Noisescapes
Audiovisual Futurology
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This project stems from the collective writing session within School of Darkness, led by Sepake Angiama, in which I participated. It was part of the publication Department of Speculative Facts, edited by Lietje Bauwens and Quenton Miller, and published by Onomatopee. The workshop was organized by CIFAS and Kunstenfestivaldesarts as part of the Free School.
Artist and curator Sepake Angiama attempts to collapse the linearity of space and time through collective written science-fiction scenarios" … "She is inspired by writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who, in her story Evidence, receives letters from her future self living in a post-capitalist society. By taking newspaper headlines as a starting point, she uses journalistic facts to subsequently speculate upon their meaning, consequences, and origins: facts not as the end, but only the beginning. Superstitions, a trendy concept among speculative thinkers, are exactly this: fictions that cause the conditions that subsequently make them real—coming from the future and retroactively changing both our present and past.
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00.00 in the lab, the digital cells are set up
00.05 the digital cells form wires
01.15 after an hour, the digital wires form a tissue
01.25
01.35
01.55
02.15 the digital tissue starts to stick together
02.35
03.25 the digital cells have grown into an organic landscape
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Mixed Media on paper 40x40 cm
The ‘higher consciousness’ that has long been considered the seat of human identity within the humanist tradition has been burned. It is increasingly dismissed as too anthropocentric, too slow (unproductive), too extravagant — abstract, detached, a cumbersome and undesirable byproduct of evolution.
In posthumanism, the emphasis shifts toward qualities that transcend the human — especially non-human modes of intelligence. Cognitive Nonconscious (Hayles) information processing is what mycelium, bacteria, and artificial intelligence do alongside us — only more efficiently.
If our present and future environment increasingly takes on the form of an Acoustic Space — post-literate and tribal (McLuhan) — how will it differ from a pre-literate past? Beyond the positive aspects of tribal connectedness—breathing and vibrating together, co-creation, participation—do we also risk the dangers of subliminal manipulation, scapegoating, polarization, or even lynchings?
In speculative fiction, the motif of Nonconscious knowledge processing frequently appears, often linked to the idea of knowledge of the present being shaped by the future. In this way, Nonconscious knowledge processing functions as a form of divination.
Through sound and image, I probe this horizon. Electronically generated noise takes shape as soundscapes and landscapes, in which I search for a possible future for humanity.
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Excerpt
Five endless fingers traveling through time, one stretched out, the other four compressed.
The revolution has resulted in physics no longer claiming to deal with what will happen, but rather with what is likely to happen.
In February 2094, Nathan reported several objects he found in the CA. This CA is closely related to our current reality. Since then, a small group of people have made further discoveries. This article documents their discoveries.
In order to prepare for the Acoustic Space, the citizens undergo a process of unlearning. During the process of unlearning, they live in an underground city.
During the process of unlearning, the citizens experience that the earth is flat because water remains flat when stored in a bottle or glass and does not curve.
Inside the city, artificial light shines diffusely through the transparent membranes of the communal meditation room.
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Teleportation was useful but selfish. You could be in and out of time. Property, care, disasters, patriarchal structures thus lost their dramaturgy.
Nathan swims in the flatness in search of curved elements. There are no waterfalls and no holes for the water to drain out of.
It is true that the water has changed. It was shiny and transparent but now it is dark.
Nathan's mother remembered the story from her childhood, where the darkness, the void, moved faster and swallowed everything.
There is no place where light and dark are intertwined. After all, we are made of the void from which we come.
The sawtooth is normally used to polarize sunlight and create a shadow, even when our eyes cannot see it.
How long before the stars start to reflect our unwanted past.
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