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Jared Jensen

University of Texas

Jared Jensen is a doctoral candidate of Organizational Communication and Technology at the University of Texas at Austin and a research assistant in the Automated Policy and Research Organizing Network (APRON). His primary research interests involve the communicative dynamics between creativity, intelligent machines, and issues of power and autonomy in work. His dissertation is focused on the ways musicians collaborate and transform their creative work with advanced technologies. He is particularly interested in conducting research that surfaces strategies creative workers can use to empower themselves in the digital age.

Investigating Advanced Technologies and Creative Collaboration in Music

A growing body of literature contends that as workers use intelligent machines, their work will transform and creativity will emerge as the fundamental function and contribution of human labor. A focus on creatives’ communication strategies elucidates that transformation by surfacing how creatives adopt, reform, and invent the technologies that surround them. Musicians provide an ideal context for such a focus because they (a) use a wide array of technologies in their work, and (b) organise in fluid and precarious networks. Drawing on observations and interviews (N=40), this study investigates the ways musicians’ collaborative practices and professional considerations inform their technology choices. In sum, musicians rely on technologies to help form their identities, persuade collaborators, and enhance and construct their creative vision. This work contributes to theoretical and practical understandings of musical work and creative work more generally.