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Music Against the Machine Arts and Music Festival
October 22 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Opening the Music Against the Machine arts and music festival (10/22-28), Desert Dispatch Media will host Hyperscale Threats in the Desert Region, featuring local artists, advocates, and leaders from the movement against rising threats in the rush for AI.
This free event explores how AI investment is rapidly expanding regional mining, militarization, surveillance, data centers, and other socio-economic harms.
Community leaders and experts will talk about relevant threats they are currently confronting, pertinent history or context, and ways for community members to increase their engagement and resilience in this crisis.
- Coordinated with the community support of Kairand Bellinger and the No Desert Data Center Coalition
- Hosted at the Dunbar Pavilion Cressworth C. Lander Auditorium, Tucson Arizona
- Tabling by Living United for Change in Arizona and Veterans Power America
- 6:00pm – Community meet and greet with light refreshments, featuring LaPira of El Conjunto LaPira
- 6:45pm – Screening The Mirage: Inhumane Tech in the Silicon Desert (2026) (15 min), produced by Desert Dispatch Media, edited by Jodi Darby, with an original score by Sage Bond and Kevin Van Winkle
- 7:00pm – Opening reading by poet and multi-media artist Mariana Rivera
- 7:05pm – Conversation moderated by Sierra Club Borderlands Coordinator Erick Meza; featuring Tohono O’odham Nation San Xavier District Chairman Austin G. Nuñez, Living United for Change in Arizona Organizing Manager Faith Ramon, cybersecurity/data scientist Rye Whalen, who has served in the U.S. Army, and Carissa S., an administrative engineer with expertise in communications and semiconductors
- 8:00pm – Closing reading by poet and agricultural worker Claire Hong
Desert Dispatch Media is a grassroots production group led by women, based in the desert region, and a project of the Desert Advocacy Media Network, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
Desert Dispatch Media is collaborating with artists, community members, and supporting organizations to document the rapid expansion of regional mining, militarization, data centers, surveillance and other harms for AI.