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- Convenors:
-
Léone-Alix Mazaud
(Mines Paris, Université PSL, Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation (CSI), i3 UMR CNRS)
Juan Gomez (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Geneva University of Arts Design)
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- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to bring together STS and Design research to engage in a cross-disciplinary exploration of and through sound. How to form a critical sonic practice that enables new forms of sensitivities to be part of the scientific process as legitimate ways of knowledge production?
Long Abstract:
This combined format open panel aims to bring together STS and Design research to engage in a cross-disciplinary exploration of and through sound.
Hooker and Farrell argue that design and science do not produce metaphysically distinct types of things (Farrell & Hooker, 2012). But design at its core is also concerned with aesthetics and modes of knowledge production that deal with sensibility to shapes and media. STS, conversely, integrate these concerns under the banner of "Art, Science, and Technology Studies" (Rogers & Al., 2021), seeing both art and science as products of human knowledge construction. Design and STS both recognize the agency of artifacts that make up our socio-technical worlds. Moreover, researchers are not the only ones who influence the analysis process; their artefacts open unexpected doors too (Savic, 2019). How to form a critical sonic practice that enables new forms of sensitivities to be part of the scientific process as legitimate ways of knowledge production?
We are welcoming contributions from STS researchers, artists, designers, and architects who incorporate sound into their practice-based research or employ it as a tool for conducting and conveying empirical investigations. We propose curating a sonic playground to engage with and discuss sonic propositions. We invite contributions that deal with sound in various ways: as a mediator for making sense of one's environment, including attention to sonic forms of data production and display; as a medium for crafting environments, through more-than-human intra-actions (Barad, 2007) enacted though sonic performances or installations, or as an additional dimension that integrates urban design and participation tools; as living agents that participate in post-industrial assemblages in which they gain autonomy, escaping the original categorization in which Schafer (1977) bound them to their sources.
We welcome experimentations, sound walks, sonic provocations, performances that engage with embodied dimensions of experimental knowledge production.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Sébastien Robert
Long abstract:
The Lights Which Can Be Heard is an artistic research project on the sounds of the Northern Lights, long witnessed by various indigenous communities in the Arctic. Despite the numerous testimonies, the Western scientific community denied their existence for decades until some hypotheses about their origin began to surface in the 1950s, which are still subject to debate today.
Among the different theories, some think that the observer/listener can perceive in their environment the natural VLF (Very Low Frequency) radio waves produced by the Northern Lights. Some natural elements, such as minerals or crystals, would act as receivers and transform the electromagnetic radio waves into the audible, acoustic spectrum.
Without rejecting any of them, this is the one that caught my attention for this project. Despite successful recordings following a three-week residency in Andøya, Norway, I realised that the VLF waves emitted by the Northern Lights are becoming increasingly difficult to perceive due to anthropocentric activity. Drowned by artificial signals, these natural radio waves are bound to disappear from our perception.
Inspired by this unique context and in continuity with my previous work, I approached this ongoing debate from different angles: indigenous, poetic and scientific, giving voice to each stakeholder while incorporating my vision.
The result is four interconnected works at the intersection of visual and sound arts, technology, science and ethnography, which allow the audience to perceive the sounds of the Northern Lights while preserving them in the light.
Icaro Lopez de mesa Moyano (HfK Bremen RuG U Groningen)
Long abstract:
Gold, the auric metal, cause of invasions and extractive practices, has been utilized as a component in audio devices and digital-electronic apparatuses due to its exceptional conductive properties which ensure the efficient flow of electrical current. However, the pursuit of it has come at a devastating cost, resulting in the loss of millions of lives and ecosystem imbalance. (Witzgall/Stakemeier, 2014)
Minerals support electrical bonds through chemical processes (Santos Barbara, 2019), and gold, being neutral, is well understood and implemented in electronic products. Gold’s use for technological purposes seems to be minimal, but it destroys the land and affects the inhabitants of the territories where it can be found. The Bolivian indigenous Aymara Philosopher Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui says "We produce raw material and they give us back processed products" referring to the "wonderful products” sold as black boxes with hidden materials extracted from South America, to be consumed worldwide.
Delving on the repercussions of gold’s mining and elaborating on how sonic material flows through gold and what gold does with sound (Cox, 2017), this performance explores the use of this precious and desired material in the digital and analog sound processes of electronic audio devices and interconnects this use (Ahmed, 2019), with the history of colonization of a exploited territory (Chocó, Colombia) where gold has been extracted since the Spanish conquest, almost 500 years ago.
Clotilde Chevet (Sorbonne University) Zoé Aegerter (Independent researcher)
Long abstract:
Artificial voices are now part of our media environments and public spaces. As anthropomorphic objects, they contribute to naturalizing technology and convey social representations regardless of the gains made in terms of listening comfort or clarity of enunciation. With deep fakes, the latest generation of synthesized voices is even more causing confusion in our digital identities. While these technologies rely more than ever on very large databases, made up of thousands of speakers, they simulate individuality and erase the collectives that served as data sources.
