joey lopez phd loves media, all kinds of media. That love of media was confirmed at UT Austin’s ACTLab, where he was teaching assistant for Sandy Stone, the legendary academic and media theorist. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we discuss ACTLab, high-end audio gear, and joey’s work at Texas A&M’s Media and Gaming Lab.

joey lopez:

When I took soundscapes Sandy was like, production’s important, but why are you making this? What are you making? What’s the story? What is sound? Why does sound matter? What was sound and what will sound be? Oh, it was just intoxicating. So I just really latched onto that to the extent that I ended up taking a plethora of classes with her on multiple topics. And it’s also where I learned HTML. I learned HTML and notepad at the ACT Lab. And by the second semester, I was making websites for hi-fi companies. And that would end up being like a $500 to $1,000 a month side gig that I did all the way through my PhD. I was hosting either dealer or importer level websites for gear that they were selling. And that was really fun. And I learned it all in the ACT Lab.

joey lopez phd – joey lopez phd is an Associate Professor of the Practice at Texas A&M and Director of the Department of Communication’s Media & Gaming Lab. joey is a polymath of sorts whose works range from Chicana Feminism to automotive journalism to hardware and software development cheerleading. He is often described as a degenerate who is looking for other degenerates to cause “otherness” with. He is a co-founder of the Convergent Media Collective, a group of “stuff makers” who span multiple disciplines and geographical spaces. He is also a co-owner of a High-End Audio shop called Dremonoid’s in San Antonio, TX. He is a fellow of the ACTLab Program which was founded by tech goddess Sandy Stone.