Category: Year 1

The Knife were a Swedish electronic music duo prolific from 2001 to 2013. Their music is thouroughly political; for example, the name of their last show “Post-Colonial Gender Politics Come First, Music Comes Second”. I listened to some of their music and I am glad politics comes first.

In 2013 they released their most recent album, “Shaking The Habitual” along with a flaming hot manifesto. It blurs between hard fact and surrealist poetics.

“Everybody is always desiring already imagined things.”

“Electronics is just one place in the body.”

“We have made some decisions.”

“We choose process over everything else.”

bODY, Unknown. Music as a medium for politics. Imagining possible futures, new ways of thinking, being. Also hard politics with insensitivity to subtlety, as a recipe for jarring music?

Thinking about the subjectivity of listening and the different modes of conciousness.

Causal listening: listening for the source of the sound,
source.

Semantic listening: listening to what is being said by the sound, meaning.

Reduced listening: listening to the traits of the sound itself,
content.

In reduced listening one cannot explore the depths of a sound in a single listen. The sound must be encountered multiple times to hear it’s “descriptive inventory.” – Michel Chion. Chion states that the sound must also be recorded to carry the exact same pitch, tone, and timbre.

Acousmatic sound is a sound that has no visually identifiable cause. To experience this we can close our eyes to listen.

Beyond the sound in itself, there is the human percieving the sound. Perception is personal so humans listen differently.

Ingrid said the brain echoes sounds heard from the world. It can be the song in your head when you wake up. Can we create new sounds internally? What is the internal voice that sings? I can actively play the same sounds I hear outside of me in my head, but it is less pixelated. Perhaps it is only an idea of the sound. But the idea is strong enough to move, create emotion. I would like to explore this inner ‘voice’ and how it relates and is affected by the environment. People who don’t like pop music will be seen nodding their heads to chart music, as if they are hypnotised by a force. The secret force of chart music is to accelerate, numb and distract. Can we use music to have the opposite affect, to bring people into the world, into it’s mundane timeless beauty?

The location of a melody in space affects mood and carries meaning. Using reverb and echo, we can simulate different environments that resonate with memory. What melodies and spaces resonate with our ancestral melodies?

I am composing music that exists in a location, mostly in field recordings I have made. Melodies and instruments weave in and around other sound objects to harmonise the space, to guide the listener around and settle the mind. For now it exists in audio format but I would love to learn how to bring these concepts into a more physical form for communal listening experiences.

We finished our first lecture with Ingrid Plum, and one statement from Ingrid fascinated me: “Subscribing to certain categories of conciousness can create culture wars.” This idea refracted with my interests in buddhism and awareness. How do we work with an uncategorised conciousness, one free from the prison of objectivity? The path of awareness is depicted as a transcendantal path, one that transcends category. But in truth there are many ways to explore being in this world, and those ways can contradict eachother, even to the point of harm. This is an interesting point, the individual truths that bring us closer to the unknown can be so different, it makes me wonder about truth itself. Can we propose there is another way, one rooted in subjectivity, that does not perpetuate the supremacy of reason above all else? In academia, that tends to be a eurocentric reason.

I do think there is another way, and it’s edges are sharpened as globalisation continues. Does globalisation unite us in struggle? In this context I am imagining globalisation not as an interdependence but an increasing homogeneity of tools, services and architecture. I don’t struggle in the same way as the peasants who grow my own food, but given the trajectory of our systems our struggles may be coming closer together. We may use the same applications. GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) unites all. (To clarify, according to the internet 4.39 billion people use the internet, that is 56% of the global population, so not everyone. This hypothesis imagines that number increasing.) In this sense the categories of conciousness become reduced as we upload ourselves into the metaverse. We are united and yet reduced. The will of GAFA is to exploit, isolate, and dismember people of their hearts, to then mine energy from this disturbed dopamine junkie creation. We are extracted. Here is the language for a non-human solidarity; my polluted mind winces at the polluted river. GAFA will reach into the far corners of human settlement for every last one of us. Can we hitch a ride by the back door perhaps? Can we undermine this process by using the same powerful tools of unification to have a global conversation that revive heart? The xenofeminists say “We want neither clean hands nor beautiful souls, neither virtue nor terror. We want superior forms of corruption.” We participate in corrupt systems to undermine them. Interestingly, the xenofeminists use XENO and ALIENATION to make a commonality of struggle similiar to the one I have made. We need to take caution making claims of a global solidarity to not appropriate the struggles of BIPOC. The global conversation is already happening and it is most important to give higher platforms to minority voices. And perhaps we can start to carve a unified heart.

“I record them in their environment then take these recordings to another environment… I make stories. … I don’t include myself, I want the listener to have freedom to think about their own association. I don’t want to tell that this is that and this is that.” – Jana Winderen

I love Jana Winderen! She records sound environments and creatures unknown to most of us. She believes in connecting with microscopic organisms as a way to spread awareness of macroscopic climate disasters and species exctinction. Her work is humble and minimal like the costume of an eco-activist and carries a clear message about the affect of human civilisation on other lifeworlds.

Pragmatism. Endings. Products? Winderen is an art warrior: she wants to make an impact with her work because she believes there is something wrong that is possible to change. In this sense the work can be considered as activist work, in the way that the practice does not only affect the artist but also attempts to change systems of power (resource extraction.) Her approach is pragmatic and due to her wanting material change it is action based. She finds pride in her history as a poor art student who saved their little cash to buy equipment. Ego as a tool for success! Her dedication can be seen in how clearly she draws these fish that she spends hours listening to.

I believe in this action-based approach the philosophy must be limited. Is philosophy a fear of life? Winderen loves Life and she wants to protect those living beings. So at a certain point with her work, she stops reflecting and pondering and starts moving forward, towards a material result (sound object, installation, concept, essay). Must we do the same? Some artists criticize those who are ignorant of something because they didn’t have enough time to think about it. Others criticize those who think too much.

Thinking is a solo project and even the theorists have to write to export the ideas from their inner world.

This is a dichotomy that I am curious about, between thinking and action. However limiting those two categories are they point to a dilemma that has divided people at crucial moments in history. Must we think, must we act, or must we do anything?

Thankfully Winderen is acting, and makes beautiful work that I enjoy listening to.

Her message to us students was to find a way that we would like to work and create that space for ourselves, not to wait for anyone to invite us in. It’s a clear fruitful message we must remember when we have dreams.

Thinking about listening: Listening, deep listening, slowly. As a rest from our urge to categorise, analyse and isolate. It is a form of meditation. We have solutions in our intellect; how do we carry them out with caution? Listening, sitting with, a discomfort, a burning heart, passion and change.

“Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you’re not. But going below the surface too, it’s an active process. It’s not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you’re tuned out, then you’re not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing.” Pauline Oliveros.

I like Pauline Oliveros and her concreteness. She writes almost clinically, but the intention is beautiful. I find it interesting that the wider world around her, the global community of Deep Listening, have added aesthetical layers to her work, but in itself it is quite clean and accessible.

Is it about sound-in-itself? Pauline discusses inner listening, the feedback and chatter, to have a more holistic approach to sound rather than sound-in-itself. As a meditation practice is it more about the practice rather than the truth of it?

Stimulating listening can have positive effect on the world. Perhaps it can be done without a philisophical debate around sound. I am inspired by many visiting practitioners who are creating practical work!

I was impressed by Asa Sterjna’s ethical practice. She focuses on the affect of an artwork: what real change can it make? I think affect is important to me and triumphs spectacle. In the overwhelming global situation and also the local ones and inner ones, action feels important. I learned that art can show a new perspective and allow people to think about something in a different way. So then the artists can say their craft is the most important craft!

It feels confusing to imagine myself doing a sound project. In the simplicity and limitations of a project it will contradict and make ignorance. Action is stopping the philosophy train for a second.

There is also the act of enjoying oneself and enjoying the creative process, without having to change The World :D. I find listening to be somewhere in between, spreading go/oodness everywhere.

From an array of artists I have been inspired to incorporate meaning and direction in my work, and from our conceptual voyage I feel more relaxed about my vision, feeling like it doesn’t have to be anything that it is not.

To stimulate listening, my vision is to compose above field recordings by remembering the states and moods of that moment. I am imagining music that does not block but participates in the wider space of the field recording. The music also reflects similiar dynamics to the wider space: it stumbles, falls away and comes together again, inhales before singing again, and wanders distracted like the melodic mind amidst the soundscape. I would also like to try step out of melody but I love it so much!