MACHINES IN BETWEEN is a variety show of sound, story, and spectacle inviting you to reimagine what you love when you love your machine. Featuring an eclectic and world-renowned cast of over 100 scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and artists, hosts John and Libby Modern guide the listener through a scintillating sonic landscape—an accumulation of bent stories, surprising cultural analysis, historical reflection, lush soundscapes, and beats sampled from obscure religious records. And along the way John and Libby negotiate their own relationship and their own sense of reality as they confront the creeping influence of the world’s leading tech-wellness group, Infinity 88, and its mysterious CEO Kelvin Trinsel. Machines in Between is a wild ride through a fun-house of samples, science-fiction, and searing social critique. The experimental series revolves around the question that has become increasingly difficult to ask—because we are always answering it: what do we love when we love our machines? Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and the Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster, Machines in Between is the first audio series to have been given access to Infinity 88’s patented techniques of headphone spirituality. Every sample is an argument. Every beat is a new theory of the universe. We invite you to listen in to this imaginative, genre-bending serial audio drama that considers our present state of technological saturation. Machines in Between is part mixtape, surreal performance, and philosophical experiment.
In the season finale of Machines in Between, we find John and Libby getting used to life without the Rosary 1653. As they contemplate whether it is ever possible to be at home in this techno-mediated world, they receive word that Kelvin Trinsel will be stopping by the studio to offer his hearty congratulations. John and Libby spin segments on glucose monitoring, spiritual optimization, water pumps, leaf blowers, and the homes at sea and in space imagined by tech billionaires. When channels wi...
19 Sept 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour 110: Google Babel Whale Vaccines
In this episode of the Infinity 88 Listening Hour you will hear about the ends, means, and limits of communication in this noisy, noisy world. Kelvin starts things off by explaining himself and his company to you. Libby and John then spin a few songs about sending and receiving. Folks trying to talk to each other through Google translate, others trying to respond to the call of the whales and dolphins in the sea, others getting caught up in the feedback, and still others who have cut through ...
29 Jun 2023
Episode 7: The Last Update
Featuring drops from such luminaries as Craig Calhoun, Philip Butler, Jon Rubin, Joseph Del Pesco, Susannah Crockford, and Alexis Wells-Oghoghomeh, the penultimate episode of Machines in Between asks big questions and entertains small conspiracies about our future-driven and memory-laden present. At the beginning of Episode 7 we find co-hosts and John and Libby considering the prospects of living with and without the Rosary 1653. After much anticipation and delay, Kelvin has final...
30 May 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour 100: Too Much is Never Enough
As a spin off of Machines in Between, the Infinity 88 Listening Hour is on the road less traveled. It knows where you need to go and how to get you there. On Infinity 88 Listening Hour 100, you’ll be exposed to an exquisite piece from Johanna Gosse and Kevin Hamilton on spectacle, the atomic bomb, and the limits of human perception. You will also hear another deep cut from Susannah Crockford’s Conspiracy EP. Along the way hosts John and Libby work out the kinks and raise a glass to CEO Kelvin...
15 May 2023
Episode 6: Third Eye Wisdom Program
On this installment of Machines in Between, John and Libby await the last update for the Rosary 1653. We soon learn, however, that its arrival has been delayed because of corporate complications. In its stead, Kelvin Trinsel sends along “Day 88,” an episode-length and expertly produced docu-drama about Infinity 88’s Third Eye Wisdom Program. Across three acts, you will be introduced to Andrew and hear about his struggle to overcome despair and information overload by opting in to the Third Ey...
1 May 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour 11: As Above So Below
Episode 11 of the Infinity 88 Listening Hour features two pieces, chosen for their persuasion profile and affinity with Infinity 88. First up, anthropologists Charles Hirschkind and Stefania Pandolfo present their lush segment on the Granadan intellectual Angel Ganivet and the “ideofono.” Next, genealogists Alison Renna and Lukey Ellsberg take an in-depth look at the science of the microbiome and all those tiny machines in each of our guts. Along the way co-hosts John and Libby consider the m...
30 Mar 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour 10: Vibrations of Transcendence
On this episode of the Infinity 88 Listening Hour two different machines share the spotlight—the Sensorium and the Hammond Organ. Hosts Libby and John are joined by Jessica Johnson and Ashon Crawley in considering the vibrations of transcendence emanating from our machine surround. As a spin-off of Machines in Between, the Infinity 88 Listening Hour takes you where you need to be. It gives you an opportunity to slow it down. To sit back and relax. And to listen deeply to things you migh...
15 Mar 2023
Episode 5: Did You Get Lost on the Trip?
