Techno Ecologies - Acoustic Space #11

To my surprise, I found an article I had submitted had been published without anyone telling me, or giving me the chance to correct any errors. Oh well, my first publication...



















Electronic Voice Phenomenon – a C21st Sonic Fiction
Annie Goh

Abstract:
 
In the as-yet unwritten history of Sonic Fiction, dating back to the beginning of the world (sound of the big bang), via the speculative sonic experiences of our palaeolithic ancestors (Archaeoacoustics), Electronic Voice Phenomena can be regarded to appear as an irrelevant anomaly, a practice of paranormal fanatics trying to prove the supernatural through the voice-like artefacts of auditive media. However, it will be supposed that with a deeper media-archaeological understanding of techno ecologies, particularly dealing with Sonic Fiction since the proliferation of schizophonia (R Murray Schafer), taking crucial MythScience impetus from Kodwo Eshun's “Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality”, Steve Goodman's third concept of “unsound” - that is, “sounds not yet heard”, and Vilém Flusser's zero-dimensional “techno-imagination”, it is proposed that EVP can in fact be understood as an organic consequence of the complexities of the technologized contemporary psyche, particularly given the specific characteristics of the auditory imagination.

http://renewable.rixc.lv/?p=966

electromagnetic microcosm @ klangstaetten | stadtklaenge - Braunschweig

“Franz Anton Mesmer called it animal magnetism; Charles von Reichenbach called it odyle. To Henri Bergson it was the elan vital, the "vital force;" while to Hans Driesch it was the entelechy . Sigmund Freud observed its functioning in human emotions and termed it libido. William MacDougall, the great British - American psychologist of a generation ago, labeled it hormic energy. Dozens, if not hundreds, of lesser - known scientists have recognized its presence and have given it a name to characterize its special properties. Among the 20th-century proponents of the concept are, for example, Doctors Charles Littlefield and his vital magnetism and George Starr White and his cosmo-electric energy . Mechanistic science in the 17th through 19th centuries embraced many of its essential qualities in the concept of the ether, while mystical human beings have embraced other essential qualities of it in the concept of god. Orgone energy is Wilhelm Reich's name for the substratum from which all nature is created. The best definition this author can provide for it is this: Orgone energy is the creative force in nature.”

Charles R. Kelley

WHAT IS ORGONE ENERGY

http://www.orgone.org/articles/ax9kelley1a.htm (accessed 31.1.2012)

Wilhelm Reich's theory of orgone energy and his related psychoanalytic practice made him a controversial figure during his lifetime. Particularly his theories about human sexuality and his unusual methods of therapy (such as the Orgone Accumulator) made him a target for attack by conservatives in 1930s and 1940s America. Drawing on Freud's “libido”, orgone energy took the function of the human orgasm to be a primary energetic force of life. Though his books were burned and he was imprisoned at the end of life, his theories were given new prominence with writers such as William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, later being crowned the father of the sexual revolution and an important figure in the Free Love/Sex-Positive movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, many issues of sexuality remain largely taboo in mainstream culture and where Reich's theories clashed with scientific proof and mainstream medicinal practice, there remain many fascinating aspects to his thought. For the exhibition, “Klangstaetten, stadtklänge – Zwischen Puff und Kloster” the work “electromagnetic microcosm” offers itself as a reinterpretation of this mysterious “life energy”. The historic red-light district of Braunschweig is for some perhaps an unrefined area of the city, but its mere existence is a geographical reminder of basic human sexuality. Though Reich was explicit that Orgone Energy was not linked to electromagnetism, there appears currently to be no other methods of measuring or detecting a possible “life energy”. There are however, many various theories concerning electromagnetic fields which throw particularly intriguing questions on how they effect human consciousness.

Many believe electromagnetic fields have adverse effects on the human body and brain and even extensive research by the World Health Organisation has been unsuccessful in either confirming or refuting the risk of EMFs on human health. The internal or endogenous electromagnetic field of the human brain, made up of approximately 100 billion electrical neurones, has been speculated to be susceptible to influences of external electromagnetic fields. Extremely Low Frequency waves (ELF), particularly those under 20Hz are considered to be of particular significance. Delta (up to 4Hz), Theta (4-8Hz) and Alpha (8-13Hz) waves are known in the brain to be present in states such as slow-wave sleep, drowsiness or arousal and states of coma respectively. The effect of externally produced ELFs on our brains acting on our health or behaviour may sound like the warnings of paranoiacs or conspiracy theories but it remains a question which modern scientific research cannot yet conclusively answer.

The work “electromagnetic microcosm” is therefore an experiment and a gesture, making some of the electromagnetic fields of our immediate surroundings visible and audible. The postulated link between the “life force” and electromagnetic fields is of an experimental nature, serving as a reminder of the unknown in scientific discourse, as a story which is constantly being re-written.

 

At Allgemeiner Konsumverein

As part of klangstaetten | stadtklaenge -

›Zwischen Puff und Kloster‹

Internationale Klangkunst in Braunschweig
3. bis 21. Oktober 2012

Curated by Sam Auinger, initiated & organised by Dr. Anne Mueller von der Haegen

http://www.klangstaetten.de/

electromagnetic microcosm @ Campus Ars Electronica

Electromagnetic Microcosm
Ars Campus Sound Studies Exhibition
30.08 -03.09.2012

Electronic Ghosts @ Electronic Voice Phenomena at FEED

Electronic Voice Phenomena presented by Mercy at FEED Berlin

SATURDAY 18 AUGUST 2012
An evening of experimental poetics, audio-visual performance and digital vocal plasms

http://www.mercyonline.co.uk
http://www.6554.de

Electronic Ghosts - A ongoing experiment to contact the ghost of Michael Jackson.

