At the Nexus of Music & Tech, a Vision Echos of the Future: Meet Senaida
photo by Cicchhetti Multi-Media
“...Then I went to Berlin in the fall of 2022, and that just completely changed my life,” Senaida (multidisciplinary artist, DJ, and WE ARE THE FUTURE founder) told me at some point along the story of their artistic journey to the present. By this point in the narrative, they’d also played piano at Carnegie Hall at age 16, composed music for a high school play, moved to NYC to attend NYU’s Clive Davis Institute, produced and released two EPs, and created a music tech start-up. But as the Toronto-born creative described their experience playing piano and writing acoustic lovesongs before discovering a fiery fascination for electronic music and technology, their creative alignment with the city of Berlin didn’t come as a shock. Naturally, it was when faced with the iconic nightlife scene they were hit with the inspiration to get behind the decks. “ I learned how to DJ overnight,” Senaida said, “And I played my first gig; it was on Refuge Worldwide Radio.”
Recalling the start of their path in music, to which Senaida points to classical piano training, they said, “...it taught me the nuances of music and mastering a skill, but it never really resonated with me because I wasn't able to express my own creative freedom. I was always playing compositions of old, dead white guys. It was all about perfection. I didn't really understand why this art was all about perfection when to me art is creative freedom.” So faced with ivory walls of tradition, they were met with an insatiable thirst for uncharted realms of expression. What they experienced in Berlin, though, felt like the creative antidote. It was in this pursuit of sonic liberation that Senaida's odyssey truly lit up.
“There’s this whole culture of women in electronic music, but their stories are lost... So I was trying to find where I could fit myself in as a woman, as a person of color, into this landscape that is now so male-dominated. And so I took it upon myself to start like listening to a lot of this early electronic music and then archiving it and taking inspiration from it. ”
They were committed to DJing upon returning to NYC, attending open decks and connecting with other DJs with whom they hosted parties. Turns out, event curation naturally resonated as well. So Senaida started having creative friends to their apartment for art shares followed by a dance party with some casual networking. It grew into WE ARE THE FUTURE, the creative platform that hosted more than 20 of these parties last year.
I planned on sitting down to learn about the inception, inspirations, and plans of WE ARE THE FUTURE. On its own, it’s an artist collective and event series, but what became undeniably clear was that it contains a multitude of Senaida’s passions and sits as a point along a journey of following many authentic creative pulls. In talking with WATF’s creator and resident DJ, I got to know it as a piece of the creative universe they’ve brought to life at the intersection of music, art, technology, and futurism. Theirs is a story that testifies to the flow of embracing multihyphenate creativity, and allowing that process to lead to the sort of world-building that defines artistry and offers multiple entry points to a vibrant community.
Below, read the rest of my chat with Senaida where we dig into interdisciplinary artistry, creative world-building, and some exciting upcoming events, releases, and projects to keep our eyes out for…
photo by Ricky Kapoor
CALLI: Something that I love so much about your journey is that creative people are often encouraged to niche down. And so many cool projects and ideas come from the opposite. From following what guides you to explore something else.
SENAIDA: I always struggled with that, because that school they kind of encourage that. “What are your genres? How do you label yourself as what do you [or how you] identify?” When people ask me what I do, [I say] I'm a multi-hyphenate artist.
C: The beauty of it is you may have never created these things if you hadn't worked with songwriting and technology and gone to Berlin. It's a testament to letting it all inspire each other. To that point, I'm thinking about the idea of interactive art. Are there ways that you saw visual arts and sound arts directly influencing each other?
S: Totally. My first class in the Interactive Media Arts major was The Code of Music. We were using p5.js and we would code the music and then create some sort of visual element. One of the projects that I did was with bouncing balls. You would see these randomly bouncing balls on the screen and every time they touched each other or the side of the screen, they would make different notes.
C: Sounds so sensorily satisfying.
S: Exactly. I want to activate all five of the senses. That's what all of my experiences are about. So much of music is listening. And there's a whole art to deep listening, but engaging some of the other senses. Even smell. People don't think about that— what does your experience smell like?
C: It's really hard to just listen these days. I feel like engaging all of the senses can be a radical form of rest and escape for people.
So about your apartment parties… I imagine it was easier to create these more intimate spaces where everybody could share their art when it was smaller. How did you translate that into your WE ARE THE FUTURE parties as it grew?
photo by Ross Kelly
S: Honestly, I'm still figuring that out. But we did scale up. We started doing parties at the Sulton Room over the summer on the rooftop. One of the most successful ones we had there, the first hour of the party was dedicated to the art share. People would come, it's open sign-up… so it's kind of like open decks, you know? You go, you sign up, you see everybody. So I took the same model and applied it to any media.
We had a comedian. My friend was sharing photos. He's one of my best friends now. But that event eventually led him into the scene. He's a big figure in the scene now as a photographer. People would share their music. My friend is making a sensory hoodie for ADHD and neurodivergent people, so she shared some early prototypes. My other friend was making an AI music video generator. It's really cool to see a diverse range of things. And people were still able to feel connected to this community. And because it's open to the public, anybody can come even if they're not sharing.
C: I love the idea that you can share something that's in progress. It’s hard to find space for that.
S: Cause you feel like people are judging it. Social media is one of those things. It's like if you put it out there, people are gonna judge it.
C: Right, and with any creative projects– that's not just work, that’s a piece of your heart and at some level. It’s personal. So something I crave is safe spaces to workshop something.
On that note, do you have any events coming up?
