Indexical

Indexical Engaging in radical and unfamiliar artistic work

https://linktr.ee/indexical Indexical is a composer-run organization dedicated to experimental music.

Indexical produces record releases, concert series, and publications. Indexical is dedicated to supporting music by composers who work outside of mainstream contemporary music institutions.

Today, Indexical proudly celebrates a decade of experimental music, performance, and community in Santa Cruz. Founded in...
07/11/2025

Today, Indexical proudly celebrates a decade of experimental music, performance, and community in Santa Cruz.

Founded in Brooklyn in 2011, Indexical settled in Santa Cruz, California in 2015, beginning with a performance of Casey Anderson’s "TALK RADIO (an opera)" and works from Robert Ashley’s "Perfect Lives" at The Art Bar & Cafe––an event that marked a turning point from its early years in Brooklyn to what would become a permanent home for visionary artistic work.

What began as a volunteer-led initiative has evolved into a stable, deeply integrated presence in Santa Cruz’s cultural fabric. Since our arrival, Indexical has produced over 350 performances, installations, workshops, and community events—continually expanding the boundaries of what music and art can be.

Our work has always centered artists and ideas that often fall outside traditional venues and contexts: experimental sound, interdisciplinary performance, and the work of historically, culturally, and institutionally underrepresented artists. What began with "TALK RADIO" has grown into a decade-long commitment––an artist-led organization dedicated to work that opens space for public dialogue, meaningful critique, and imaginative change.

We’re deeply grateful to the artists, audiences, volunteers, funders, and collaborators who’ve made these ten years possible—thank you.

As public funding for the arts continues to shrink, sustaining spaces like Indexical depends more than ever on community support. We remain steadfast in our mission: to uplift marginalized artistic communities and practices, and to keep our programs accessible to all.

To mark a decade in Santa Cruz, we’re launching $10 for 10—a grassroots campaign to raise $10,000 in community support.

If you value what Indexical brings to this community, give $10 (or more!) to help us keep artists paid, programs open, and our space thriving.

$10 for 10 years. $10 for the next 10. Join us.

https://www.indexical.org/donate

Residencies for Santa Cruz County ArtistsIndexical’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) Program supports four emerging Santa Cruz...
07/01/2025

Residencies for Santa Cruz County Artists

Indexical’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) Program supports four emerging Santa Cruz County musicians / composers / sound artists to take unprecedented risks in reaching the next stage in their careers by providing an artist stipend ($2,500), dedicated workspace, and access to production, marketing, and curatorial resources. These activities will take place at Indexical’s performance space in the Tannery Arts Center (TAC). The residency culminates in the creation of a new, ambitious work to be showcased during Indexical’s 2025-26 season.

In alignment with our mission, Indexical especially seeks proposals from artists from South Santa Cruz County and groups or demographics that have been historically, culturally, and institutionally underrepresented in the field of experimental music and sound art.

Deadline to apply: July 29, 2025

This program is supported in part by The Live Music Society Music in Action Grant.
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El Programa de Artistas en Residencia (AIR) de Indexical apoya a cuatro músicos / compositor / artistas sonoros emergentes del Condado de Santa Cruz para que tomen riesgos sin precedentes y así alcancen la siguiente etapa en sus carreras. El programa ofrece un estipendio artístico ($2,500), espacio de trabajo dedicado, y acceso a recursos de producción, marketing y curaduría. Estas actividades se llevarán a cabo en el espacio de presentaciones de Indexical en el Tannery Arts Center (TAC). La residencia culmina con la creación de una nueva obra ambiciosa que será presentada durante la temporada 2025-26 de Indexical.

En alineación con nuestra misión, Indexical busca especialmente propuestas de artistas del sur del Condado de Santa Cruz y de grupos o comunidades que han sido histórica, cultural e institucionalmente subrepresentados en el campo de la música experimental y el arte sonoro.

Fecha límite para postular: 29 de julio de 2025

Este programa cuenta con el apoyo parcial del Music in Action Grant de The Live Music Society.

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As part of the exhibition "Several Paths Together," Indexical is pleased to present a solo music performance by Billy Go...
06/10/2025

As part of the exhibition "Several Paths Together," Indexical is pleased to present a solo music performance by Billy Gomberg followed by a post-concert conversation.

Sat., Jun. 14, 2025
Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30pm

Billy Gomberg lives in San Francisco, California. As a musician, his practice incorporates traditional & modern synthesis, digital treatments, acoustic location recordings and occasional instrumentation. As a visual artist, he uses film photography to document the natural world and its human interface. Commitments to improvisation; exploration of internal and external spaces; and interpersonal relationships as pathways of cultural and emotional exchange guide his work.

