From Sound to Waves to Territories

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From Sound to Waves to Territories

“Perhaps last traces of human existence will be radio waves beamed into space, travelling distances before they dissolve into noise.”
Curtis Roads in Micro-Sound

“Perhaps last traces of radio waves [are] human existence beamed into space travelling distances before they dissolve into noise.”
Jan Hendrik Brueggemeier – From Sound to Waves to Territories

From Sound to Waves to Territories” is Jan Hendrik Brueggemeier’s creative PhD project (2010 -2014) at La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Tags: city, cloud, collaborations, communication, community, experience, internet, media activism, performance, play, radio, remix, research, scenography, soundscape

Introduction to From Sound to Waves to Territories

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From Sound to Waves to Territories

!!! This section of the website is under heavy construction … More will happen here very soon … Apologies for any inconvenience !!!

professional background
practising media artist and producer / media and architectural interventions in the city / independent media networking / sound installations / radio art events /curating of festivals / Master in Media Arts & Design, Bauhaus University Weimar, chair for Experimental Radio (mentors: T. Kogawa, R. Homann)

Radio and the “schizophonic” Poetic of the urban Space

My creative PhD project “From Sound to Waves to Territories” focusses on the communicative and aesthetic challenges of the electro-acoustic space of radio connecting with the urban space. Here I intend to focus on the two particular locations involved in the radiophonic: the imaginary and the reality of the ‘city’ (as backdrop of the everyday).

My point of departure is the notion of the series as a genuine radio format invented by early US radio amateurs movement. I am interested in the series’ two main constituents, which in my view are the time-based notions of ‘repetition’ and ‘disruption’ and how they help to construct collectively a sense of territory and how this compares to similar cultural phenomena like play and ritual. Another way to describe this would be the “rhythmisation of the everyday”. It also connects to the Georges Sorel’s concept of the “social myth”.

Speaking from the experience of my own practice as a radio maker and media artist I have started to reflect differently about this territory I was actually transmitting into. While approaching the city from a Arts perspective, I feel unsatisfied with the common media business practice of analysing cities communication potential through market share and targeted audience groups. This dissatisfaction fostered my interest in communication as part of urban planning and media respective radio as a concrete tool for architectural and urban design – based on my reflection as a media practitioner about this space and its modi operandi.

Former works relating to media and the city: the neture series

My creative Ph.D strategy therefore consists out of two parts:

To form an own theoretical “transdisciplinary” framework called “urban media scenography” in order to approach the nexus of the contemporary city based on selected source from the area of philosophy, urban planning and media studies
to produce a body of creative work which addresses the “city-ness” (Saskia Sassen).

Based on my recent research these two strategic parts (mentioned above) led me to identify two main focusses of my creative research:

the role of the stranger in the network of radio and city
the idea of sonic imaginative leaks or sonic leaks of imagination (not yet decided which wording I like betta)

The role of the stranger in the network of radio and city

A concrete urban condition, “on the ground” so to speak.
In contrary to the digital sphere where user activity can be precisely measured the conventional broadcast business still relies on to “statistically” assume its targeted audience based on the nature how the data surveys are being conducted and one can not technically measure the tuning in. A fact, which would translate to me, as they don’t really know, they assume. (example?)
More generally looking into the notion of the strange or the alien as a communicative challenge, this connects with the concept of a “responsive phenomenology” (Bernhard Waldenfels) and the idea of the creative answer, which means the “what” of an answer is and will be always made up but not the “whereupon” we are answering and this is the true challenge.

The idea of imaginative leaks or leaks of imagination

Here I am aiming from a sound perspective at what the following:

In his book “Poetics of Space” the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard unpacks the subconscious qualities of poetic imaginary which seem to leak in from a deeper level of human experience which is usually more hidden and less familiar to our everyday being in communication. The American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth understands art as something that points or refers to the “unsayable”.
I want to connect this with the notion of the “schizo-phonic”. A term coined by the Canadian scholar R. Murray Schafer.

While I do not agree with all of Schafer’s arguments particular in relation to how he comes to terms with an actual moral judgement of a sensual experience from an ecological point of view. Nevertheless his term schizophonic is interesting to me, because I do consider that a split is taking place in the amplification process of mediation in general but to me this is taking place on a social, political and / or cultural level. Although I find the way Schafer is referencing schizophrenia quite cliche like I still appreciate its notion of the potential imaginative leak. However in terms of schizophrenia I prefer to align my work rather along the lines of the work of R. D. Laing or Gregory Bateson’s and their observation of the group dynamics of schizophrenia. In addition I find Humberto Maturana Romesín’s remark important where he stresses that the difference between virtual and non-virtual realities can only be a cultural one but not one in terms of cognitive perception. This again could be related to R. D. Laing idea of the “reframing”.

