Algorithmic Sovereignty: Jazz as Source Code

Hosted as the third iteration of the Marley P. Carroll Symposium Series, Algorithmic Sovereignty: Jazz as Source Code operates as a critical bridge between the UNC Charlotte School of Architecture and the Harvey B. Gantt Center. This two-day interdisciplinary symposium convenes computational designers, spatial theorists, and musical avant-gardists to explore the relationship between cultural memory, artificial intelligence, and the power of communities to shape the technologies and environments that influence their lives.

Building on Ruha Benjamin's powerful insights into systemic bias (Technology, Savior or Slayer), the symposium posits a radical reframing of Artificial Intelligence: moving away from the perception of AI as cold, extractive machinery, and instead treating it as an "ancestral repository" of human genius and cultural memory. By translating the complex polyrhythms and structural improvisation of jazz into a rigorous design lexicon, the event empowers designers and communities to transition from passive consumers of digital tools to active architects of their civic data and spatial futures.

Cultural Innovation Summit

Day 1: Harvey B. Gantt Center, November 12, 5 pm - 9 pm

The summit centers the human experiences, cultural knowledge, and lived histories behind technological innovation. Programming features technical and musical workshops, followed by keynote presentations from David Brown (Professor, UIC; theorist on the "Available City") and Olalekan Jeyifous (Black Reconstruction Collective artist and speculative architect). A special keynote video presentation by 7-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon grounds the evening in the architecture of survival and cultural memory, followed by a civic design panel featuring transformative architects Cathy Morrison, FAIA, and Malcolm Davis, AIA, and technologist Iyare Oronsaye.

Academic Computation & Application

Day 2: UNC Charlotte (Storrs Building Salon), November 13, 12 noon - 5 pm

Day 2 bridges cultural theory with rigorous academic computation. The day features deep-dive keynotes by transdisciplinary AI and spatial scholars Vernelle A. A. Noel (Carnegie Mellon University) and Ifeoma Ebo (Creative Urban Alchemy / City College of New York). The academic programming is enriched by an exhibition of sophomore architectural work from the Harmonic Rhythms studio, a live student vernacular jazz dance performance, and culminates in a closing interdisciplinary panel exploring the synthesis of physical movement, social entrepreneurship, and generative design.

Please note: Day 1 takes place at the Gantt Center (551 S. Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC 28202). Day 2 takes place on the campus of UNC Charlotte inside the Storrs Building Salon (9115 Mary Alexander Road, Charlotte, NC 28262).

David Brown, a Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago, works on The Available City, the potential of Chicago’s 10,000+ city-owned vacant lots as a collective space system, an urban design, and a future we can have today. Iterations of the speculative design have been exhibited in the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale and the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial. Brown was the Artistic Director of the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennial, which had The Available City as its focus and theme. His essays and drawings presenting the transformative impact The Available City can have on Chicago’s South and West Sides are found in CENTER 18: Music in Architecture—Architecture in Music, the Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies, volume 2, and Flat Out 4. Those essays continue his study of architecture and design in relation to structures in jazz that facilitate improvisation, which he initiated in the book Noise Orders (University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Ifeoma Ebo is a Brooklyn-based designer, urbanist, educator, and Principal of Creative Urban Alchemy, an award-winning design studio working at the intersection of art, architecture, urban design, and planning. Her practice centers spatial equity, cultural heritage, and community knowledge as essential forms of design intelligence.

As Distinguished Lecturer for Design & Sustainability at the Spitzer School of Architecture at City College of New York and formerly holding Senior positions in New York City government, Ebo has led interdisciplinary projects that transform public spaces, housing environments, and civic infrastructure through community-centered design. Her work asks how cultural memory and lived experience can be translated into the physical and digital systems that shape our cities.

Her practice and research explore placekeeping, Afrocentric design methodologies, climate and environmental justice, and the ways communities can become co-authors of the spaces and infrastructures they inhabit. Ebo is a United States Artists Fellow in Architecture & Design and has received recognition from the Architectural League, AIA, the Black Artists + Designers Guild, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Nnenna Freelon is a woman who intimately understands the intersection of architecture, memory, and the rhythms of survival. Nnenna is a seven-time Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist, a visionary composer, an author, and an award-winning podcaster.

From her groundbreaking work on Concord Records to her recent induction into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame, she has utilized the human voice as the ultimate instrument of transmission.

