Allison Jerzak studies the history of digital music and music recommendation. Influenced by her previous work experience in the technology sector, Allison’s research program is committed to offering a humanistic interpretation of computational research.
Her dissertation project traces music’s migration onto Web 1.0. It explores the vexed set of problems — and, at times, questionable solutions — that computational researchers tackled as they recast music, a phenomenon many considered ineffable, into something quantifiable and amenable to the computational logics of Web 1.0. But more than that, this history reveals how entangled the technical, the aesthetic, and the economic became on the early commercial Internet, and offers a new methodological approach to algorithmic interpretability.
Allison is also a keyboardist. She completed her B.A. in Piano Performance at the University of Wisconsin and a M.M. in Piano Performance and Pedagogy at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. At Berkeley, Allison plays on historical keyboards with the University Baroque Ensemble.
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Musicology
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