The Space of All Possible Rhythms Hackathon at MIT

DETAILS:

• The first ever Rap Theory Hackathon at MIT asking ourselves one question: what would happen if we brought together the most creative minds in music and rap, science and philosophy in a space where they had the freedom to truly experiment and test their strangest ideas?

• Meals, beverages, snacks provided!

• More details on our Luma: https://luma.com/raphackathon

WHAT:

• The Space of All Possible Rap: Our main question for the weekend is can we create a modeling system–informed by the most powerful ideas in neuroscience, music theory, and linguistics–that empowers us to explore new structures of rap that are yet undiscovered? And in doing this, does it challenge our expectations so much that the very way we define rap to begin with must change forever?

• This "Theory of Everything of Rap" your team should distill rap into its constituent parts and how the parts connect, coordinate, and relate to each other. Music is not about the sounds, it’s about how they live together and build on one another… literally!

• In the end on Sunday–your theory and the new techniques you learned from it will be put to test in a live cypher performance from each team!

• Your article will be published on the Computational Rap Journal Substack, and cypher performances on the Ekkolápto YouTube.

WHO:

• Researchers in computation/bio/physics/math/linguistics, philosophers, musicians, visual artists, engineers, and curious students are welcome! If you are interested in joining and think you may not be a fit, don't worry, you're probably a good fit :)

• The incredible creators we've had at previous hackathons are almost uncategorizable: just the way we want it. We had plant biologists researching the foundations of mathematics and language, we had medical students interested in esotericism and religion, instrumentalists researching how biology uses musical elements and rhythms to communicate, and so much more.

ITINERARY: 

• ➡️ Friday July 17:

  • 4PM to 8PM: The Space of All Possible Rhythms (And Rhymes) Salon (Hackathon Participants MUST Join: https://luma.com/rapmit)

• ➡️ Saturday July 18:

  • 10AM: Doors Open + Breakfast

  • 1PM: Lunch

  • 7PM: Dinner

• ➡️ Sunday July 19:

  • 10AM: Doors Open + Breakfast

  • 1PM: Lunch

  • 4PM: Projects should be wrapping up (dinner is served later)

  • 5PM to 6:30PM: Cypher!

  • 6:30PM to 7PM: Awards

  • 7PM to 8PM: Ideating + Networking

HOSTED AND SUPPORTED BY: 

• Addy Cha (Founder @ Ekkolapto.org, O'Shaughnessy Ventures Fellow, FAU Machine Perception Cognitive Robotics Lab/Center for Complex Systems)

• Evan Cole (Founder @ CodeSchool in a Box)

• Tori Husain (International Creative Strategist, Harvard Divinity School MDiv and Rapper-Dancer-Wild Artist. hehe. torihusain.com)

• Ruben Stephen (MIT) / MIT Rap Club

• Previous Ekkolápto hackathons, salons, podcasts, and dinners at MIT, UT Austin, FAU, Harvard, Augmentation Lab, Frontier Tower SF, DC/Maryland, NYC, University of Toronto, Akatos House, University of Waterloo, Harvard St. Commons.

PREVIOUS EVENTS:

• 2024 Longevity & Unconventional Computing Research Hackathon at MIT Media Lab, featuring Stephen Wolfram, David Sinclair, Curt Jaimungal, and more: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy5dPSW_KkniuHpoLwlzkYcxhxn50Mn0T

• Past Polymath Salons and discussions are uploaded for you to watch on the Ekkolápto channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ekkolapto3

• Polymath Salon at UT Austin with Professor Scott Aaronson on the Philosophy of Computational Complexity:

• Polymath Salon at University of Toronto with Michael Levin, Andrés Gómez Emilsson, and Elan Barenholtz on the Binding Problem and Platonic Spaces: