Karla Vinueza, also known as LITA, is a first-generation Ecuadorian-American artist, DJ, and creative technologist integrating sound, code, design, and community to envision more accessible, liberatory, and memory-driven technologies. Her interdisciplinary practice moves fluidly across performance, open-source education, and hardware design shaping experiences that invite others to listen, feel, and take part in reimagining the world through sound.

Her ongoing body of work, Sonic Liberation Devices (S.L.D’s), sits at the heart of this mission. S.L.D’s is an evolving series of devices merging decolonial design, sound engineering, and creative coding into a practice of liberation that  champions accessibility and challenges extractive design systems that define how we create and connect. On the S.L.D website, LITA presents the first device, “The Palestine Drum Liberator” offering instructions + codes, documentation of her design process and research to further expand this work and invite others to learn, build, and collaborate. 

Lita’s creative practice extends beyond fabrication, sound, and performance. As the founder of Basement Tapes, a live visual DJ performance web-series centering experimental media, performance design, and collaboration, Lita has also created physical spaces for artists to gather, share, and imagine collectively. She has performed live at MoCADA, Center for Performance Research, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The People’s Forum and during the Voices of Multiplicity (VoM) residency on Governors Island with Tanika Williams, amongst others.

As a DJ and sound artist, she has performed for brands and companies such as Adidas, Nordstrom, Footlocker, Peloton, Etsy, Wells Fargo, and United We Dream, as well as major events including SXSW and Brooklyn Magazine Festival. Her four-year radio residency with The Lot Radio and guest mixes on NTS, Rinse FM, and Femme House Radio on Diplo’s Revolution-Sirius XM have made her sound synonymous with experimentation and electronic exploration. She also is the 2022 Red Bull Culture Clash winner and currently working on a homemade hardware EP set to be self-released in 2026.

Lita holds a Master’s in Interactive Telecommunications (ITP) from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and dual B.A’s in Mass Communications (Public Relations) and Spanish, with a minor in International Relations from Texas State University. She is a member of the New Museum’s 2025 NEW INC Incubator Fellow Year 12 Cohort (Art & Code),  Rhizome Microgrant Awardee, Latin American NIME Research Network, and a 2022 Video and Sonic Art Residency at Alfred University’s Institute for Electronic Arts (supported by the New York State Council on the Arts, Schein-Joseph Endowment and National Endowment for the Arts).

Her commitment to open access education is reflected in her numerous workshops, lectures, and panels at NYU, Berklee College of Music, Parsons School of Design, and Dazed in partnership with Lenovo and Intel. The topics span from decolonial design, creative coding, audio-visual experiences, liberation technology, accessibility, electronic music performance and open-source sound systems.

Lita’s work has cultivated a growing community of artists, musicians, and technologists who view her practice as both a movement and a methodology. Whether building instruments from scratch, designing open-source tools, or performing live, her work invites others to listen, learn, and build together.