The beautiful, retro tech of two theatrical sound designers
When asked what they do for work, creative couple Jessie Char and Maxwell Neely-Cohen should probably just say ayes.a True professional multihyphenates, Charas gig history includes stints as a UI/UX designer, conference organizer, concert cellist, and Apple Genius; Neely-Cohen is a novelist, ballet dancer, and coeditor of the experimental literary journal The HTML Review. Together, theyave built everything from a real-life version of Cher Horowitzas Clueless closet to the sound design of a play with over 200 original sound cues.
I asked them for a tour of the tech in their Williamsburg, Brooklyn, loft, where they regularly host literary salons, violin performances, and film industry mixers. We chatted about their shared reverence for old hardware, live coding, how they find comedy in sound, and why theyall never install a smart light switch.
How did you two meet?
Max Neely-Cohen: It was at a Zoom reading group at the very beginning of the pandemic. We were reading Expanded Cinema [by Gene Youngblood] with a group of mostly designers and artists.
Jessie Char: The book was about the early history of computer art and animation.
And then what? Someone slid into t …