The installation Electronic Ghosts uses modern methods of EVP researchers, specifically the 'Speech Synthesis Method', such as that developed by German EVP researcher and software designer Stefan Bion. In this method, the spiritual entity is given auditive 'aids' of raw audio material cut up into small segments. By influencing the order of these, the communicating entity can subsequently form words with which to communicate with living beings. Auditive material sourced exclusively from samples of Michael Jackson reinforces the channels of communication and those with hearing tuned to identify EVP may make out words, phrases or messages.

Limited Limitlessness - New findings in primitive digital art @ LEAP Berlin

Limited Limitlessness
New findings in primitive digital art

Following the utopic high of the nascent cyber age in the 1990s, came a natural slump in the emotional well-being of the subjects of the digital era. The tireless increases in speed, efficiency, ever sleeker interfaces and ever smaller devices, the spoilt children of this epoch no longer needed to economise with time and memory, as their mothers and fathers did. Plentiful memory space, processor speed, not to mention the "information" itself which is stored, duplicated, re-distributed via innumerous communication paths creates a vast horizon of possibilities which we now have at our finger tips. Yet instead of inducing the elation expected at these bountiful resources, it seems to the contrary to often stifle in its unendlessness.

Aware of the technological superiority of their computer companions, humans have begun to notice an unerring tendency, a savvy post-humanism which seeks to recompensate lost essences by favouring the indiscrete over the discrete. At the same time, the hypocrisy is clear as the everyday dependence on our technological devices increases, a love-hate man-machine relationship.  Such is the state of digital existentialism which contributes heavily to today's first world anxieties.  Techno-pornographic media arts accentuate this simultaneous fascination and disgust which presents itself as difficult to avoid.

The exhibition "Limited Limitlessness - New findings in primitive digital art" aims to expose these internal contradictions as well as embrace that which technology cannot or does not do. Amidst the practice of sterile media art, we find ourselves both as critical recipients and as propagators thereof. The works of the exhibition explore aspects of the artists' own primitive urges within computer-based art. 

Participants:
AEAEAEAE and Stian Korntved Ruud, Yair Elazar Glotman,

Annie Goh, Sascha Hanse, Petja Ivanova
Karin Lustenberger, Tobias Purfürst and Pierce Warnecke

Opening Friday 20.07.2012, 20:00
Exhibition   21.07.-03.08., 12:00-18:00 Wed-Sat
Finissage 03.08., 20:00

http://www.leapknecht.de/

formantika @Crelleklang 2012

threads & traces – Klänge zwischen Punkt, Strich und Linie
über 29 Lautsprecher an Fassaden der Crellestraße 5-17
sechs Kompositionen der Künstlergruppe Berg 26
6 Wochentage – 6 Kompositionen
mo – sa, 17.00- 17.15 Uhr
29.Mai bis 8.September 2012


Formantika - Annie Goh

The vowels of a live geo-located Twitter-feed around Crellestraße (Berlin Schöneberg) are sonified using the formants of the artist's own voice. Abstracted vowel sounds can be heard via this technological stream, though their semantic value is lost. The composition is generated anew every Tuesday.

Morpholexical Ping Pong @ Society for Nontrivial Pursuits - FEED Soundspace Berlin
11.05.2012

 An improvisational dialogue of acoustic misunderstandings and semanto-phonetic morphologies for self-made sensor instruments, live voice and Supercollider. For two players.

 We expanded the performance to try and include the computers as players, using the latest edition of Google Chrome and a slightly unreliable applescript, we automated functions of computer-listening and computer-speaking for the computer to join in our dialogue of misunderstandings.

We projected our automatically posted Skype dialogue for the audience to read. Here is a copy of it including errors:
[11/05/2012 21:49:08] Mari Matsutoya: can you when I am not your nano
[11/05/2012 21:49:26] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 21:49:43] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 21:50:00] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 21:50:20] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 21:50:50] Mari Matsutoya: eddie you
[11/05/2012 21:51:08] Mari Matsutoya: 81
[11/05/2012 21:51:25] Mari Matsutoya: call after you
[11/05/2012 21:51:43] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 21:52:01] Mari Matsutoya: call of duty on
[11/05/2012 21:52:41] Annie Goh: is this out
[11/05/2012 21:52:53] Annie Goh: epcot
[11/05/2012 21:53:05] Annie Goh: definitely not cry
[11/05/2012 21:53:17] Annie Goh: 7 is fine
[11/05/2012 21:53:30] Annie Goh: even without a condom
[11/05/2012 21:53:56] Annie Goh: delta sonic
[11/05/2012 21:54:08] Annie Goh: delta sonic
[11/05/2012 21:54:20] Annie Goh: ultrasonic
[11/05/2012 21:54:33] Annie Goh: super cala fragilistic expialidocious
[11/05/2012 21:54:45] Annie Goh: yeah that's the plan
[11/05/2012 21:59:04] Annie Goh: how to live
[11/05/2012 22:00:06] Mari Matsutoya: soon soon soon soon the station
[11/05/2012 22:00:25] Mari Matsutoya: Translate
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[11/05/2012 22:00:34] Annie Goh: save the paper paper paper
[11/05/2012 22:00:58] Mari Matsutoya: tron tron tron tron tron discretion
[11/05/2012 22:01:30] Annie Goh: tron tron tron tron tron question
[11/05/2012 22:01:57] Mari Matsutoya: super super super super super power
[11/05/2012 22:02:23] Annie Goh: testing testing testing testing
[11/05/2012 22:02:51] Mari Matsutoya: how are pop pop pop pop to the station
[11/05/2012 22:03:28] Annie Goh: safe to say that