Cyberlove - Black Mirror S2 EP01

Big thanks to Lisa for flagging this up.

I won't reveal the contents but the episode has big themes about our relationships with technology, cyber simulacra and avatars. Of course, the voice is key...

Watch links here
http://watchseries.lt/episode/black_mirror_s2_e1.html

Heather Phillipson & Erik Bünger

Heather Phillipson's "polyrhythmic swim-time in a bath of unspilled feelings" really struck a chord with me, evoking so many thoughts about the tyranny of language and corporeal co-ordination - swimming as speech! Swimming as speech in that one has to badly and awkwardly co-ordinate all these body parts (mouth, arms and lungs) together to do something they were not "evolved for" or "meant for" - swimming or speaking! I also pondered about lane control as bio-politics and language. The LOAF/LOVE punning and life guard segments made me recall concepts of occularcentricism and faciality - life guards as gods who you can never see but only idealise and mis-hear and set their mis heard orders to false mantras. Also rhythmic control and lane choice, in facialized conversation we cannot help but rhythm match, just like swimmers! All these notions are fascinating, but especially so when held in hand with the aspect of her performance - speaking alongside her piece.

I urge you to visit her website to watch some of the other videos, in particular A is to D what E is to H is excellent and focuses on the overlap of eating and speaking, there are also shades of eucharistian cannibalism.

Whilst "polyrhythmic swim-time in a bath of unspilled feelings" provoked many musing on voice, language, occularcentricism, bio-politics and social control there are two particular videos that may be interesting for anyone on the Sex, Gender, Species course; the "Well This Is Embarrassing" excerpts one and two.

Heather mentioned another artist to me, Erik Bünger. His videos are excellent too. I urge you to watch three particular excepts of his films on his site:

A Lecture On Schizophrenia
The Third Man
The Girl Who Never Was

I think all of these videos/pieces will resonate with the texts on vocalities. Siren themes, Echo and Narcissus themes, vocal subjectivity themes, Technological modulation themes, haunting technology themes, engendering voice themes etc etc.

I know this post has been scatty, I'm simply too excited by these films at present but wanted to share them so they could be watched and thought about over the holiday.

Lastly, I'll bow out with a Bifo quote (although I heard him in a talk say this quote is actually an observation from Rose Goldsen's book, The Show & Tell Machine):

"For the first time in human history there is a generation that has learnt more words and heard more stories from the television machine than from its mother." - FB - PR. pp.36-37.

Knowledge Exchange Lecture: Marc Couroux

As part of the Common;sense online platform, we have now started a knowledge exchange between PhD/MA students and anyone interested in presenting and discussing ideas.

The last event before the holidays will be on:

THURSDAY 12TH OF DEC AT 4-5PM,
ROOM 221 EDUCATION BUILDING (GOLDSMITHS)

Professor and schizophonic magic(k)ian Mark Couroux from York University Toronto will speak of neoliberal modes of capture operating in the audio-visual register, which he pressures via infra-medial practices and technologies of (as yet un)lived experience.
www.couroux.org | www.asounder.org | www.theocculture.org

In preparation for the lecture check out Marc Couroux's PREEMPTIVE GLOSSARY FOR A TECHNO-SONIC CONTROL SOCIETY (WITH LINES OF FLIGHT) here:
http://www.theocculture.net/preemptive1
http://www.theocculture.net/preemptive2
http://www.theocculture.net/preemptive3

Her

Scarlett Johansson in her most cinematic role yet - voice.

Robot Whispers, ASMR: A void being close

After creating a technologically augmented ASMR piece for the English Heretic event with Carey I've been thinking about the reasons why intimacy and strange feelings are conjured.  For ordinary ASMR I expect this is mostly due to misguided and unacknowledged reactions to occularcentric, heteronormative and tertiary capitalism norms. For an example of the fodder for such bad conflations of innocent autonomous responses and an aesthetic and affect indebted to a conditioning from the worst tropes of hegemony see the below:


 But is there a cyborg ASMR voice? In an apt conceptual reversal of feigning closeness the whisper voice synthersizer (available on all text to voice readers) is just what the typical ASMR whisper is. The synthetic whisper voice is essentially a de-toned and noised out voice - noise is added. This should create a distance - but in an odd way I feel that it creates a closeness. But making a synthetic voice hide behind a gauze of noise a longing intimacy is conjured on cyborgian terms. I feel this resonates with the deluded fans of actual ASMR whisperers - despite the whisperers delivery being shot through with occularcentric and tertiary service conflations - the fact that their whispering is delivered though a lonely youtube channel must be considered. Is the intimacy of ASMR due to the format of isolation that spawned its popularity? See a nice dramatisation of this in Kate Bush's video for Deeper understanding:



So here I approach the cyborg whisper of intimate distance - the synthetic whisper effect that is a voice hidden behind a gauze of noise. Two particular pop videos come to mind but I'm sure there are more - (I almost feel this cyborgian distance intimacy of the whisper noise effect is a trope.)

Is the distance, the silent, un-admitted distance, mute distance of the isolated position of the listener the object voice of the cyborg?

The voice that:

"embodies the very impossibility of attaining auto-affection, it introduces a scission, a rupture in the middle of the full presence and refers to a void" (Dolar)

"the true object voice is mute (...) and what effectively reverberates is the void: resonance always takes place in a vacuum  - the tone as such is originally a lamentfor the lost object. The object is here as long as the sound remains unarticulated ; the moment it resounds , the moment it is "spilled out," the object is evacuated, and this voidance gives birth to the barred subject ($) lamenting the loss of the object" (Zizek)

I feel that both ASMR and the cyborg whisper trope in music afford an intimacy through technological distance, the lamentation for the distance between object and subject evokes the strange intimacy.

See two nice examples of the cyborg whisper below:
technologically manifested distance keeps the voice feeling close...

In Mark Fisher's lecture about the crackle, one concept stuck with me the most--the idea of the iSociety, based on immediate connectedness to the entire world which is concurrent with an immense metaphysical isolation. I think he called it "connected loneliness," or "networked loneliness."

It's as if Adam Curtis was at the lecture and used it as the inspiration for this new documentary of his, "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace":