Events

How much in your life is preprogrammed? Presets, or default settings on technology that condition their use, are everywhere, from microwave popcorn buttons to predictive text and Instagram filters. But while presets facilitate the quick, efficient production of tasks or art, they simultaneously reinforce economic, political, and social norms. In this talk, interdisciplinary scholar Amy Skjerseth asks what presets allow and deny in media, music, and technology. She explores several case studies across media history to show how artists re-program presets, using the very tools that have predetermined biases to develop new forms of artistic and cultural expression.

Combining sound and music studies, media and cultural studies, philosophy, art history, and more, this talk stems from Skjerseth’s forthcoming book, Preprogrammed: How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media (UC Press, Fall 2026). Preprogrammed urgently reconsiders the cultural and political systems we often take for granted. The 2020s have perpetually redefined “the new normal,” from COVID-19 to 2025 executive orders, where rules are overturned and remade seemingly overnight. Given our imbrication with apps, platforms, and AI, our entanglements with norms cannot be ignored.

Amy Skjerseth is Assistant Professor of Popular Music at the University of California, Riverside. Her scholarship focuses on intersections of music, media, material culture, and technology. She is currently working on two books: Preprogrammed: How Electronic Presets Changed Music and Media (UC Press, 2026) and The Feminist Wall of Sound. She is also the editor of the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Voice and Identity. Her work has appeared in journals from [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies and animation to The Radio Journal and Journal of Popular Music Studies, among others.

Film and Media Studies Department colloquium lecture