Photo by Rod Deal
Audio By Carbonatix
Reader support matters more than ever
We're in the final stretch of our summer campaign. Our goal is to raise $10,000 by August 9 to support the journalism our community relies on. Reader support is helping shape the future of local news.
Uchi, Isabella Douzoglou, shared three pieces of good news with New Times. First, after ten years in Europe, she is moving back to the East Coast. Second, she plays Downtown’s Floyd, where she will be opening for Leon Vynehall and Aurora Halal on August 21. Third, artificial intelligence will, likely, not spur a technological Armageddon.
Douzoglou began her DJ career with the Dead Air program on the University of Miami’s WVUM 90.5 FM. She played Miami’s underground parties and events, including III Points and her Cyborgs party at the late Electric Pickle. As a producer, she gained recognition for her dark, mystical sounds, which took her across Europe, including multiple performances at the world’s most renowned club, Berghain, in Berlin.
After graduating from UM, Douzoglou pursued DJ’ing full-time and moved to Berlin in 2016 after playing her first show at Panorama Bar, Berghain’s sister club. She describes her love for warming up the dancefloor and playing abstractly without the “pressure for bangers; I’m not a banger person.” Indeed, Uchi’s production is a slow, bass-driven haze that blankets the room.
Douzoglou isn’t moving back to the United States for studio time or to play a residency, however. She is relocating to Boston, where she will serve as a teaching assistant for a machine learning course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She discovered machine learning while watching a bioinformatics documentary after a Berghain set. Machine learning, as defined by MIT’s Sloan School of Management, is a “subfield of artificial intelligence that gives computers the ability to learn without explicitly being programmed.”
The documentary reminded her of a UM course called “Computing for Scientists.” She interned at the European Space Agency, focusing on interstellar molecules, which linked to machine learning. “My day is looking at a screen, looking at how this symbol or this text relates to a language. Learning computer science was what introduced me to everything, like how to code music into a drum machine.”
Uchi is a Miami local who started her music career in Miami. “I was thinking, ‘Could I move back to Miami, and, in the meantime, move to Boston? Then I decided to live in both places,” she laughs. “I spoke to some friends saying, ‘Hey, I’m back, [and want to play shows]. And they’re like, ‘Oh, you should reach out to Santi [True Vine, talent booker].”
While she was a full-time DJ in Berlin, her best friend, a scientist at Geneva’s European Organization for Nuclear Research, recommended pursuing a career in science. Douzoglou earned a master’s degree in Amsterdam and moved back to Berlin in 2020 to pursue a PhD in biophysics. “I found creativity through science, but there’s something in music that cannot be replaced.”
Douzoglou then moonlighted as a DJ throughout her scientific endeavors but describes resistance by some of her superiors who were critical of her split duties. “I had to do some identity switching throughout the last ten years. In Miami, I felt I was one person doing computer science and DJ’ing. Ten years later, I learned both are intrinsic.” She eschews “societal norms for their comfort. I can choose to work with certain people that will accept me as I am.” To that point, she no longer separates Uchi the artist from Douzoglou the person.
There are many historical analogs of the cross-pollination between science and music. Queen’s guitarist Brian May holds a PhD in astrophysics; the composer William Herschel discovered Uranus. Likewise, Albert Einstein was a violinist who named his instrument “Lina.” Douzoglou notes a correlation between people who study computer science and what would be their theoretical second major. “It’s often music. I guess you could say music is some sonic alchemy more than a science. But some people do treat it pretty robustly like a science.”
Photo by Uchi
Douzoglou remains hopeful of AI’s utility outweighing societal consequences. “We’re in a genesis and an apocalypse. You could say that we’ve created a godlike entity — we fed all the knowledge of the world into this thing, which is a little scary. There’s a lot of science being discovered, research is sped up, and analysis of a lot of data is facilitated through AI. I think scientific progress is never going to be the same, and everything will go a lot faster. That is a good thing for society.”
She focuses her AI concerns on the building of data centers. “We’re going to build these huge data centers where all of these areas are going to do all this stuff, which may be good, may be bad, but the implication of it is the same: you’re going to use water and burn energy.”
Readers should expect Uchi’s return to III Points this year and more music and shows in the US, with her intellectual curiosity stronger than ever. “I’ll be a frequent visitor in Miami. I think that this gig will reset a new era of expression, where I can explore all sides of creativity and technical ability.”
Leon Vynehall Invites: Aurora Halal. With Uchi. 11 p.m. Friday, August 21, at Floyd, 40 NE 11th St., Miami; 305-608-2824; floydmiami.com. Tickets cost $14.99 via dice.fm.