Why radio?
- The oldest of the new media
- it’s sound driven and the way sound stimulates one’s imagination in particular because of a lacking visualisation
- it has this clear territorial bond,
- it has proven a strong media hybridity with e.g. online media
- the live moment
- truly global and consumes very little energy in comparison to other electronic media.

Recap:
As soon as one has space, time and energy one has rhythm. The radio format of the series as a mean “rhythmisation of the everyday” and collectively created imaginary territories and therefore similar to other cultural phenomena like play and ritual.

At the same time radio means a spatially defined and bonded territory in comparison to e.g. the Internet (although there can be hybrid media mixes), which in my case means the contemporary city with its urban conditions and challenges and the individual “cityness” of each location.

Approaching the existing genre of the “radio play” as an output for my creative work I would like extend its notion:
Radio as a play with listening and “schizo-phonic” poetic – radio as play with strangers in the city.

Tags: sound, territories, waves

Supervisors & Research Panel

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From Sound to Waves to Territories

Supervisors: Prof. Norie Neumark, Senior Lecturer John Tebbutt, La Trobe University
Research Panel: Prof. Norie Neumark, Senior Lecturer John Tebbutt, Senior Lecturer Peter Hughes (La Trobe University) and John Jacobs (producer, Nightair ABC Radio Australia)
Website: www.fromsoundtowavestoterritories.com

Tags: sound, territories, waves

Human perception and virtual realities (H. Maturana)

The cognitive biologist Maturana Romesín and the psychologist Verden Zoeller stress “that for us human beings nothing that we live in flow of our emotioning, whether consciously or unconsciously, is irrelevant or “virtual” in our living.” Humberto Maturana Romesín further expands on his approach to human perception and virtual realities:

“Our nervous system is continuously changing along the ﬂow of our living, and it does so in a manner that is moment by moment contingent on the course of our living, both in our conscious and unconscious, external and internal, relational psychic space. As a result, all that we live, regardless of what kind of living we live, arises in us modulated by the history of our psychic existence regardless of whether this takes place through our living in what an observer might call a virtual or a non-virtual reality. … In other words, as we live them repeatedly, realities that were initially virtual progressively stop being virtual. As features of our culture, they become part of our biological manner of living and, hence, of the non-virtual reality that we live. The problem with virtual realities, then, if there is any, is not how they occur, or if they occur at all, but whether we do or do not like the psychic manners of existence and the cultural transformations that we generate through them. Virtual realities are never trivial, because we always become transformed as we live them according to the emotioning of the psychic space that they bring about in our living, and this is so regardless of whether we like it or not. If we care about what happens to us and to other human beings through what we do through virtual realities, then it is our responsibility to act accordingly.” (Maturana Romesín 2008)

Humberto Maturana Romesín, The Biological Foundations of Virtual Realities and Their Implications for Human Existence,biological–epistemological – biology of cognition, (paper) 18 November 2006

This paper is comprises two appendices from the book “The Origin of Humanness in the Biology of Love” written in 1994 by Humberto Maturana Romesín and Gerda Verden Zöller (edited by Pille Bunnell). The appendices were written by Hunberto Maturana Romesin in the years 1996–1997. The book is in press with Imprint Academic, and was published 2008.

Tags: human perception, Humbero Maturana, Verden Zoeller, virtual realities

Schizophonic (R. Murray Schafer)

The Canadian scholar R. Murray Schafer voiced a critique by describing radio as source for ‘defamiliarisation’ from the everyday environment. Identified as a sensual alienation by Schafer he portrayed this media experience as ‘schizophonic’. When Schafer coined radio as schizophonic, he criticised the perceptional split of sounds. To him, when recorded, sounds are brought out of the context of their original environment and are broadcast without any further spatial reference to their origin.

“When I originally coined the term schizophonia in “The New Soundscape” I said it was intended to be a nervous word. Related to schizophrenia, I intended it to convey the sam sense of aberration and drama. … A character in one of Borges’ stories dreads mirrors because the multiply men. The same might be said of radio. As the cry broadcasts distress, the loudspeaker communicates anxiety. … Modern life has been ventriloquized.” (Schafer 1973)

This mediative process turns these schizophonic sounds for Schafer into a symbolic-only and dream-like meaning and consequently leads to a sensual alienation.

“The plan was to put microphones in remote locations uninhabited by humans and to broadcast whatever might be happening out there; the sounds of wind and rain, the cries of bird and animals – all the uneventful events of the natural soundscape transmitted without editing into the hearts of the cities.” (Schafer 1987)

And although I share sympathies for Schafer’s proposal for a new and radical radio. I would shift here as well the focus away from the media aided representation of the environment to the aesthetic side of human communication and a possible ‘defamilarisation’ in communication.