Recently, through her acclaimed podcast 'Great Grief' and her phenomenal book, 'Beneath the Skin of Sorrow', she has demonstrated how the rigorous geometry of jazz improvisation can guide us through profound loss, teaching us to become the active architects of our own healing. Nnenna is the widow of Phil Freelon, FAIA, the design architect of the Harvey B. Gantt Center and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Olalekan Jeyifous is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work reimagines the intersections of architecture, community, and the environment through inventive visual storytelling. By merging physical and digital elements with both historical and speculative contexts, his practice offers critical reflections on existing systems while imagining alternative ways of relating to each other and the spaces we inhabit. His art has been exhibited at major institutions including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Vitra Design Museum, and Guggenheim Bilbao, and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and SFMOMA.

His Illumitage installation in Charlotte on the Corner of Brooklyn Village and College Street, adjacent to the Harvey B. Gantt Center, was managed by Hodges Taylor Art Consultancy. Through this large-scale aluminum panel work, Jeyifous celebrates the historic neighborhood of Brooklyn, located in this section of uptown referred to as Second Ward. Incorporating iconic architectural landmarks, cultural references, and symbols of Charlotte, the artist creates a collage of memories in the aluminum panels. The panels vary in depth and create a high-relief sculptural installation on the wall.

In addition to an extensive exhibition history, he has spent over two decades creating large-scale public installations and was co-commissioned to design a monument to Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm for New York City’s She Built NYC initiative.

His distinctions include the 2024 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Silver Lion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship in Architecture and Design, the 2021 J. Irwin and Xenia S. Miller Prize, and two NYFA Fellowships. He has also been awarded residencies at MacDowell, The Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center, and he currently serves as the 2026 Brooklyn Botanic Garden Heidi Nitze Fellow. His solo show Hydricosmic Litanies is currently on view at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN.

Vernelle A. A. Noel, Ph.D., is a computational design scholar, architect, and artist. She is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the Situated Computation + Design Lab. Her research advances architecture and design scholarship through new conceptual frameworks, novel computational methods and workflows for design and fabrication through ethnographic work, and critical inquiry. Dr. Noel investigates crafts and cultural practices, computational making and fabrication, and emerging technological systems to explore embodied, socio-cultural, and political aspects of computing to repair practice, pedagogy, and our publics. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and ideas2innovation (i2i), and she has a TEDx Talk titled, “The Power of Making: Craft, Computation, and Carnival.” Noel is co-editor of the book “Critical Computational Relations in Design, Architecture and the Built Environment.” She is also Co-Editor of the upcoming book, “Artificial Intelligence and Ecological Design: Frameworks and Methods for Deep Vernacularity.” Dr. Noel is an international speaker on cultural practices and computing, novel fabrication methodologies, and design education.

Iyare E. C. Oronsaye is a BEDAC Mellon and Dumbarton Oaks Fellow, Telly Award–winning creative director, animator, artist, educator, and researcher whose work explores the intersection of computational creativity and human intentionality. With over 18 years of industry experience, he brings traditional artistic practices into dialogue with emerging technologies in animation and immersive media.

As an Assistant Professor of Media Arts, Design and Technology at North Carolina State University and a Doctor of Design candidate, Oronsaye investigates Human-AI Co-Creativity (HC3), examining how AI-generated proposals influence artistic decision-making and authorship. His doctoral research introduces the Pivot Event, an analytical framework for identifying key moments when an AI-generated proposal introduces a creative direction that alters human intent.

His commercial and artistic portfolio includes work associated with PBS, Netflix, Disney, and the Smithsonian. As a designer, Oronsaye leverages his expertise in production pipelines and emerging media to articulate new frameworks for storytelling in the age of intelligent systems.

Kyle Spence (Symposium Chair) is an architect, educator, and Assistant Professor of Critical Design Futures and Computation at UNC Charlotte, as well as the Principal of The BAKLab. Operating at the intersection of generative artificial intelligence, digital fabrication, and public-interest design, his work seeks to reclaim human agency within an increasingly automated world. Spence empowers communities to transition from passive consumers of computational tools into active architects of their civic data and spatial futures.

Central to this vision is his JazzSpace methodology, which translates the structural improvisation and complex polyrhythms of jazz into a rigorous generative syntax for spatial justice. By intentionally reframing artificial intelligence as an "ancestral repository" of human cultural memory rather than a system of cold algorithmic bias, Spence moves beyond critique to actively build community-centered solutions. This protocol drives both his professional and pedagogical work—from securing honors for the Mitchelville Heritage Trail competition by encoding Black history into high-performance computational models, to shaping the foundational curriculum of undergraduate studios like Harmonic Rhythms.

Backed by a 2025 Gambrell Faculty Fellowship and the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, Spence has built and speculative projects redefine community scholarship as a direct technical partnership. Whether developing permanent civic infrastructure like the EcoDome Pavilion or driving public discourse as the inaugural keynote speaker for the Mint Museum’s Contemporary Architecture + Design Series, his practice fluently bridges rigorous academic computation with the vital cultural gravity of civic enfranchisement.