In contrast, the Bestiorobot project explores the hypothesis of an artificial voice that would sound 'collective', revealing as well as representing the groups involved in its design. To this end, we are bringing together researchers from Ircam's Analysis/Synthesis team and french pupils to work on a joint project: the creation of the artificial voice of Bestiorobot, a hybrid and monstrous character invented in class. Our contribution to the panel will provide an opportunity to share different visual and audio versions of the bestiorobot, each exploring different ways of (mis)using the available voice technologies, to open up the path of what we could name ‘a democratic handcrafted voice’.
This project, at the crossroads of communication studies, anthropology and design, explores central issues in STS: sociotechnical imaginaries, relationship between scientists and society, transparency and democratization of digital technologies as well as the political significance of the aesthetics of sensitive interfaces.
Mona Hedayati
Long abstract:
My proposal is a lecture-performance that partially gives accounts of my ASTS project that hovers between biosensors, data processing and sound design and partially allows for participatory sound making. The proposal builds on a live sound performance that relies on a 6-month database of biosignals and breathing patterns that I collected from myself while watching videos of socio-political oppression tied to my experience as a migrant in exile. I then leveraged these datasets to communicate the ineffability of my complex psychophysiological states by designing a sonic experience afforded by sensory qualities of sound. The sensor-to-sound reconfiguration, thus, draws the data close to body for sensemaking while acknowledging its reductive nature particularly when capturing complexity of bodily processes. In the next iteration, the project moves towards participation, leveraging the same mechanism of sensor-to-sound to continue the other way around integrating audience’s biosignals to feed back into the cycle tying in my bio and acoustic signals with those of others. The sociality mobilized by interactive participation in this sense allows for sonic responses to my initial sonic prompt. The lecture-performance engages the current state of the project, allowing for a brief participatory sonic loop as I recite passages from my “lab notebook” that goes over the research-creation process, hypotheses, observations, and analysis. While contextualizing the sonic loop, these descriptive passages highlight the hybridization of epistemic virtues of data science and computation with those of STS and critical perspectives from social science and humanities grounded in the thickness and materiality of artistic practice.
Juan Carlos Duarte Regino (Aalto University)
Long abstract:
Atmospheric Listening: Attuning to a polyphony of environmental voices.
This ongoing artistic research intends to bring forth a hybrid listening to atmospheric phenomena to foster a deeper empathy with our natural environments. The atmosphere is a complex system of geophonic soundscapes that requires an interdisciplinary engagement to reveal its audition. This kind of augmented perception is possible with technoscientific instruments to attune to the natural environment, sourcing electromagnetic signals and weather data sonification. Hence, I aim to explore the possibility of a nonhuman voice of the atmosphere, that emerges from a resonance with the atmospheric medium, custom-made instruments, and listener’s positionality.
Psychologist Jaime Berenguer promotes a profound shift in perspective to nurture a deeper empathy for the natural environment. This transformative change involves moving away from an anthropocentric outlook, centered on self-preservation and altruism for humans, and embracing an ecocentric viewpoint that perceives the environment as a self-contained entity.
Delving into ecocentrism, I look into Listening after Nature by Mark Peter Wright, as a shift from perceiving nature as a distant object or idyll. Wright emphasizes attending to natural environments' invisible and unsounding aspects to counteract the human-centered intentionality often prevalent in field recordings. In harmony with this idea, my research aims for a critical exploration of the nonhuman voice of nature.
In this performance lecture, I present advances of my ongoing artistic research, with sound compositions created for attuning to a polyphonic soundscape found in the hybrid intersection across technology, atmospheric dynamics, and our embodied positionality as listeners.
Emine Onculer Yayalar (Bilkent University) Tahsin Tolga Yayalar (Bilkent University)
Long abstract:
"Resounding Transitions" is an acousmatic sound installation that delves into the evolving ecological landscapes of urban Turkey, focusing on Ankara's shift from natural riverscapes to concrete urbanity. Drawing inspiration from soundscape ecology (Pijanowski et al. 2011) methodologies, this project aims to establish a critical sonic practice. Building on the work of Hildegard Westerkamp, the proposed work theorizes sound as an ecological element and mediator of the construction of knowledge and experience. By utilizing recorded sound samples from various locations in Ankara—where once audible river murmurs are now overshadowed by concrete—this installation crafts an acousmatic soundscape. This soundscape challenges traditional categorizations of sound and its sources, urging participants to engage more deeply with the auditory experience, reconsider their environmental interactions, and promote new sensitivities towards the non-human agents within these environments.
