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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Now collecting imaginary music. This “hyperaccelerated polyphony” is from Ted Chiang’s “Understand” (an excellent story that did not take the turn I was thinking it would)

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alex roberts @lexlanham.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

a euphonium that pours beer, a 13-bell trumpet, an ocular harpsichord that emits colored lights, & a piano that makes music by forcing cats to meow? my CAMD colleague @deirdrelough.bsky.social wrote a ridiculously cool book on imaginary & imagined instruments news.northeastern.edu/2026/07/06/i...

news.northeastern.edu

A piano that makes music with cats? Book explores imagined devices

Imaginary musical instruments, from a cat piano to a beer-pouring horn, get their history told in a new book by a Northeastern professor.

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Just read Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, after seeing someone compare it to Amazon’s book destruction for AI training data operation uncovered by @404media.co. It’s so funny, and so frightening in all the right ways for our time. Also, an unexpected sighting of Gabriel’s Horn

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Boston-area friends: tell your students, we’re hackathoning imaginary musical instruments!

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Boston-area friends: tell your students, we’re hackathoning imaginary musical instruments!

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Apparently in my excitement I misspelled Journal

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Gift link to a review of The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments in today’s Wall Street Jorunal! Spoiler alert: it finds in the book’s “treasures…the ‘enduring fascination’ of the possible, no less important for being imaginary.” @reaktionbooks.bsky.social www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

wsj.com

‘The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments’ Review: The Sound of Whimsy

In 1922 Joseph H. Kraus proposed a “smell organ.” A middle C would smell like a rose; bass notes like clove and vanilla.

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Sonic Field @sonicfield.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Published by @reaktionbooks.bsky.social, The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments, by Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson, catalogues “fictophones” invented across myth, literature, theory, video games and art. sonicfield.org/the-museum-o...

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Bone Flute to Auto-Tune index submitted! Hopefully in the book it all makes sense

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Of the many odd facets of the dinosaur skeleton economy on display with today’s auction, this surprised me most: “Gus also comes with ‘full rights,’ meaning it does not contain any copyrighted bits of other dinosaurs…” www.cnn.com/2026/07/13/s...

cnn.com

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Out now - join us for a Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments event this summer/fall! @reaktionbooks.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Reviewing proofs of Bone Flute to Auto-tune, where I wrote this really not that long ago. I’m feeling notably less so confident about the present tense in “a world where writing is integral to education and knowledge production”…

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments got reviewed in The Wire! A magazine whose pages I scoured for Sounding Human, and never imagined I’d appear in myself www.thewire.co.uk/issues/509

thewire.co.uk

The Wire 509

On the cover: EarthBall : The Canadian quintet’s freeform punk aesthetic embodies the values of the close-knit Vancouver Island scene. By Emily Pothast; DoYeon Kim : The bandleader and virtuoso gaya...

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Well to be candible about it, this made my day

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Browser extension by researchers at University of Chicago to detect AI songs generated by Udio v1.5 and Suno v5 - very high accuracy thanks to consistent artifacts in their frequency spectra inaudible to humans: www.etch-humanity.org/etch-lab/qui...

etch-humanity.org

Quicksilver - Browser Plugin — ETCH

Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browser extension to detect AI-generated music.

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Talking about imaginary musical instruments, as Thomas Patteson and I are wont to do. The book is out in the US July 6, and we’re available for podcasts, events, and conversations. @reaktionbooks.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

“I am happy my kids didn’t need to learn cursive.” Shock + horror. But seriously, this is a great post about why we have to keep asking what to offload to AI and what not, both now while the technical and cultural defaults are being built and always (as I try to do with 40k years of music tech)

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Finally saw Project Hail Mary, which means now I can read about the production. Great interview with the sound designers of Rocky’s voice getting into how they did it and thought about it: www.motionpictures.org/2026/03/proj...

motionpictures.org

"Project Hail Mary" Sound Designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn on Creating Rocky's Alien Language

How sound designers Erik Aadahl and Ethan Van der Ryn created Rocky’s musical alien language in "Project Hail Mary."

