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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.