R Murray Schafer (1993) ‘Radical radio’, Semiotext(e)16: Radiotext(e), no. 6
R Murray Schafer (1977) The Tuning of the World, Knopf, New York

Tags: r murray schafer, schizophonia

Responsive phenomenlogy (B. Waldenfels)

In his book “Grundmotive einer Phaenomenlogie des Fremden” German philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels addresses the phenomenon of the strange / alien

The strange has a very specific position which is extraordinary or beyond the order or organisation or more precisely in between the borders of different orders. Waldenfels therefore very philosophically wonders how we can approach the strange or alien while not already neutralising and denying its challenges and demands through our manner of approaching it.

If you ask me, I would think that is a very good question but it also ties in with the second aspect of my PhD work the idea of imaginative leaks. It is also interesting to compare it with the be-a-friend trends in social media.

Bernhard Waldenfels, Grundmotive einer Phaenomenlogie des Fremden, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M, 2006

Tags: bernhard waldenfels, phenomenolgy, responsive

Radio series (Wolfgang Hagen)

Series as radio format

According to Wolfgang Hagen, German media scholar and director of the national radio Deutschlandradio, was the format of the series born in the early North-American amateur radio as a practical result of its time and technical condition.

The radio amateurs movement in the US grew too big to be regulated by the Congress right away. A few frequencies were shared by several parties including naval emergency calls, therefore the act of transmitting did always include the listening out and relaying of others. Technical it was based on the principal of call and call-back and in terms of legislation it was more understood as wireless telephony.

The North-American situation for example was completely different to the European situation, where its was top-down state affair. Although back in the day every receiver could easily could be turned into a transmitter. Something Bertold Brecht was very aware of. And back then already a legitimate reason for house searches by the police.

Source: Serialisierung des Radios – Serialisierung von Radio-Kunst? (last access: 8. August 2011)

Tags: radio, series, wolfgang hagen

Schizophrenia (Barbara O’Brien)

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Introduction, From Sound to Waves to Territories
the-other-me

BARBARA O’BRIEN, author of Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic

On Schizophrenia
“There is an amazing lack of accurate knowledge among laymen concerning the effects of schizophrenia upon its victims. The most prevalent current notion is that, when the mind is split in schizophrenia, the individual becomes two people, two distinct personalties, or even multiple personalities—that the subconscious mind, rebelling against the repressions imposed upon it, has declared civil war, deserted the conscious authority; and that in the resulting schism, the new personality which emerges periodically is composed of the parts of the personality which the individual has consciously, deliberately, persistently repressed.

In infrequent cases, this appears to be just what does happen. The unconscious has rebelled, assumed control, created the person it wishes to be, forced the conscious controller into a small, tightly closed box where it cannot even see what is going on, and then taken over the floor of the conscious mind.

In most cases of schizophrenia, however, the unconscious appears to prefer not the techniques of the actor, but those of the director. It does not create a new personality but, instead, stages a play. The major difference is that the conscious mind is permitted to remain, an audience of one sitting lonely in the theater, watching a drama. on which it cannot walk out.”

BARBARA O’BRIEN, Operators and Things: The Inner Life of a Schizophrenic, ARLINGTON BOOKS Cambridge 1958, page 5

Tags: Barbara O'Brien, schizophrenia

Cityness (Saskia Sassen)

CITYNESS IN THE URBAN AGE

by Saskia Sassen, Centennial Visiting Professor, LSE and Ralph Lewis Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago:

“Urban agglomerations are very often seen as lacking the features, quality and sense of what we think of as cities. Yet, urbanity is perhaps too charged a term, charged with a Western sense of cosmopolitanism of what public space is or should be. …

The same thing applies to this question of cityness as a way to capture forms of urbanity that do not necessarily correspond to our more Westernised eye, who knows what morphing is going on, even in these very rigid structures. …

Partly this is an empirical question but, coming back to this notion of stripping urbanity from its Western richness and trying to use cityness as a tool to detect urbanities that may be constituted in very different ways, I would say that one issue that cuts across all of this is if the gaps between the differences, between component parts that belong to slightly different worlds, if those gaps cross certain thresholds, to what extent do we actually lose the possibility of cityness?”

