Meaning Making Machines
Meaning Making Machines
Podcast Description
Meaning Making Machines connects the deep past with the imminent future through the search for the eternal, enduring, and essential. Join host Simone Leon as she discusses how we find and define meaning through art, religion, and technology.
She'll be speaking to artists, technologists, technophobes, religious thinkers, and philosophers. Exploring the deep questions with a curious mind, and questioning everything.
simoneleon.substack.com
Podcast Insights
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The podcast explores topics related to the intersection of art, religion, and technology, with episodes discussing concepts such as matrilineal versus patrilineal cultures, the influences of mythology on contemporary life, and the spiritual connections found in nature and storytelling.
Meaning Making Machines connects the deep past with the imminent future through the search for the eternal, enduring, and essential. Join host Simone Leon as she discusses how we find and define meaning through art, religion, and technology.
She’ll be speaking to artists, technologists, technophobes, religious thinkers, and philosophers. Exploring the deep questions with a curious mind, and questioning everything.
Welcome to my conversation with composer JoAnne Harris. JoAnne has conducted and recorded film scores at Abbey Road, East West, The Village, and Avatar with artists such as grammy winning Kurt Elling and members of the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Her television work includes score for: Mal de Ojo (HBO), 20/20, Primetime, and Dateline. She teaches media scoring at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema (CUNY Brooklyn College), orchestration at Catholic University of America, and is a student of the organ and spends her free time working through the Orgelbüchlein. In this episode we speak about JoAnne’s life story, and unexpected path into composition, the meaning of art and the value of art in the age of AI, JoAnne’s religious background and explorations of faith, and the primal relationship humans have to music whether it is in worship, community, or the pursuit of excellence. 00:00 – Teaser & Theme01:16 – Intro02:42 – Joanne’s musical biography and path to composition04:02 – Growing up in Lutheran choral tradition and discovering composition06:10 – Moving to New York City08:02 – Backpacking Southeast Asia and becoming a film composer’s apprentice10:10 – Artistic Purpose15:10 – Hollywood’s risk aversion and the remake epidemic21:02 – The church’s historical relationship to music32:00 – Technology’s impact on composing42:36 – What AI forces us to ask56:40 – Worship music: high church hymns vs. contemporary praise01:04:36 – Growing up Lutheran and navigating theological schisms01:30:09 – The non-linear path back to faith01:34:40 – Future plans: music, ministry, and being a 21st century Hildegard von Bingen01:36:58 – OutroShow Links:Substack: http://simoneleon.substack.comJoanne’s Links:Website: https://www.joanneharriscomposer.comSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3hVn60X9XS53Nwq3QYkZYcSoundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/joanneharrisInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/joannecomposer/Music and editing by Simon Linsteadt: www.simonvictorlinsteadt.com
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