Section outline

    • Field recordings

      Perhaps you want to listen more closely to computer mice and keyboards? Mechanical keyboards are fashionable with plenty of nerding out on YouTube. People really like to listen to keyboards. Do you have a favorite? Does listening to recordings make you sensitive to hearing keyboards "in the wild"? Which words would you use to describe keyboard sounds? What can we infer from listening... what is the user doing, are they happy or sad, who are they? What would be your mediatheoretical take on this whole phenomenon?

      For reading on revival of mechanical keyboard culture, check David Rambo's Building, Coding, Typing. published 2021 in Computational Culture, issue 8.

      This article describes the technoculture of custom mechanical keyboards, with an emphasis on the author’s experience of building, programming, and relearning to type Colemak on a non-standard mechanical keyboard called the Planck. The Planck is not merely a technical object but a metonymy for a technical activity. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation and theory of the technical object, the author proposes that technology is first and foremost a process that modifies phenomena by intentionally intervening in the media that condition them. Human experience and cultural meaning are no less integral to technology’s purposeful coordination of heterogeneous processes than the physical and electronic components. With building, coding, and typing on the Planck as a guide, the article argues that proprioceptive preference, coded customization, visual taste, materials quality, consumer fads, community belonging, and personal expression all factor into the technological individuation of the mechanical keyboard technological activity. In particular, it criticizes both Simondon’s theory of the technicity of technical objects and Wolfgang Ernst’s media archaeology for keeping factors other than physical materiality outside the domain of technical media. Ultimately, this article contributes to Eric Schatzberg’s work on the technology concept. Its formulation of technology as its own individuation intervenes between predominant media theories that rely on a either a paradigm of prosthesis or the materiality of nonhuman actors to explain the nature of technology.

      You might want to look into or autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) on YouTube, TikTok etc. What is it about? Is it creepy or cool? Disgusting or erotic? Perhaps you want to try out ASMR in your audio paper...

      Here is artist Carolyn Kirschner's take Iconoclash Slow Squeeze on ASMR at Matter. Non-Matter. Anti-Matter, ZKM Karlsruhe.

    • Electromagnetic radiation, EMR

      This extremely simple contraption, a coil, picks up electromagnetic radiation (EMR). It is basically the same as a guitar pickup mic.

      Here are seven minutes EMR recordings from devices Mace's home, such as computer screens, a transformer, LEDs, a small speaker, a synthesizer, smartphone connecting to the internet et cetera. Do you recognize some of the sounds?

      A simple D.I.Y. coil for listening to EMR (Audio and photo by Mace Ojala).

      Consider trying out EMR listening, it's very simple especially with help of a good quality recorders which also have a good quality amplifiers.

      See the Shintaro Miyazaki's video Probing, tapping, listening above from 15:45 onwards, as well as the TV spot with Hayley Suviste also above where listen to street advertisements.

      🦇 Suggested bonus reading: Thomas Nagel's absolutely classic philosophy of mind paper What Is It Like To Be a Bat published 1974 in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4, pp. 435-450.

    • Envelope follower synth URL

      Here is a little digital instrument for you which combines concepts we have learned early in the course about synthesis with our recordings. What the program does, is transfer the amplitude ie. loudness.of a field recordings to the pitch of a synthesizer. Can you still recognize the original sound? Can make a copy of the program and use your own recordings to drive the sound? Could you imagine some other computer program which takes data from one source and uses it to generate something new in some other context?

    • Sculpture distortion function URL

      Here is another digital instrument for you which manipulates a recording at a sample level, typically 44100 per second, and distorts it in unusually ways. Does this kind of distortion remind you of sounds you have heard earlier somewhere? Try making a copy, uploading a few seconds of your own recording experiments, and change the line 4 to point to your file. Use the three sliders to make new sounds.

      Watch out, this can get really loud and noisy!

    • Blaues Rauschen

      Blaues Rauschen festival is a sound festival in Ruhrgebiet. The program is quite diverse, ranging between music, fieldrecordings, synthesis, sound performance, noise etc. but all experimental and very digital. Such a festival experience can be possible source for audio paper inspiration. Speak with the festival organizers, artists and audience members is always a good idea, don't hesitate!

       

      Tomoko Sauvage with her work Audio Bowls (photo by Mace Ojala).

      Ji Youn Kang with New Work Live (photo by Mace Ojala).

    • What is this sound? File

      Mace encountered this sound when riding the bike in Dortmund home from one of the Blaues Rauschen concerts. Can you recognize it? Does it cause some affect in you, and what could the sound mean? What do it's waveform and spectrum look like? How would you describe the sonic qualities of the sound? Tip: it's a field recording from the street.

    • For exploration

      • Make more recordings; use headphones to monitor, and listen to your recordings afterwards. Have fun!
      • Read Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey. „Translator’s introduction to Real Time Analysis, Time Axis Manipulation“. Cultural Politics 13, Nr. 1 (2017): 1–5.
      • Read one of the following; you might have encountered this canon item on another seminar already smile
        • Kittler, Friedrich. „Real Time Analysis, Time Axis Manipulation“. Übersetzt von Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Cultural Politics 13, Nr. 1 (2017): 1–18.
        • The above Kittler in original German, if you find it.
        • Krämer, Sybille. „The Cultural Techniques of Time Axis Manipulation: On Friedrich Kittler’s Conception of Media“. Theory, Culture & Society 23, Nr. 7–8 (1. Dezember 2006): 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276406069885.
      • Read Curtis Roads Microsound (The MIT Press, 2001) the very beginning, pages 2-9, up until the section Infinite Time Scale.
      • Draft 3 audio paper ideas. Think of a potential name of your audio paper, and some references. Write down a paragraph of each idea.