Episode 5 of Machines in Between is about the immediate processes of absorption that mediate us. All those tools and devices that facilitate memory and forgetting both—how do they make us who we are? What is the value of history when all is becoming a matter of predictive processing? What happens to the past amidst so many technologies of the virtual? With the arrival of a new update for the Rosary 1653, Episode 5 takes a psychedelic turn as co-hosts John and Libby Modern ponder the col...
1 Mar 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour: 1
As a spin-off of Machines in Between, the Infinity 88 Listening Hour takes you where you need to be. It gives you an opportunity to slow it down. To sit back and relax. And to listen deeply to things you might not otherwise. On this episode of the Infinity 88 Listening Hour, hosts Libby and John present a collaborative piece by the artist Krista Dragomer and the theologian Beatrice Marovich. It’s called “Nights in Between”—a bedazzling meditation on resisting a world of maximum brightness. T...
9 Feb 2023
The Infinity 88 Listening Hour: 0
As a spin off of Machines in Between, the Infinity 88 Listening Hour is off the beaten track. But also on point. For it gives you an opportunity to slow it down. To sit back and relax. And to listen deeply to things you might not otherwise. The Infinity 88 Listening Hour creates moments that move people and serve them where they live—whether it be the poor house or the penthouse—seekers, dwellers, artists, lurkers, working stiffs, personal trainers, executive suiters, social influencers, poli...
30 Jan 2023
Episode 4: Binary Spirituality
Who are you and who are we in this age of mechanical reproduction? In Episode 4: Binary Spirituality, co-hosts John and Libby get down to business as they ask big questions and entertain small conspiracies. Libby presses John about their sponsor Infinity 88 and its elusive CEO Kelvin Trinsel while John reveals disturbing new facts about the Rosary 1653. Featuring segments from Susannah Crockford, Cory McAbee, Amber Mann, Dennis Herbert, Jeremy Seedorf, and the Nielsen Family Band, episode 4 c...
5 Jan 2023
Episode 3: Push Button People
In Episode 3: Push Button People, hosts John and Libby Modern consider the scene of Lancaster, PA and reflect upon their encounter with the Amish encounter with machines. Who are we in this push button age? Honing in on the devices of domestic bliss and the algorithms of religious tradition, this episode features segments on the trade in raw milk between Amish farmers and Orthodox Jews (Rachel Feldman), breast pump telepathy (Emily Ogden), the thinghood of dishwashers (Annette Aronowicz), the...
18 Nov 2022
Episode 2: What Do You Love?
Episode 2 revolves around a question of what do you love when you love your machine? Joined by an all-star cast of musicians and collaborators, hosts John and Libby Modern explore the mechanics and metaphysics of technophilia in these viral times. All manner of machines are held up for loving appreciation: Beautiful glitches and block chain deities. Social media embraces and the tingling textures of 16mm film. Fountain pens and the future of civilization. A child’s imagination of the iPad. Th...
7 Nov 2022
Mixtape, Side 2: Music from the 306
Side two of our first mixtape. As an example of headphone<>spirituality™ it will initiate sonic pleasure and intellectual well-being.
7 Nov 2022
Mixtape, side 1: Music from the 306
Side one of our first mixtape. As an example of headphone<>spirituality™ it will initiate sonic pleasure and intellectual well-being.
5 Nov 2022
Episode 1: Saturation
In the first episode of this off-kilter variety show, the listener is treated to a lush array of samples, original beats, and eclectic stories that take up the question of what is happening now. What is to be done as we grow entangled with machines, their pleasures, their economies, and their conditions of possibility? Smart devices. Sex toys. Robot intimacies. Kitchen appliances. Religious technics. Urban cyborgs. And machines that rust and wound and bleed into the ground. In Saturation host...
26 Oct 2022
Welcome to The Vinyl Church (featuring Doc Roc)
Located in Lancaster, PA, THE VINYL CHURCH is an interactive installation where visitors can bear witness to the machines in between. The Vinyl Church is a sacred space of saturation. Walls covered with records chosen for their insistence upon another world; chosen for their intensities, desperate demands, and surplus of feeling; chosen for their longing, for their standing awestruck and bent harmonies. Portals to the other worlds of heaven, UFOs, and talking spirits, of chakras and healing e...
19 Sept 2022
Welcome to Machines in Between (Season Trailer)
Welcome to Machines in Between. This is a little preview of what is to come. The first (of eleven episodes) drops on November 5th. With over a 100 collaborators from around the world, you will soon experience psychic and sonic disturbances that will shake you to your foundations. You will transcend the obstacles. You will encounter the between. You will transgress all that came before. And you will become yourself for the first time. Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and Franklin &am...
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