(p.1-2)

Download the pdf Cityness in the urban age (Urban Age project, LSE and the Alfred Herrhausen Society) from here

Tags: cityness, saskia sassen

Four evolutionary processes (Maturana, Verden-Zoeller)

from: Biology of Love (paper), By Humberto Maturana Romesin and Gerda Verden-Zoller, Opp, G.: Peterander, F. (Hrsg.): Focus Heilpadagogik, Ernst Reinhardt, Munchen/Basel 1996. [pdf]

The authors state:
We humans are the present result of these four basic processes. But there is more to our human condition than what is apparent in these reflections, both in the richness and range of being animals that live in conversations:

the expansion of childhood and the expansion of the emotioning of the child/mother* relation
the expansion of female sexuality
language
intelligence and consensuality

The four basic processes in the evolution of mankind

Some five to six million years ago, the lineage of primates that gave origin to us began in a trend of continuous expansion of childhood in a manner that has progressively extended to involve now practically our whole life span. This is a frequent evolutionary phenomenon, and is called neoteny (extension of childhood), and occurs as a systemic conservation of a manner of living, in the terms that we described above. This process entailed in the history of our lineage not only the conservation of child like body and physiological features into adulthood, but also, and above all, the expansion of the emotioning of the child/mother* relation as a relation of total mutual trust in body acceptance into the adult life. The result was the constitution of a lineage whose evolutionary history was centered on love as the basic emotion in community relations, not aggression or competition as has happened with other primates like chimpanzees. Mammals are loving animals in general, and this can be easily seen in how they become like children when they live in close relations of love with humans, but not all of them live in love along their whole life as the center of their manner of living that defines their identity. The identity of a species in terms of its manner of living is not genetically determined or conserved, but it is determined and conserved systemically in the relation, organism/medium. The genetic constitution determines a field of epigenetic developmental possibilities in a living system, while in the realization of its ontogeny and phylogeny, living system and medium change together congruently in the systemic conservation of a manner of living. And this is precisely what has happened in our evolutionary history in which the conservation of the relation of love in mutual trust and care proper to the mother*/child as a life habit into adulthood, has been the peculiar feature of the manner of living in which both organism and medium have changed together congruently constituting the peculiarity that defines our lineage as a particular primate lineage.

Some four million years ago the females of our lineage began to live an expansion of their sexuality that went from a yearly cycle of desire for sexual intercourse and pleasure in the intimate body proximity of the other, to a continous desire that matched the continuous sexual desire of males. We think that this must have happened as a feature of the neotenic trend of our lineage. Sex has to do with body acceptance in mutual trust in the joy and pleasure of the nearness and contact of the body of the other whether male or female. The first most basic consequence of this process was the separation of sexual intercourse from reproduction as a feature of the course of living, and the establishment thereof, of sexual pleasure as the most fundamental manner of relation between the members of a group. The second basic consequence was the arising and development of permanent intimacy in tenderness, sensuality, and individually oriented sexuality, as the source of stability and joy of living together that resulted in a manner of living in small family communities of four to seven individuals.

Some three and a half million years ago, language, to live in language, must have begun as a manner of living in consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behavior conserved generation after generation in the learning of the children of the small families in which our ancestors lived as a result of the expansion of the sexuality of the females. In fact, what must have begun then, must have been living in the braiding of languaging and emotioning that we call conversations, and with that what began then was human living as a living in networks of conversations, so that everything human takes place in conversations as a flow in consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of behaviors and emotions.

The evolutionary history of our lineage as a history of the conservation of a neotenic trend in the biology of love, is a history of social life also centered on consensuality and cooperation, not on competition or aggressive strife. As such our evolutionary history is a history of expansion of the capacities for consensuality, and, hence, of expansion of intelligence. Intelligence has to do with consensuality, intelligence is not primarily the capacity to solve problems, but it is the capacity to participate in the generation, expansion, and operation in consensual domains as domains of coordinations of behaviors through living together. Problem solving takes place as an operation in a domain of consensuality already established, so it is secondary to consensuality, not prior to it. Languaging, indeed, living in conversations as we humans do requires such an enormous capacity for consensuality, that we humans are all essentially equally intelligent, and the differences in intelligence that seem to exist between humans are not due to differences in their capacity for consensuality, but in their emotioning. In fact, due to the nature of intelligence as a relational biological phenomenon, different emotions affect it differently.Thus, ambition, competitiveness, anger, envy, aggression and fear, reduce intelligence, because they restrict the domain of openness for consensuality. This is acknowledged in daily life with popular expressions such as: he or she is blinded by anger or ambition. Only love expands intelligence, because love as the domain of those behaviors through which the other arises as a legimiate other in coexistence with oneself, opens us to see and to enter in collaboration. To live in love, in the biology of love, in the conservation of collaboration, in the acceptance of the other and in the acceptance of the conditions of existence as a source and not as an opposition, restriction or limitation, has been the fundament for the evolutionary trend of conservation of the continuous expansion of intelligence in our lineage. We humans are the present result of these four basic processes. But there is more to our human condition than what is apparent in these reflections, both in the richness and range of being animals that live in conversations.

* mother can mean both male and female as it is understood as a caring function

Humberto Maturana Romesin and Gerden Verden-Zoeller, The Origin of the Humanness in the Biology of Love, Imprint Academic, Exceter, 2008

Tags: childhood, evolution, intelligence, language, love, sexuality

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