Algorithmic Sovereignty: Jazz as Source Code

As the third installment of the Marley P. Carroll Symposium Series, Algorithmic Sovereignty: Jazz as Source Code operates as a critical bridge between the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. This two-day interdisciplinary symposium convenes computational designers, spatial theorists, and musical avant-gardists to explore the relationship between cultural memory, artificial intelligence, and the power of communities to shape the technologies and environments that influence their lives. Building on Ruha Benjamin's powerful insights into systemic bias (Technology, Savior or Slayer), the symposium posits a radical reframing of artificial intelligence: moving away from the perception of AI as cold, extractive machinery, and instead treating it as an "ancestral repository" of human genius and cultural memory. By translating the complex polyrhythms and structural improvisation of jazz into a rigorous design lexicon, the event empowers designers and communities to transition from passive consumers of digital tools to active architects of their civic data and spatial futures. Day 1 Location: Harvey B. Gantt Center, November 12, 5 pm - 9 pm The summit centers the human experiences, cultural knowledge, and lived histories behind technological innovation. Programming features technical and musical workshops, followed by keynote presentations from David Brown (Professor, UIC; theorist on the "Available City") and Olalekan Jeyifous (Black Reconstruction Collective artist and speculative architect). A special keynote video presentation by 7-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon grounds the evening in the architecture of survival and cultural memory, followed by a civic design panel featuring transformative architects Cathy Morrison, FAIA, and Malcolm Davis, AIA, and technologist Iyare Oronsaye. Day 2 Location: UNC Charlotte (Storrs Building Salon), November 13, 12 noon - 5 pm Day 2 bridges cultural theory with rigorous academic computation. The day features deep-dive keynotes by transdisciplinary AI and spatial scholars Vernelle A. A. Noel (Carnegie Mellon University) and Ifeoma Ebo (Creative Urban Alchemy / City College of New York). The academic programming is enriched by an exhibition of sophomore architectural work from the Harmonic Rhythms studio, a live student vernacular jazz dance performance, and culminates in a closing interdisciplinary panel exploring the synthesis of physical movement, social entrepreneurship, and generative design. Please note: Day 1 takes place at the Gantt Center (551 S. Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC 28202). Day 2 takes place on the campus of UNC Charlotte inside the Storrs Building Salon (9115 Mary Alexander Road, Charlotte, NC 28262). David Brown, a Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, works on The Available City, the potential of Chicago’s 10,000+ city-owned vacant lots as a collective space system, an urban design, and a future we can have today. Iterations of the speculative design have been exhibited in the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Brown was the Artistic Director of the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which had The Available City as its focus and theme. His essays and drawings presenting the transformative impact The Available City can have on Chicago’s South and West Sides are found in CENTER 18: Music in Architecture—Architecture in Music, the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, volume 2, and Flat Out 4. Those essays continue his study of architecture and design in relation to structures in jazz that facilitate improvisation, which he initiated in the book Noise Orders (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Ifeoma Ebo is a Brooklyn-based designer, urbanist, educator, and Principal of Creative Urban Alchemy, an award-winning design studio working at the intersection of art, architecture, urban design, and planning. Her practice centers spatial equity, cultural heritage, and community knowledge as essential forms of design intelligence. As Distinguished Lecturer for Design & Sustainability at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York and formerly holding Senior positions in New York City government, Ebo has led interdisciplinary projects that transform public spaces, housing environments, and civic infrastructure through community-centered design. Her work asks how cultural memory and lived experience can be translated into the physical and digital systems that shape our cities. Her practice and research explore placekeeping, Afrocentric design methodologies, climate and environmental justice, and the ways communities can become co-authors of the spaces and infrastructures they inhabit. Ebo is a United States Artists Fellow in Architecture & Design and has received recognition from the Architectural League, AIA, the Black Artists + Designers Guild, and the New York State Council o