Bio
Ritwik Banerji is an experimental ethnographer, interactive media artist, and improviser. His work focuses on two areas: 1) the use of artificial intelligence as a medium for ethnographic depiction, performance, and elicitation; and 2) the meaning of “freedom” in the musical practice of free improvisation. His monograph, Suspended Critique: The Sense of Freedom in Free Improvisation, is currently under contract for the Critical Conjunctures in Music and Sound Book Series with Oxford University Press. His other writings appear in the journals Jazz and Culture, Jazz Perspectives, and Anthropology in Action, as well as in the edited volumes Kits for Sociotechnical Research, The Oxford Handbook of the Phenomenology of Music Cultures, and Making Music Together.
As an installation artist and performer, Banerji has presented his work at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia (NYC), Ausland (Berlin), Elastic Arts (Chicago), as well as more recently at the Federal Fluminense University in Niterói (Rio), the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University, and the Meeker Elementary School art fair. Over the years, Banerji has also collaborated with a variety of renowned sound artists, musicians, and composers, including Tony Malaby, Axel Dörner, Rob Frye, Ben Lamar Gay, Theresa Wong, Liz Allbee, Emilio Gordoa, Matthias Müller, Tomomi Adachi, and Tritha Sinha
Courses Taught
- Design Ethnography
- Intro to Cultural Anthropology
- Anthropology and AI
- Music in American Cultures
- Intro to Asian American Studies
- Globalization and the Human Condition
Research Areas
Artificial Intelligence, Improvisation, Field Methods, Multimodal Ethnography
Selected Publications & Awards
- Suspended Critique: The Sense of Freedom in Free Improvisation. Critical Conjunctures in Music and Sound Series. Gavin Steingo and Jairo Moreno, eds. Monograph Under Contract with Oxford University Press.
- 2026. “Silence in Interactions between Performers of Free Improvisation.” Making Music Together: Analytical Perspectives on Musical Interaction. ed. Garrett Michaelsen and Chris Stover. Oxford University Press.
- 2025. WLC Innovator of the Year.
- 2023. “Artificial Intelligence, Humanness, and Nonverbal Sociality.” Anthropology in Action. Special Issue: Entangling Data and Entangling Disciplines: The Future of Anthropological Collaborations with Data Scientists. ed. Roberta Raffaetà, Giovanna Santanera, and Francesca Esposito.