This weekend (5/24-5/25), join us for Habitus, an investigation of new music technologies, creative coding, and field re...
05/23/2025

This weekend (5/24-5/25), join us for Habitus, an investigation of new music technologies, creative coding, and field recording with an eye toward the monome ecosystem.

Open House
May 24, 2025, 7pm
Join us for a hands-on experience with members of the lines community demonstrating some of the electronic instruments that comprise the monome ecosystem. Followed by solo music performances from Jonathan Snyder and Dani Derks.

Workshop
May 24, 2025 – May 25, 2025
A two-day collective gathering to explore new habits of programming and musical practice through experimentation, research, collaborative learning, and the exercise of daydreams.

Biofeedback Music: Theory and Practice is a 2-day workshop offering a comprehensive overview of the history, theory, and...
05/20/2025

Biofeedback Music: Theory and Practice is a 2-day workshop offering a comprehensive overview of the history, theory, and practice behind the use of physiological data to compose and perform music.

Biofeedback Music: History of Biofeedback Art
Aug 2, 2025, 2pm
Scholar and curator, Anastasia Chernysheva guide us through the history of biofeedback art from the 1960s to the present and an overview of the main approaches to live representation of biological data.

Making Biofeedback Music
Aug 3, 2025, 2pm
Artist and researcher, Barbara Nerness leads a hands-on biofeedback music workshop with three types of EKG devices and techniques for heartbeat sonification.

Indexical is please to announce "Several Paths Together," a new exhibition by Billy Gomberg. A public reception will be ...
05/16/2025

Indexical is please to announce "Several Paths Together," a new exhibition by Billy Gomberg. A public reception will be held on June 6 from 5pm–8pm and the exhibition will remain on view until July 31. Gomberg will present a solo music performance followed by a post-concert talk on June 14.

"Several Paths Together" is a set of ten photographs by San Francisco-based musician and artist Billy Gomberg. Shot on film in and around the Marin Headlands, Point Reyes, and Bolinas, these photographs express the awe-inspiring majesty of Bay Area landscapes—and our own human impositions upon them.

After moving to San Francisco in 2018, Gomberg began hiking around local environs with his son: first as a transplant, and eventually as a resident. These explorations soon moved farther afield to West Marin, and with camera and child in tow, Gomberg began shooting, framing the same vantage points on different days, in different weather.

Whether or not you've traversed these spaces yourself, Gomberg's photos, and the immediacy of their beauty, reveal the West Coast anew.

These works were created on the occupied, unceded ancestral homelands of the Me-Wuk (Coast Miwok) and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples.

Dates
Opening Reception: Fri., June 6, 2025, 5pm–8pm
Performance: Sat., June 14, 2025, 8:30pm

Regular gallery hours: Saturdays, 1pm–5pm

Today's tea ceremony with Melina Roise, program coordinator of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library is SOLD OUT.Through h...
05/15/2025

Today's tea ceremony with Melina Roise, program coordinator of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library is SOLD OUT.

Through hot tea and tender spaces, this workshop will take us through a short but profound trip into our own spirits, the spirits of other people, and the seeds that help us weave stories to navigate a world that is in a state of hospice.

In Absence of Vivien Sansour - Tea Ceremony
Thu., May 15, 2025
Doors at 3:30pm | Event at 4pm

This program is part of the ongoing exhibition 'Limbs.' For the duration of this exhibition, all related artwork sales and ticket sales will pass through Indexical toward supporting reconstructive limb surgery and grass roots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian and shelter disaster in Gaza and Lebanon via the The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. If you'd like to support this initiative directly, visit: gascf.org

Cellist Tyler Borden and pianist Mari Kawamura present Morton Feldman’s concert-length work, Patterns in a Chromatic Fie...
05/13/2025

Cellist Tyler Borden and pianist Mari Kawamura present Morton Feldman’s concert-length work, Patterns in a Chromatic Field. Written in the last decade of his life, this work is a unique example of his late style, known for long durations and unpredictable repetition. In his maturity, we find Feldman exploring different ways that ambiguity catalyzes performer interpretation and invites contemplation on the nature of the listener’s perception. Microtonal shadings ring against the equal tempered piano, creating complex rhythmic constellations that drift slowly through the air. Introduction and opening remarks by Professor of Music at UC Santa Cruz Amy Beal

Tyler J. Borden & Mari Kawamura: Patterns in a Chromatic Field
Sat., May 17, 2025
Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
at Wind River
421 Wild Way | Santa Cruz

Indexical is pleased to present the world premiere of Nina Sobell’s participatory real-time brainwave drawing performanc...
04/29/2025

Indexical is pleased to present the world premiere of Nina Sobell’s participatory real-time brainwave drawing performance GammaTime.

