Ian Condry
Affiliate Faculty
Professor of Japanese Culture and Media Studies
Room 14N-423
508-314-2567
Biography
Ian Condry is a Cultural Anthropologist and Professor in Comparative Media Studies/Writing with an affiliated appointment in Anthropology.
He is the author of two books, founder of the MIT Spatial Sound Lab, radio DJ on WMBR, co-founder of the startup Hearby.com. He releases music as Leftroman. His books are available for free under Creative Commons license.
In the fall of 2019, he launched the MIIT Spatial Sound Lab, a community production studio for immersive, multiperspective, sonic experimentation. We aim to disrupt hierarchies, reduce inequalities, and cross borders. He is co-organizer of Dissolve Music, a sound conference and music festival, in 2018 and 2020 (mitdissolve.com).
Hearby.com is a local live music discovery platform which uses AI and Anthropology to provide new pathways to finding artists, playing locally, who you didn’t know you would like.
His first book Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization (2006, Duke University Press), explores ethnographically how hip-hop took root and developed in Japan, with a focus on Japanese musicians and their fans. Based on fieldwork in Tokyo nightclubs and recording studios, he finds that "globalization from below” is the best explanation for cultural movements that spread transnationally before there is interest from corporations and governments.
In his second book, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story, he argues that the global success of Japanese animation arises from "collaborative creativity" between official producers and fan remixers, between industries of manga, merchandise, and more, and so offers a model for understanding how media and culture are changing in the twenty-first century.
Since 2018, he is the radio DJ for Near and Far, a Japanese hip-hop show, on WMBR 88.1FM, Cambridge, and online at wmbr.org, every week Tuesdays, 7-8pm (Eastern US). Archive at mixcloud.com/iancondry.
Since 2006, he organized the MIT/Harvard Cool Japan research project, which explores the critical potential of of popular culture.
He is currently working on a book about musicians after the end of the recording industry, at the frontiers of music and sound, in Tokyo, Boston and Berlin.
He received his BA from Harvard in Government in 1987 and a PhD in Anthropology from Yale in 1999. He has been teaching at MIT since 2002. He is former Head of Global Studies and Languages and he serves on the Executive Committee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation.