The UCLA PEER Lab
The UCLA PEER Lab

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.

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Push against the colonization of the senses

We are made to believe that the ear is for music, the eye is for art, the mouth is for taste. Through multisensory practice, the Lab pushes against academia’s categorization of the senses.

Provide resources to marginalized thinkers

We provide time, dedicated physical space, campus partners, and research support to artists and thinkers who have been subject to structural inequalities.

Engage with excluded practices

We address past and present-day injustices by focusing on experiential practices which have been historically excluded from western epistemology.

Legitimize transdisciplinary experimentation

We bring artists and thinkers into unexpected connections. We protect intimate, non-goal oriented dialogue that may lead to the incubation of new thoughts, ideas, and concepts.

Textura Magazine just named "Serenade with a Dandelion" one of the top twenty classical albums (quartet, ensemble or orchestral category). The 4 disc set was the vision of Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian and features UCLA faculty Jan Berry Baker and Che-Yen Chen. Textura praised the compilation as "extremely accessible" and "a stunning act of curation... [that] captures the incredible richness of Armenian music, past and present."
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Available for purchase and streaming on all major platforms.

Textura Magazine just named "Serenade with a Dandelion" one of the top twenty classical albums (quartet, ensemble or orchestral category). The 4 disc set was the vision of Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian and features UCLA faculty Jan Berry Baker and Che-Yen Chen. Textura praised the compilation as "extremely accessible" and "a stunning act of curation... [that] captures the incredible richness of Armenian music, past and present."
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Available for purchase and streaming on all major platforms.
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Fivemind Reeds joins the UCLA Wind Ensemble for an eclectic concert featuring works by Charles Ives, Clara Schumann, David Biedenbender‌, Leonard Bernstein, Gustov Holst, Arnold Schoenberg and more. 
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic

Fivemind Reeds joins the UCLA Wind Ensemble for an eclectic concert featuring works by Charles Ives, Clara Schumann, David Biedenbender‌, Leonard Bernstein, Gustov Holst, Arnold Schoenberg and more.
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FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic
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UCLA Philharmonia celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner with this concert of visionary musical landscapes.
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/event/ucla-philharmonia-december-2024/
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic #Schoenberg150

UCLA Philharmonia celebrates the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Ives and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anton Bruckner with this concert of visionary musical landscapes.
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/event/ucla-philharmonia-december-2024/
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic #Schoenberg150
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Join us for Camarades, "the music of friends," our string area's chamber ensembles, for their concert celebrating the holiday season.
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 7:00 PM
ENSEMBLE ROOM, OSTIN MUSIC CENTER
(link in bio)
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#Camarades #ThisIsUCLAMusic #ChamberMusic

Join us for Camarades, "the music of friends," our string area`s chamber ensembles, for their concert celebrating the holiday season.
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 7:00 PM
ENSEMBLE ROOM, OSTIN MUSIC CENTER
(link in bio)
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#Camarades #ThisIsUCLAMusic #ChamberMusic
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Join the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as we welcome violinist Yevgeny Kutik for a special guest lecture about his ongoing recital projects that explore his experience as part of the Eastern-European Jewish diaspora.
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 4:00 PM
LANI HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic

Join the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music as we welcome violinist Yevgeny Kutik for a special guest lecture about his ongoing recital projects that explore his experience as part of the Eastern-European Jewish diaspora.
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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 4:00 PM
LANI HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic
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The UCLA Symphony performs works by Berlioz, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Frank Martin in a concert that concludes with Respighi's rapturous "Fountains of Rome."
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic #Symphony

The UCLA Symphony performs works by Berlioz, Charles Tomlinson Griffes and Frank Martin in a concert that concludes with Respighi`s rapturous "Fountains of Rome."
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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 4, 8:00 PM
SCHOENBERG HALL
link in bio
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#ThisIsUCLAMusic #Symphony
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Nothing says holidays quite like a woodwind concert--join us for an evening of wonderful music in intimate Lani Hall.
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 6:00 PM
LANI HALL
link in bio
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#Woodwinds #ThisIsUCLAMusic

Nothing says holidays quite like a woodwind concert--join us for an evening of wonderful music in intimate Lani Hall.
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TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 6:00 PM
LANI HALL
link in bio
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#Woodwinds #ThisIsUCLAMusic
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The UCLA choirs present the annual “Choral Holiday” presentation: the perfect way to begin the holiday season!
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MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 8:00 PM
St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church
link in bio
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#UCLAChoral #ThisIsUCLAMusic

The UCLA choirs present the annual “Choral Holiday” presentation: the perfect way to begin the holiday season!
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MONDAY, DECEMBER 2, 8:00 PM
St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church
link in bio
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#UCLAChoral #ThisIsUCLAMusic
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Music and Metaphor Symposium: Accepting Submissions
We are accepting submissions until February 22nd for a two-day symposium on music and metaphors.
Soundbites with Alba Triana: Exploring the Dialogue Between Elements
Sound installation artist and composer Alba Triana sits down with the UCLA PEER Lab to discuss her interactive, atmospheric and intimate work, ahead of her appearance as the first guest in the upcoming Pop Up Lab series.
Beyond Sound
Beyond Sound

“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?

Sound’s Material Transmission
Sound’s Material Transmission

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.

Naming What We Know
Naming What We Know

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#?

Heirlooms
Heirlooms

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?

The PEER Lab is shaped by its community. Join us!

You can participate by joining one of our test kitchen multisensory experiments, sitting down with us for a family meal where a practitioner invites us into their process, or by applying to become an affiliate researcher. Sign up to stay connected.

Our events, built on the metaphor of the kitchen, are tactile and collaborative–much like the act of cooking. In the test kitchen, we carry out experiments that give us new ways to sense the world.

Music Beyond Metaphor

This research group maps the way music has been shaped by dominant metaphors, such as linear time, text, and proscenium space. These metaphors impact not only the vocabulary we use to describe and analyze music, but also determine musical imaginary, performance practice, and sensory access to music.

Mapping Practice-Based Research

Practice-based-research as a methodology is a relatively new endeavor. This research group traces the convergent developments across fields and continents and builds a public database of practice-based-research and its origins.

Sensing Home

Participants document their multisensory lived experiences. What are the daily actions we carry out to feel a sense of home? This project seeks not only to archive practices and epistemologies often overlooked by academia but to change the stories that are told about individuals and communities. Join this project.