"Resounding Transitions" constructs an immersive auditory experience highlighting the nuanced interplay between human and non-human agents in urban settings. Through juxtapositions of various sonic layers and sources, the reassembled sounds serve as a poignant reminder of the ecological shifts from lush riverscapes to urban expanses, underscoring the agency of the non-human in our environments. This installation not only functions as an artistic endeavor but also as a scientific provocation. It invites participants to adopt new sensitivities as legitimate ways of understanding ecosystems, fostering a space for reflection on urban development's ecological impacts.
Joana Chicau (Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London) Jonathan Chaim Reus (University of Sussex)
Long abstract:
Anatomies of Intelligence (AoI) is an artistic research project led by Joana Chicau and Jonathan Chaim Reus, who together work to make connections between anatomical knowledge and investigations into the “anatomy” of machine learning and prediction processes.
To support their performative exploration they have developed a custom browser-based software, the Networked Theatre (Chicau and Reus, 2023) used in-person/online audio-visual live-coding performances.
Live-coding, also referred to on-the-fly or just-in-time performance (Blackwell et al., 2022) is a practice where computer code is written live in front of an audience. In these performances, they use a K-means clustering algorithm, operating on a small custom dataset consisting of images and texts collected from historical anatomical research collections and data science publications.
Crucial to their performances is the notion of embodiment, its role in sense-making and as catalyst for reflecting in computational systems. Audience members are invited to experience the clustering algorithm through a sonic and visual journey, bridging AI and anatomy, classification and categorisation, space and distance, optimisation, dimensionality and orientation.
The artists propose to present a short demo of the Networked Theatre, followed by a presentation that will focus on their approach to embodiment, viscerality and reflective awareness.
Project website: https://anatomiesofintelligence.github.io
Video trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJvtoDVQjk
Bibliography:
Blackwell, A.F., Cocker, E., Cox, G., McLean, A. and Magnusson, T. (2022) Live Coding: A User's Manual. The MIT Press.
Chicau, J. and Reus, J. (2023) 'Anatomical Intelligence: Live coding as performative dissection', Organised Sound, 28(2), pp. 290-304. doi: 10.1017/S1355771823000481.
Jonathan Castro
Long abstract:
Dirty listening refers to intentionally exploring and embracing the non-linear and unconventional aspects of sound. It involves actively seeking out and engaging with sounds that may be considered undesirable, disruptive, or "dirty" in the traditional sense. Instead of avoiding or dismissing these sounds, dirty listening encourages individuals to embrace them as valuable and meaningful sonic experiences.
Dirty listening challenges the idea of what is considered "clean" or "pure" in sound and encourages a reevaluation of our auditory perception. It prompts us to question our preconceived notions of what is pleasing or acceptable in soundscapes and opens the door to reconsider what we see or listen as nature. Dirty listening is to pay attention to this dark ecologies and embrace them as part of nature too.
By embracing the "dirty" elements of sound, and other sonic imperfections, dirty listening encourages a deeper exploration of the complexity and diversity of auditory experiences. It invites us to listen beyond the surface and discover hidden layers such as new textures, narratives, and emotional responses that may not be immediately apparent in a pristine or controlled sonic environment, enabling us to discover beauty and significance in unexpected places.
Lauren Tortil (Eur CAPS Université Rennes 2)
Long abstract:
À la croisée des arts sonores et des STIC, Notes vocales est une performance sonore participative que j’ai co-créée avec l’artiste Anna Holveck. Cette pièce vise à questionner de manière réflexive et poétique les nouveaux usages des applications de messagerie instantanée (et la fonction push-to-talk) dans les espaces publics, par le prisme du sonore. À partir de la création originale d’une application de messagerie instantanée vocale et sonore, nous composons à distance depuis nos smartphone un échange sonore constitué de notes vocales. Cet échange est par la suite partagé publiquement lors d’une diffusion performative et participative sur un ensemble de téléphones. En effet, notre application, en plus d’être une interface de composition, devient alors une interface de multidiffusion via les smartphones des participant·es réuni·es dans un même espace. Ce projet a pour vocation de mobiliser l’expérience médiée offerte par une technologie individuelle — le smartphone connecté — au profit du collectif, expérimentant à l’unisson la force d’une émission commune et créant un vertige entre interactions intimes et publiques.
Lieu de monstration : espace public intérieur ou extérieur, tant que j’ai accès à une connexion internet sur un serveur dans un périmètre de 25 m.
Nombre de participant·es : de 2 à 40 personnes.
Besoins techniques :
Matériel fourni : Raspberry Pi, routeur et switch ethernet, câble électonique Matériel sollicité : une connexion au serveur internet du lieu d’accueil et les smartphones du publics.
Ce projet bénéficie du soutien du Dicréam, du Château Éphémère et de l’Eur CAPS.