Media Performance 4 / Gesture @ Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

4th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCEON PERFORMANCE, PERFORMATIVITY AND MEDIA
November 19th-20th 2014

Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic 

ANNIE GOH | The Dimension of Sound in Flusser’ - Implications for a sonic media archaeology

Although Vilém Flusser’s work is not often associated with music or sound, his writings on music and listening indicate a largely over-looked significance of these in his thought. Reading Flusser’s “crisis of linearity” thesis as a media-philosophical and epistemological model, his critique of Western culture can be expanded upon in the context of contemporary sound studies and its challenge to ocularcentrism. Using the example of archaeoacoustics, the gesture of listening can be re-examined for its implications towards a sonic media archaeology. 

Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism at CRiSAP LCC 2014

I am delighted to be presenting a paper at Sound::Gender:: Feminism::Activism 2014 at CRiSAP at LCC in London.

The symposium question is:

What, in the historical present, might constitute an activist life in sound?

More info

Publication of Archaeoacoustics - The Archaeology of Sound

My paper "Myths of Echo - Sound Art and Archaeoacoustics" has been published in Archaeoacoustics: The Archaeology of Sound: Publication of Proceedings from the 2014 Conference in Malta.

Abstract:

Archaeoacoustic research on the intentionality of rock-art placement and echo myths demonstrates with clarity the vast difference between modern Western modes of perception and those of prehistoric/ancient cultures. Comparing the phenomenon of "echo" within modern acoustics to various mythological interpretations across cultures and times, a fascinating chasm emerges which allows us to explore modes of listening between aesthetics and epistemology. The physical explanation of "what an echo is" has de-mythified the phenomenon for us, where it was previously a source of wonder. Despite stemming from wholly disparate cultural domains, sound-art (particularly the German tradition of Klangkunst), overlaps with some aspects of archaeoacoustics. This paper explores how applying Foucault's “archaeological” (and genealogical) method within archaeoacoustics can expose and challenge the historically conditioned nature of our modern listening practices, and proposes artistic research as a potentially valuable contribution to archaeoacoustics. 

ISBN-13: 978-1497591264

ISBN-10: 1497591260 BISAC: Science / Acoustics & Sound


Contributors include: Alejandro Ramos-Amezquita, Panagiota Avgerinou, Ros Bandt, Anna Borg Cardona, Emma Brambilla, Fernando Coimbra, Stef Conner, Paolo Debertolis, Stella Dreni, Richard England, Mairi Gkikaki, Annie Goh, Anne Habermehl, Wouter F. M. Henkelman, Sepideh Khaksar, David J. Knight, Glenn Kreisberg, Selin Kucuk, Esthir Lemi, Torill Christine Lindstrom, Maria Cristina Pascual Noguerol, Riita Rainio, Iegor Reznikoff, Mustafa Sahin, Divya Shrivastava, Katya Stroud, Rupert Till, Steven J. Waller, Nektarios Peter Yioutsos, Ezra Zubrow.

Myths of Echo - Meisterschüler examination show UdK Berlin July 2014

Myths of Echo - Room installation / 6 - channel sound composition (4 standard loudspeakers, 2 ultra-directional loudspeakers), two rotating reflector screens.

Exhibited 22nd July 2014 as part of Meisterschüler exam at University of Arts Berlin, Art and Media - Class of Computation/Generative Art with Prof. Alberto de Campo. 

Gendy Trouble - Sound, Gender and Technology from Xenakis to Butler and beyond

Course description at University of Arts Berlin (Summer Semester 2014)

What does Iannis Xenakis' "Génération Dynamique Stochastique" approach to waveform synthesis (shortened to "GenDy") have to do with Judith Butler's seminal feminist work "Gender Trouble"? Aren't maths, technology, programming and sound gender neutral?

