Residency 
2026




Synth Library NYC is excited to welcome Amina Ross, Daniel Shinbaum, Jonah Senzel, and Sonora to our 2026 Artist-In-Residence program!    

Residents work as a collective to improve the library, plus they steward an individual project of their choosing with the support of our infrastructure and membership!   

Our three residents were selected through a community review process from a pool of outstanding applicants, each showcasing a diverse range of talent and innovative ideas. Applications for the 2027 residency will be expected to open in Fall 2026, so keep an eye out for our emails. 


Here’s more about our 2026 Residents and what they will be doing this year:  
        
Amina Ross (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based artist, filmmaker, and educator whose interdisciplinary practice spans video, sound, sculpture, installation, and collective inquiry. Their work centers the body and the subtle social, emotional, political, and environmental architectures that shape perception and behavior. They currently teach at Parsons School of Design and hold an MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During their Synth Library NYC residency, Amina will develop Portal Practice, a workshop series that combines collective reading of liberation-oriented texts with synth-based sound baths to support embodied understanding.



Daniel Shinbaum (he/they) is a mediologist with a research focus on communication technologies and their role in the organization of social relations. A year ago Daniel began building DIY modular electronic instruments, and has been experimenting with electronic music and DJing for over a decade.


Jonah Senzel (he/him) is the designer of experimental at-cost Eurorack modules “Pet Rock” and “SUPRA” which evolve over days and months of real time. Jonah has also composed music and designed sound for indie games since 2016, and loves making installation art, zines, and wandering games.

In their collaborative residency project, Daniel and Jonah will lead a series of beginner-friendly, hands-on workshops where participants can learn about modular synthesis and solder their own DIY Eurorack modules.
Sonora (she/her) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist from Bogotá, Colombia. Her practice is a living process of transmutation, an ongoing attempt to remain in contact with the deeper currents that connect perception, the body, and the immaterial. Her work understands sound as the space where divinity, queerness, and ecology merge into a single realization. For her residency project, Sonora will work with a collaborative improvisation practice developed through La Balsa Eléctrica, an art collective and methodology she co-founded in Bogotá. Rooted in reconnecting with instinct and collective listening, this practice lowers barriers to electronic music and experimentation by prioritizing shared learning over technical or educational hierarchy. This space nurtures the capacity to embrace states of change, whether related to gender, perception, spirituality, or any dynamic process, through a collective sound-making experience.






2025 Artists-in-Residents

Delaney Benstead (he/they) is a Brooklyn-based audio engineer and lifelong musician who is deeply passionate about learning and currently focused on expanding their knowledge of engineering through building synthesizers as well as coding audio plugins Before moving to Brooklyn 2 years ago, Delaney worked as an audio engineer in Boston, MA at Infinite Recording Studios. Delaney apprenticed under Steve Catizone and also worked as a student coordinator for a 6 month audio engineering course. He created training manuals and protocols for using the studio and taught students key audio engineering concepts. Delaney’s residency project focused on developing member-led guides and training modules for synth-beginners.

        
Rachel Jihye Han (she/her) is a composer, classically trained violinist, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and poet living in Brooklyn. She received an MFA in Poetry with a Jazz Studies Concentration from Rutgers University-Newark where she currently teaches English and Poetry, and has taught workshops for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and New Jersey Performing Arts Center. A 2023 MacDowell Fellow, 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow, and 2022 Hawthornden Castle Fellow, she performs and releases music under the name Hiera Jihye. Her first poetry collection, I AM RETURNING FOR THE BODY, won the Gatewood Prize and is forthcoming with Switchback Books. For her residency project, she launched a series of interdisciplinary production workshops and collaborative sound sessions focused on underrepresented artists, culminating in an album of synth library members’ works.    


        
Austin Johnson (he/they) is a singer originally from the Chicago area based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He received a B.A. in Art History and African-American Studies from Yale University. He currently works at YouTube Music as a Manager of Operations, which has given him intimate insight into racial and gender inequities that persist in the technical fields of music. Austin’s residency project focused on improving the library’s inventory and diversifying avenues of participation in our mission.