The Institute of the Mechanical Surround (IMS) is a production studio, a label, and a workspace for experimental collaborations between scholars, musicians, and artists. The IMS is here to identify, measure, and evaluate conditions of technological saturation. Celebrating knowledge in terms of sonic intervention, lyricism, and aesthetic wager, the IMS is here for you.

PROJECTS

Machines In Between

About

The Institute of Mechanical Surround is a hub for asking new questions concerning technology and producing new genres through which to answer them. In generating a more nuanced and more pleasurable understanding of technological saturation, each node of IMS programming operates as a bridge between scholarly inquiry, artistic pursuit, and the wider community. The IMS seeks to reimagine the ends of art and means of intellect.

Founded in 2023 with a sense of urgent concern, the IMS will recalibrate your senses of and appreciation for the machines that make you up, bring you down, and otherwise mediate your mere human existence. Located aside the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, the IMS was founded by John Modern and Nick Kroll in 2023. With a network of collaborators that spans continents, intellectual disciplines, and artistic practice, IMS takes up the question of what is happening now.

Drawing from our collective expertise in philosophy and history, social theory, socially engaged art, turntablism and electronic music, the IMS is animated by what is perhaps the most pressing humanistic concern of our time: technological saturation. For we find ourselves in a world that, in so many ways and on so many levels, is bent on integrating whatever might be a defining characteristic of the human— cognition, creativity, indeterminacy, imagination, sociality, flourishing, empathy, love, rationality—with machines.

The Studio

Mirage and Moog find harmony.
MPC and EPS await input from the turntable.
Drum, bass, guitar and more are all on call.
Reason is our CPU.
Take 5 or 808, it makes no difference to us.
Our studio is a space for showing how the mental and the physical interact.

The studio is designed with strict engineering principles. And it is equipped with the tools to deconstruct and reconstruct our mechanical surround. Machines include: Toft Console, Akai MPC 2000, Ensoniq Mirage, Korg Minilogue, Arturia Mircrofreak, Behringer RD-82, TECHNICS SL1210M5G direct drive turntable, Pioneer s9 2 channel mixer, Casio SK-8 sampling keyboard, Danelectro DM25 Tube Amp, Panasonic RR-830 Standard Cassette Transcriber, Moog Source Monophonic Analog Synthesizer with Patch Memory, ADAT, ukeleles, Nektar Impact Controller, Vestex VNL stylus, Pioneer djm 800 mixer, Universal Audio Apollo Interface, ‘93 Music Man Stingray 4 string bass, Vox Wah pedal (V847), PT101 Numark Scratch, Danelectro 3021, Ibanez bass guitar, Azur Fuzz pedal, QoB2 Benjistone FX pedal, Ensoniq SQ80, Rosary 1653, Pioneer Reverberation Amplifier SR-9, Shure SM7B, Boss Digital Delay DD-6 pedal, Earthquaker Data Currupter pedal, Julia pedal, DigiTech Studio S100, Geiger Counter WMD pedal, Yamaha PSS-170, CASIO SK-1, tambourine, Marine Band Harmonica (M. Hohner), Fender Precision bass, etc.

People

  • John Modern

    Co-Director of IMS
    Producer of Machines in Between and Me and My Monkey Mixtape, Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of the Humanities and Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College

  • Libby Modern

    Creative Director
    Artist, designer, and founder of Modern Art, co-host of Machines in Between

  • Vinny Smaldone

    Sound Ecologist
    Producer and Co-host of Outside the Algorithm; Producer of Processing.
    Aka DJ Image, a national touring DJ.

  • Nicky Kroll

    Co-Director of IMS
    Producer of Processing; Sound Designer for Machines in Between; Professor of Philosophy, Franklin & Marshall College

  • Mike Newman

    Sound Engineer
    Mike trained under legendary recording engineer Shelly Yakus at Tongue & Groove Studios in Philadelphia. He has worked with Mavis Staples, The Dixie Hummingbirds, Art Garfunkel, Levon Helm, and Blue Oyster Cult.

  • Jenny Schulder Brant

    Staff Photographer
    Jenny is a creative director, photographer and ayurvedic practitioner. Her work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Jane, Fortune, Japanese Playboy, and Vanity Fair.

  • Jamaal Washington

    MC
    aka The Primacy Intelligent— a 90s style hip hop beat conductor, co-host and co-producer of Outside the Algorithm

Advisory Board

Courtney Bender
Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine Professor of Religion, Columbia University

Sylvester Johnson
Executive Director of the Tech for Humanity Initiative; Professor of Religion and Culture, Virginia Tech University

Hillary Kaell
William Dawson Research Chair and professor of Anthropology, McGill University

Lerone A. Martin
Martin Luther King, Jr. Centennial Professor and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute, Stanford University

Funding

The IMS has been generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation, the Luther Binkley Fund in Philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College, and the Charles and Barabara Kahn Endowment in Religious Studies, and the Office of College Grants at Franklin and Marshall College

Our community partners included Lancaster Conservancy (Providing wild and forested lands and clean waterways for our community. Forever), Music for Everyone (Cultivating the power of music as an educational, community building and public health tool), and Modern Art (Making Lancaster Weird)