Countering a common perception that this is true, in this seminar we will examine the gendered nature of technology and sound in its construction, distribution and use. We will be reading texts and discussing the following questions;  What is the role of gender within sound and computational/generative art? How does the continued hegemony of the male subject in technology and experimental/electronic music lead to an impoverishment to its development? What can alternative, including feminist, approaches provide in order to challenge and subvert majoritarian beliefs and practices in contemporary media, computer and sonic arts?

Indicative reading list: Judith Butler - "Gender Trouble", Iannis Xenakis - "Formalized Music", Sadie Plant "Zeros and Ones", Tara Rodgers "Pink Noises - Women on Electronic Music and Sound", Luciana Parisi "Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-Technology and the Mutations of Desire", Curtis Roads - "Microsound", Shulamith Firestone - "The Dialectic of Sex - The Case for Feminist Revolution", Susan McClary - "Feminine Endings: Music, Gender & Sexuality", Donna Harraway "Cyborg Manifesto", VNS Matrix - "A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for 21st Century", Valerie Solanas "Scum Manifesto", Anne Carson "The Gender of Sound", Rosi Braidotti Chapter 9 "Discontinuous Becomings" of "Nomadic Subjects. Embodiment and Sexual difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory" 

Course Blog:

http://gendytrouble.tumblr.com

Sonic Cyberfeminisms and Its Discontents

My article "Sonic Cyberfeminism and Its Discontents" was published in the CTM 2014 Festival Magazine "Dis Continuity".


In her text, "Sonic Cyberfeminism and its Discontents", Annie Goh takes gender inequalities in electronic music as her starting point to survey the hidden, and less-hidden prejudices which dominate the discourse surrounding it. With a historical look at cyberfeminism, as well as recent work on women in sound and electronic music, she examines the complexities of a debate situated between theory and practice within the festival theme of Dis Continuity .

Myths of Echo: Sound Art and Archaeoacoustics @ OTSF Archaeoacoustics Conference, Malta

It was great to attend the first ever international conference on archaeoacoustics in Malta 19th-22nd Feb 2014. I did a poster presentation called "Myths of Echo: Sound Art and Archaeoacoustics".

Publication coming out in Summer 2014.

http://www.otsf.org/conference.htm

Banality of Affect v1

Banality of Affect v1 is online:
[Some streaming issues still being solved...]

http://banalityofaffect.net/

The Banality of Affect is an audiovisual installation and real-time net-art project which problematizes the commodification of emotions via new media and the ecology of (sonic) affect.

Data streams from Twitter and the Dutch stock market influence the emotional output of the music with a “corrective” function. This is undertaken by assessing incoming tweets from top five trance music DJs (Armin Van Buuren, Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Ferry Corsten and Sander Van Doorn) and five top news agencies (Reuters, BBC News, Russia Today, CNN and Al Jazeera). The tweets are assigned numerical emotional values (from -5 to +5), which are used to influence the euphoric or disphoric output of the generated music in real-time. Good news allows for more melancholic music, bad news enforces more euphoria. Fluctuations of the Dutch stock market alter the speed of the music; a turn for the worse increases the tempo, an increase in its value lets the tempo slow pace.

CTM2014 Sound, Gender, Technology – "Where to" with Cyberfeminism?

 

My contribution to this year's CTM Festival - CTM 2014 Dis Continuity:

Sound, Gender, Technology – "Where to" with Cyberfeminism?
Lectures and panel discussion: Sadie Plant, Marie Thompson, Fender Schrade, Susanne Kirchmayr, Moderation: Annie Goh   
Sat 1st Feb 14:00
Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien

Recent discourse on the subject of women and electronic music falls tendentially into two categories; either writing forgotten histories of pioneering work of women such as Daphne Oram, Elaine Radigue, Delia Derbyshire, Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher amongst many others, or with reference to the recent statistics via female:pressure, which highlight the huge quantitative discrepancies between male and female musicians, DJs, and producers represented at labels and music festivals worldwide. 
 