S: Yes. We have two very exciting ones. The first one is on March 9th. It's a semi-open invite. I'm hosting my first play party! And it's a fundraiser for this music video that I'm going to be working on. It’ll be a VR/3D music video experience for my song, Princess of the Hills. My partner is directing it, and we've been working on this for a long time. So I'm really excited.
photo by Carson Packer
The video was largely inspired by my experience in Berlin, particularly at a club called KitKat. It's very famous. And I did Sally in KitKat, and it was one of those moments where you could just feel all the love and warmth in a space and the music was amazing. So I really wanted to recreate that experience in the music video but with cyborgs— a “cyborg orgy” is how I would describe it.
And for the party, I was like, “We could do a fundraiser and it could kind of recreate that!” So it's kind of a real-life cyborg orgy. And it's mostly femme-dom oriented. We're gonna have burlesque performers, I have a friend who designs lingerie so she’s going to dress all the dancers, [we have] some Shabari artists. It's at a venue in Chinatown. I'm partnering with my friend Arick, who hosts play parties there regularly. It's called “Technophilia”. Because I think I'm a technophile lowkey, I want to have sex with the machine— that's my deepest desire! But all the music is techno… so it works!
And then March 29th will be our one-year anniversary party for WE ARE THE FUTURE. That's gonna be at Hell Phone in Bushwick. I love that venue– it's kind of a newer speakeasy turned techno underground club. My friends Finn and Bree are the managers there. We're gonna do the art share during happy hour and then go into a dance party for the rest of the night.
I’m really excited because I want more communal activities. Some of the things I want to bring are writing note cards to a stranger. So we're gonna have a big box and everybody can write a note and take a note from the box. The other thing I wanted to do was bracelet making. In rave culture, there's a big bracelet exchange thing, so I'm gonna have a bracelet-making station. And at all of our events, we have flash tattoos and tarot. We’ve had piercings in the past. And different vendors sell their art! It's a festival-esque experience, but not as big or overwhelming.
C: So cool. I’d love to hear more about the music you’re making and your new project.
S: Yeah so the album is mostly inspired by my time in Berlin and influences of electronic, avant-garde music, and techno.
photo by Carson Packer
But for the last two years, I’ve been doing this thing called “beat-ober” where for the month of October, I produce a beat every single day. I mostly did that because I wasn’t producing music. I was so busy running my start-up and then later doing all this other random shit. And I was like, “Oh I’m supposed to be a musician but I don’t make music”. So it’s 31 days of making beats and some really interesting ideas come out of it. The last time I did it I was in Berlin and I would try to capture my day. I’d do it at the end of my day, even if I came home at 3 or 4 am I would sit down and make a beat. And it was like a time capsule in a way! Sometimes I would use field recordings I’d recorded that day.
So I have all these beats from the last two years that I haven’t put out. Most of the album is taken from my favorite beats I’ve made, and then I’m gonna expand it out. “Princess of The Hills” is one of those tracks. The song title comes from a town in India called Kodaikanal. I took a sample in that city of birds in the forest. It’s kind of known as a psychedelics town. People will go there to do shroom trips or smoke weed cause it’s illegal in India. My partner actually went to high school there. So the track is inspired by that and also the idea of this tribal dance.
The video, as I mentioned, is cyborg-esque inspired. And since it’s the first visual piece I’m putting out, I really want it to state: This is who I am now. Kind of a new artist identity. The main character in the video is called Senaida 2.0, and they’re a cyborg. They have wings, they can fly, a very majestic kind of monstress. I’m really inspired by the musician, Arca, who also graduated from Clive, and did these cool animated videos for one of their songs. In 3D, you can create many things that would not be possible in real life. Or even really expensive sets and production design. You can defy gravity and shit! So a lot of my work plays to the media that I’m using. I’m trying to get to the core of: what can you do with this medium that you can’t do anywhere else?
It’s been fun to create and design these 3D worlds. Then we said since it’s built in Unreal Engine, it would be easy to make it a VR game. So people can step into the shoes of Senaida 2.0 and walk through each of the scenes! That’s a big part of the music video release: this installation experience. We’ll have it at NYU inside of a 50-speaker surround sound lab. So they’ll be hearing “Princess of The Hills” playing all around and they’re in VR– it’s super trippy!
C: The coolest thing to me is that you’ve created a world in this energy and there are so many entry points for people to experience that vision. And it’s so visceral. Is there anything else we should know about your work?
SENAIDA: I don’t think I mentioned… the title of the album is going to be “KUNST KAPUTT”. And there’s a funny story behind it. When I was in Berlin, I went to Berlin Art Week. I’m allergic to alcohol, I don’t drink, but at the time I was still kind of drinking. I was in this art gallery on opening night and I drank less than half a bottle of beer. So we’re walking through the gallery, and all of a sudden I’m feeling super light-headed. The next thing I knew I passed out and when I woke up everyone in the gallery was looking at me. Apparently, I had hit my head on a piece of art and broke it!! So they escorted me outside and the security guard just kept saying “Kunst kaputt! Kunst kaputt”. Which means “broken art”.
C: That’s amazing. When’s the album coming out?
S: This summer– that’s the goal! I’m not a big fan of streaming platforms. I don’t listen to Spotify. I find most of my music on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. So I was thinking instead of making pennies on Spotify, I would create my own distribution platform– like a web interface. I’ve been working a lot with AI as well in my process. So I want to build this platform that uses AI to take the stems that I’ve created for the songs and rearrange them so that every time somebody goes onto the website and plays the song, it’s different. But it’s still the same song. I want to do that for all the songs on the album so it’s essentially an AI-generated album.
photo by Ricky Kapoor
You can keep up with Senaida’s upcoming events, projects, and releases on their Instagram, WE ARE THE FUTURE’s Instagram, their Website, and YouTube.
Including some details on Technophilia this weekend and We Are The Future Anniversary Party later this month.
While we wait for Princess of The Hills and KUNST KAPUTT, Senaida just released a new track, IAMABADBITCH, featuring Grimes AI vocals. You can listen where you listen now.
