…life under hylaster

The full text of the talk I gave at the CUNY Radical Aesthetics and Politics Conference can be downloaded HERE.

Abstract
World on a Wire: Towards a New Theory of Emergence in the Sonic Arts

In the mid-20th century a new conceptual paradigm rose to prominence in the sciences that captured the imaginations of the the burgeoning counterculture and its most forward-thinking artists. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, the advent of computer technology, and a newly scientific concept of the human mind, a branch of systems theory called cybernetics was presented as a way to study control and communication within complex, self-regulating systems. Although it initially stemmed from the theoretical work of mathematicians and military engineers, the author will argue that cybernetics developed into an ideology that views the human mind as a machine, and in which organisms, organizations, and even “nature” are universally understood to be systems wherein stability and homestasis are preeminent and maintained via feedback. Cybernetic thought evolved as political and social concerns precipitated a shift in focus from control and stability towards agency, dynamism, and emergence, and eventually towards virtuality and embodiment. Nonetheless, the teleological and holistic strains of cybernetic thought have continued to exert a hegemonic, yet largely unconscious, influence in the realm of experimental and technology-driven arts.

Owing to the research of Christina Dunbar-Hester, the author will trace the paths of influence and intersections of interest between cybernetics and the sonic arts. The author will also draw inspiration from a “listening” to Ranier Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 dystopic sci-fi miniseries Welt am Draht (World on a Wire). This recently re-released work alludes to the major concepts of cybernetics, delineating them with its inventive and audacious soundtrack while proffering a scathing critique. Referring to the work of literary theorist Timothy Morton, theoretical innovations in the field of Object Oriented Ontology, and the writings of French critical collective Tiqqun, the author will argue that the idealistic and techno-utopian character of cybernetic thought, particularly the holistic concept of emergence, does not serve us in grave ecological times. Finally, the author will suggest new ways to understand emergent phenomena in sound art that are free of anthropocentric notions of intelligence, and in which the sonic entities conjured in experimental practice can be greeted as Morton’s “Strange strangers.”

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Blood Wedding is Danishta Rivero (vocals and digital processing) and me (steel guitar and modular synth.) We have been playing shows in San Francisco and Oakland for a couple of months now, and rehearsing since late 2010.

The form that we seem to be working on is fairly consistent - although each performance is different - a 25 to 30 minute drone that builds in a classic arc, in which noise and density creep in almost imperceptibly until it is quite loud and tense, drops out dramatically near the end, and finishes with a coda of unamplified Ebowed strings and voice. We give each other visual cues for a small number of transitions, but within this larger structure the music is mostly improvised.

A pair of Ebows sustain two strings on the guitar that are tuned to unison. This pitch - somewhere around 440Hz - is our fundamental. Danishta vocalizes pitches based on that frequency and uses MaxMSP to loop and extend her sounds. As the piece develops she creates haunting yet stately clusters of chords that swirl around the room like a choir of ghosts.

For my part, I use a steel bar on one of the unison strings to play just intervals. The difference tone generated by the two pitches is amplified and filtered such that it sounds like a deep bass tone that moves with the steel bar. This difference tone is used as a voltage source for various FM, AM, and ring modulation signals passing through a small modular synth.

This project has been very gratifying. Like the Dream Music of Young, Zazeela, Cale, and Conrad, we are playing inside the sound. Slight variances in intonation create massive standing waves and beating patterns though which feedback becomes audible in the troughs.

There is agency in this. A virtual sonic architecture is created in the moment, surrounding us and seizing the walls and window frames. And we are able to create a space for another entity to emerge by seemingly paradoxical means: by paying precise attention to intonation in the intervals sung and played on the guitar while creating a space through chaotic circuitry for noise, feedback, and a system be-coming what it will through its own tendencies and innate behaviors. A simultaneous fine-tuning and relinquishing of control. We are catching a glimpse of the object(s) of our contemplation.

There is a

revealed here: the harmonic series. It’s presence is made known by the “locking in” of pure intervals, and the wildly visceral beating and pulses generated by the near misses. We are “inside it” even when we aren’t. It transcends us (and most other objects) physically and temporally. And there may be another hyperobject behind the noise and chaos of distressed, over-amplified circuits feeding back, devouring the sound in the space, and taking life - the physics of electricity? Resonance? Acoustics?

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