Whilst both can be considered worthwhile approaches in their own right, the former approach risks creating fetishized figures of "patchbay nuns" (Abi Bliss) and the latter finds hostile responses and risks ostracization in its own field. In both, one fundamentally important aspect remains overlooked - Judith Butler formulated this as the necessity not only to inquire how the category of “women” might become more fully represented - for example here in music -, but also crucially to understand and critique the very categories and structures of power in which these discourses operate.

Taking root from an abstract ontological level, in which binary categories of sex and gender have long been refuted (biologically as well as culturally), the panel aims to assess the interactions between sound, gender and technology from various philosophical and artistic positions. The widely discussed "cyberfeminism" borne in the early 1990s questioned the perpetuation of technology as male-dominated domain, whilst also inciting digital culture as an ideal flourishing ground for subversive strategies. Though the relationship of this purported digital utopia never largely or explicitly addressed sound, it shares dimensions in its affective power as well as non-linear, decentralized and un-hierarchical characteristics.

Approximately two decades since cyberfeminism boomed - how can we assess the cyberfeminist dream of the subversive potentialities within technology in the current status quo? How does an inquiry into the nature of sound tally to the broader aims of cyberfeminism? Does a gendered understanding of technology and sound technologies help the dismantling of the structures that form sound, gender, and technology today, or does it perpetuate these? Referring to both levels of feminist activism and feminist theory outlined above, as well as the dual tendencies within cybernetics towards order and chaos at the core of cyberfeminism – what can be identified as continuity and discontinuity in the structures of sound, gender and technology?

Lectures:

Mixing Music, Cybernetics, and Feminism.

Sadie Plant
Abstract coming soon.

Performing Between Their Bodies And Your Ears. Stories of a Trans*gendered Live Sound Engineer.

Fender Schrade
Fender Schrade approaches live sound engineering through an artistic as well as a trans*feminist perspective. The talk will discuss the particularities of the agency of a live sound engineer and the interactions with space, bodies, technology and sound.

Generative Transformations – Deviate from the Grid

Susanne Kirchmayr
Susanne Kirchmayr will deliver insights into her praxis of sound production and composition. Drawing on her background in linguistics, her recent compositions have worked with human, often female voices to deal with themes of the disintegration of spoken languages, deconstruction, and reorganization of meanings and [grammatical] structures. In her presentation, she will also demonstrate her research into the musical potential of concurrent sequences with divergent timings in order to go beyond the scope of ordinary rhythmic synchronizations.

Feminizing Noise

Marie Thompson
Marie will explore the relationship between constructions of femininity and noise, which is understood here as an affective transformative force, rather than simply as unwanted sound. She will suggest that ‘feminine’ noises are often deemed negative; not because of what they mean, but as a result of the transformations they threaten to induce. Marie will raise questions around essentialism – does talking of a feminine or feminized noise require us to adopt an essentialist position, or can an alternative approach be found?

http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival2014/2014/02/01/programme/event/sound_gender_technology_where_to_with_cyberfeminism/ 
[Recording coming online soon]

Sound Knowledge
Rethinking Histories and Futures of Electronic Music – Keynote lecture by Tara Rodgers (via Skype)
Sat 1st Feb 14:00
Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien

 

How do we know what we know about the history of electronic music, and how does this knowledge frame, and sometimes limit, approaches to the creative, technical, and social possibilities of music-making in the present? What knowledge might sound itself give us to live more mindfully and create more expansively? 
 
This lecture draws upon feminist theories and archival research to explore these questions in the context of the CTM festival's theme of "discontinuity," which calls for challenging and presenting alternatives to existing histories of electronic music.

http://www.ctm-festival.de/festival2014/2014/02/01/programme/event/sound_knowledge/
[No recording of this at lecturer's request]

 

Banality of Affect at transmediale Afterglow (Art Hack Day)

Banality of Affect v0.9 at transmediale Art Hack Day "afterglow" 
in collaboration with Paul Christoph

Photo credit: Michael Ang