An experimental research Lab dedicated to decolonizing data, methodology, and analysis through creative practice.

At the UCLA PEER Lab, we study the creative processes involved in everyday, traditional, and emerging practices. We pay attention to how oppressed groups and individuals survive, pursue knowledge, and express joy through music and sound. And, acknowledging storytelling as the root of cultural appropriation, we take an active part in which stories are told, and who gets to tell them.

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” is a classic example of how we reduce a rich and multifaceted event to one medium and one sensorium: sound and ear. What if we liberate both the mind and the sensorium? How does the weight of “Purple Rain” feel in your hands? Where in the universe are you transported with the morning’s first sip of coffee? What temperature is the sun on your skin when you recall the most important voice from your childhood?

What is sound? Sound is energy transduced through a material entity. In a vacuum, sound cannot exist. Each sound takes its character through a unique instance of material transduction. Energy + material = singular sound. The note A# by itself is only half of the equation. You can only know A# through its material transduction. Imagine a beloved song. Imagine a friend singing it as you rest your head on their chest. Imagine listening to the same song as it echoes through a valley. In the shower. Inside a crowded closet. Inside a cathedral or the womb.

In the daily practice of cooking an egg, an object is transformed through the material entities of air, oil, and heat. Omelet. Souffle. Huevos rotos. Tamagoyaki. We have distinct names for these transformations, but what if we only had one? Would eggs benedict be as gooey if hardboiled was our only descriptor? Would hardboiled constrain the imagination so that lacey tendrils would never float to the surface of egg drop soup? How can the expansive lightness of souffle be contained by a hardboiled egg’s density? Much like an egg, sound takes on many forms and flavors. Yet how many words do you have to describe the note A#?

A woman always cut the corner off the beef before she fried it. She had never given it a second thought, until one evening a dinner guest was puzzled. “My mom always did it this way, let me call her and ask why.” The mom didn’t have an answer. The question travelled up the family tree to the woman’s grandmother: it turned out the old family skillet had been so small that a piece always had to be cut off the meat and fried separately. Without even knowing it, the woman’s hands held the wisdom of the family’s first skillet. Where did your hands learn their first lessons? Your gut? Your eyes? Your feet?