Mike Sugarman is a media producer, musician, and organizer interested in how music communities use the internet to organize offline. While in CMS, he studied how improvised music communities improvised to adapt to live-streaming events when COVID-19 made in-person concerts impossible. At the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure, he furthers that research in two ways: first seeking to understand how online tools and social media might be developed to cater to the values and needs of small, interest-based communities, and second co-designing online tools with communities currently underserved by the profit-motivated social media. In addition to that research, Mike produces iDPI’s public-facing media, creating a forum for the community of scholars, journalists, activists, and artists working to build a new internet that centers equity, justice, and communities’ values.
Thesis:
Playing It By Ear: Improvised Music Livestreaming During COVID-19
