it — it's in how we deliberately break what colonialism built into its foundations.

Through my work in Sonic Cyberfeminism, I'm showing that true musical rebellion isn't about dropping activist samples over a four-on-the-floor beat. I’m out here questioning why that beat became standard, who programmed our plug-ins, and whose musical knowledge got coded out of existence. And that’s a hill I will die on.

Crucial questions we should all be asking. So much of the tech stack we take for granted is built on the towering assumptions of Eurocentric (post-)modernity. But back to the practical, if I may: What advice would you give aspiring music producers who are just starting out? Are there any common pitfalls they should avoid?

Release it. Keep going. Never stop learning. Perfectionism is a lie. Use the tools you have and build on top of that. 

And what about advice for ongoing practitioners? Any tips for staying engaged with the process of production?
Music is not a solo sport. Community is what will nurture you and push you forward. If you think sitting in front of Ableton Live all day long or being a DJ waving your hands like you’re God’s gift to club culture and festival escapism will give you staying power, then you’ve got some very hard to swallow pills coming your way — and you will choke. Artists do not operate in silos — at least not anymore. Get out there and collaborate. And never ever stop learning.

I agree — though I can see how the insatiable thirst for knowledge can be a double-edged sword, with creators using it as a crutch to avoid production — “If I just learn this one more technique...” — rather than just getting down to it with, as you say, the tools they have in front of them. But on the other hand, remaining open to learning, and seeing value in new perspectives — these are indispensible. You’ve been so generous with your time and thoughts here. Before we let you go, can you share any upcoming projects or collaborations that you’re excited about? What can we expect from you in the future?
My next project, Binary/Unbound, rips apart the colonial grip on electronic music while weaponizing AI against its own biases. I’ve composed raw, generative fusions of Latin/Arab/Andalusian rhythms with machine learning. In this project I actively force artificial intelligence to confront its Western prejudices: every time it tries to “correct” my rhythms, my TouchDesigner system fragments into particles and rebels, transforming sterile code into fluid, defiant forms. It’s a visualization of mechanical structures bathed in undulating, melting bioformatics. It techno-digests itself as it breaks down and morphs beneath the power of indigenous patterns and quantum soundscapes.

This isn't just a performance — it's a declaration of war against binary thinking. A queer cybernetic ritual where human and machine collide, and a reminder that the future of electronic music belongs to those willing to shatter its foundations.

I'm also developing workshops that merge technical machine learning skills with critical theory, documenting how algorithmic bias manifests in electronic music culture. I also seek to build alternative futures for music generation that prioritize collaboration over hierarchy. This is central to my upcoming Interface Intifada Handbook and Sonic Solidarity Toolkit, which I envision not just as creative resources but as instruments of resistance and transformation in electronic music culture. My hope in this machine learning work and research is to uncover how emerging technologies can be repurposed to amplify silenced voices by creating new possibilities in next-generation music technology.










I HAVE ZERO INTEREST IN THE ACT OF CREATING UNLESS I’M HIGH ON TECHNOLOGICAL KINSHIP - IT’S A STRANGE EXTASIS THAT I’VE COME TO LOVE.






















STAY AWAY FROM THE MAIN MUSCLES
AND BUILD THE ACCESSORY MUSCLES
- THAT’S A NINJA’S SECRET.


























SONIC CYBERFEMINISM IS A VEHICLE THAT OFFERS CREATORS POWERFUL TOOLKITS FOR RESISTANCE ... IT’S ABOUT UNDERSTANDING SOUND AS A MEDIUM FOR CHALLENGING
POWER STRUCTURES.



























THE COMMODIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC ISN’T AN ACCIDENT. IT’S A DELIBERATE ERASURE OF RADICAL HISTORIES.





























EVERY UNQUANTIZED LATIN RHYTHM THAT DEFIES THE GRID IS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE.






























THIS ISN’T JUST A PERFORMANCE - IT’S A DECLARATION OF WAR AGAINST BINARY THINKING.