Michael Dessen, PhD, Director

Professor

Department of Music, Claire Trevor School of the Arts

mdessen@uci.edu

The lab was created in 2025 by Prof. Michael Dessen to build on work with musical telepresence that he and many international collaborators have developed over the past two decades, including dozens of immersive, multi-site concerts as well as educational projects like Puentes Telemáticos, a workshop linking youth in Santa Ana, California and Manizales, Colombia.

Current projects affiliated with the MTLab include CaucesSónicos: Creative Music Making Across the Borderlands, co-directed by Prof. Michael Dessen (UCI) and Prof. Wilfrido Terrazas (UC San Diego) and supported by an award from the University of California Alianza MX initiative. Over a two-year period, CaucesSónicos will leverage collaborative musical experimentation to explore a kaleidoscopic, expansive notion of the US-México borderlands, engaging communities and deepening institutional partnerships both directly on the border and as far south and north as Ensenada, Baja California and Orange County, CA. Other projects and artist-researchers affiliated with the MTLab will be announced in summer 2025.

Link(s): For information on past projects led by Prof. Dessen, click on the link below.