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NeurIPS Conference @neuripsconf.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Focusing on the theme of Agency, this year’s track asks: how agency emerges, is exercised, is negotiated, and is contested through creative practice with AI.

neurips.cc

Call For Creative AI 2026

Title: NeurIPS Creative AI Track 2026: Agency

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

A few interesting things about this AI overview result for my search for _oram unpublished ms “sounds of the past”_ (1/): First sentence (“there might be a mix-up in the title”) - That’s correct, I did misremember the title. Oram’s unpublished ms is actually called “Sound of the Past” (not Sounds)

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

“I love music history. Unless it goes too far back and then it’s boring.” My own kid. Obviously he means anything before 40,000 years ago

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Spotify’s plan for an AI cover/remix tool is understandably getting the most attention. They also plan “Reserve” so subscribers can buy tix to their favorite artist before general sale. That seems smart, thanks largely to the broader mess ticketing is in news.northeastern.edu/2026/05/18/b...

news.northeastern.edu

Musicians are canceling their tours. Is blue dot fever to blame?

Northeastern music industry experts discuss the claims that “blue dot fever” is causing musicians to cancel their tours.

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

In our house, “Mom music” means unmarketable music that is all of the genres and none of the genres, and takes at least a paragraph to explain what it sounds like

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Wow, I love this framing for talking about technology in the age of AI! So many necessary monsters (to recall Borges)

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

quote with a fictional band that’s not Spinal Tap

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Working through the playlist for The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments one track at a time over on Instagram. The latest was an especially fun one: the Ocarina of Time. www.instagram.com/deirdrelough/ Image from The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia featuring it and other fictophones of Hyrule

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

The perennial how to dress for 90 degrees and office air conditioning question

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

The disco ball icon arrived to my device. I’m predisposed to like disco balls but…I feel like this one communicates a lack of taste

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

“It’s not that the prehensile hand came first…& then that allowed us to have the material culture…it’s the fact that we’re doing these amazing things that creates the selection pressure for the hand” - I find this coevolutionary logic relevant to music technology podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

podcasts.apple.com

The inner life of the hand

Podcast Episode · Many Minds · May 7 · 1h 10m

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

According to this 1655 source, “Letters are the plow, which create the furrows out of which all matters of the mind can spring.” Was just talking with @hilaryporiss.bsky.social &c about this kind of value to handwriting in the music classroom. These letters seem best for some wild ideas

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

Discussions of forecasting and speculative history with LLMs got me thinking of Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” - highly recommend

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

My husband, at our 13yo’s request, showing him how to use a tape deck: “You are going to be so ahead of the game” 13yo: “I don’t think the game is going to revolve around tapes”

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Early concept art for the Death Star... From a 15th-century catalogue of designs for a variety of fantastic and often impossible inventions. More here: publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-dr… #MayThe4thBeWithYou #MayThe4th

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

“The book is endlessly playful, if not playable.” Made my day, thank you for the thoughtful review @mathewlyons.bsky.social

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Learning about “vintage LLM” Talkie. I thought surely the reason for the 1930 cutoff was to have an LLM trained on only public domain data. Did not occur to me the project motivator would be testing/developing prediction of the future

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

Thomas & I talked about our book on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social, and how we got into this project with its cat pianos, computing dreams, and an 1885 satire that got the future of music tellingly wrong. newbooksnetwork.com/the-museum-o... @reaktionbooks.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social

newbooksnetwork.com

Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson, "The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments" (Reaktion, 2026) - New Books Network

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

The Bone Flute to Auto-Tune book cover is here, and I couldn’t ask for a cover that better captures the range of what’s inside. Forty Thousand Years of Music Technology, out November 2026 from @uchicagopress.bsky.social

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Picked up Natalie Lawrence's enchanting Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and their Meanings thinking about imaginary instruments, but her chapter on "the horned sorcerer" got me thinking about Bone Flute to Auto-Tune.

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

After Thomas and I did an interview about MIMI yesterday, it occurred to me to make a playlist of music and musicians in the book. Of course there’s lots with no Spotify (or any worldly, for that matter) presence. Nonetheless, the playlist is suitably out there: open.spotify.com/playlist/57B...

open.spotify.com

Music for the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

On the necessity of music to imagine cosmic silence. From Margret Grebowicz, Whale Song (a Bloomsbury Object Lessons book)

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

J. G. Ballard had an acute sensitivity to sound and its speculative possibilities. In his stories, sound is no mere fleeting vibration. It accumulates on surfaces, it emanates from flowers, it reflects its listener like a mirror.

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

I think Ben Lerner may have totally described LLMs in 10:04 (2014): “…we can think of them as bad forms of collectivity that can serve as figures of its real possibility: prosody and grammar as the stuff out of which we build a social world…”

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

“This is my music - this is myself.” One of many phrases humorously, visually literalized ⬇️

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Deirdre Loughridge @deirdrelough.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

“every time there’s this radical extension of the ability to capture or reproduce the voice, or the image, etc, it creates an interesting counterpressure on the arts it supposedly renders obsolete…1/2

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