Being (a) part of NIME: Embracing Latin American perspectives

Latin American (LATAM) contributions to Music Technology date back to the early 1940’s. However, as evidenced in historical analyses of NIME, the input from LATAM institutions to its proceedings is considerably low, even when the conference was recently held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Reflecting on this visible disparity and joining efforts as a group of LATAM researchers, we conducted a workshop and distributed a survey with members of the LATAM community with the aim of sounding out their perspectives on NIME-related practices and the prospect of establishing a LATAM NIME Network. Based on our findings we provide a contemporary contextual overview of the activities happening in LATAM and the particular challenges that practitioners face emerging from their socio-political reality. We also offer LATAM perspectives on critical epistemological issues that affect the NIME community as a whole, contributing to a pluriversal view on these matters, and to the embracement of multiple realities and ways of doing things.