SURROUND SOUND is a machine for listening, an experiment in tracing the echoes of Los Angeles’ past to uncover the resonances shaping its present. Built from archival news footage, oral histories, and neural networks trained to seek the unseen, this project reworks discarded fragments into a living, evolving commons — where memory resists erasure and voices long left out of the frame can be heard.

In 2025, SURROUND SOUND will move beyond the archive and into the city. A series of IRL and digital activations will bring this work to communities across Los Angeles, transforming historical footage into a catalyst for conversation, art, and collective remembering. Through workshops, interactive installations, and a culminating public gathering, this initiative will create spaces where residents, cultural workers, organizers, and artists can engage with the weight of history while shaping new pathways forward.

This is a collective effort, and it’s only beginning. Sign up for updates and join us in building a new SURROUND SOUND — one that reverberates beyond the archive, into the streets, and into the futures we are imagining together.

Created through the Artist-in-Residence Program at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2024 with support from the Golden Globe Foundation.