Nina Sobell - GammaTime
Sat., May 3, 2025
Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30pm

Since 1969, New York-based artist Nina Sobell has been actively working with closed-circuit television, video, EEG technology, and internet communications in the arts, focusing on technology as a modulator of time and space, and a mediator for human experience, memory, and communication. Her work is in the collection of or has been shown at the Getty Museum; Hammer Museum; de Saisset Museum; the Whitney Museum, MUDAM, Luxembourg; Kunsthalle, Vienna; Banff Centre for the Arts; Manchester Gallery, England; Acme Gallery Archives in Whitechapel Gallery, London; The Blanton Museum, Austin; CAM, Houston; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Archivio Storico delle Arti Contemporanee, La Biennale di Venezia; ICA London; DIA Foundation; Cornell University and many other institutions.

Founded as a supportive and all-inclusive open mic event for anyone involved in making electronic music, Santa Cruz Synt...
04/24/2025

Founded as a supportive and all-inclusive open mic event for anyone involved in making electronic music, Santa Cruz Synth Cooperative’s EMOM events have been a critical site for showcasing local talent and building community.

Join us Thur, Apr 24 as we celebrate the 1 year anniversary of EMOM with performances by Pale Blü Dot, OMINO, Special Thoughts, Trimpot, Creature Crenshaw, Kinch, and visuals by BenBen.
..and of course, we're bringing cake! 🎂

Electronic Music Open Mic: 1 Year Celebration
Thu., Apr. 24, 7pm
FREE and open to the public

04/14/2025

Japanese artist Taku Hannoda has been performing improvised music across Japan for the past 25 years, collaborating with artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Nobukazu Takemura, and others. For this event, Oddly Satisfying curator Allen Riley ( ) presents a series of moving image works from the artist.

Taku Hannoda - Sound Sculpt / Sound Compose
Fri., Apr. 18, 2025
Doors at 8pm | Show at 8:30pm

Taku Hannoda
Born in 1981, Hannoda has been performing improvised music in cities across Japan since 2000. In 2005, he appeared at the ONKYO MARATHON at the Japan Society in New York, an event curated by Carl Stone. In the spring of 2011, he was invited as an artist-in-residence in Krems, Austria. Since 2021, he has released 10 solo albums and performed at venues including the Mizunoki Museum of Art. In 2024, he released the albums EG SOLOs, Melonesque, and Crickets.

Oddly Satisfying
Oddly Satisfying presents a series of audiovisual and performance works by artists who work with video as a physical material. “Oddly satisfying” is a label given to viral looping videos that somehow feel tangible to the viewer, eliciting haptic sensory perception that absorbs perception into the screen. The artists presented in this series recognize that physical participation is the basic condition of experiencing media and they respond by instead calling attention to embodied perception.

Curated by Allen Riley, 2025 Curator-in-Residence

"Limbs” is a series of gatherings where we can co-create our rituals of regeneration. As destruction of lands, shelter, ...
04/04/2025

"Limbs” is a series of gatherings where we can co-create our rituals of regeneration. As destruction of lands, shelter, peoples, hopes and ideals continues under the hands of out of control, self-righteous, weaponized humans, we can grow the ability and imagination to create & perform our rites of healing, instead of entrapping our wounds with trauma and despair.

Unidentified body parts collective: Limbs
May 9 – 31, 2025

The exhibition includes workshops, performances and an installation of Limbs sculptures. The Limbs are for sale to raise funds to support reconstructive limb surgery and grass roots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian and shelter disaster in Gaza and Lebanon.

Opening Reception, May 9, 5–8pm
Tea Ceremony with Vivien Sansour, May 15, 4pm
Workshop: Limb Memorials, May 31, 2pm

“Unidentified body parts” collective
Unidentified body parts are made up of numerous creative hands and bodies. At a time where regional powers and imperial powers wage their wars for primacy, and peoples populate their statistical maps as civilian casualties and unwilling victims. We all face the risk of becoming numbers, our personal stories erased and our social fabric atomised. Yes, bombs might melt our features into unidentifiable mucks. And if we’re privileged enough to survive the bombing, our critical political thought might be detained and our opinions, bodies and faces tracked and our rights dispossessed. We thus freely choose to be unidentified, as an act of free will, as a way to pay homage to all those who’s shattered bodies remained unidentified and as a yearning to melt into the collective creative body.

more info at indexical.org

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Santa Cruz, CA

Opening Hours

1pm - 5pm

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