The Dimension of Sound in Flusser: Implications for a Sonic Media Archaeology

This paper unearths a hitherto neglected sonic dimension within Vilém Flusser's work. It fuses one of his few essays on the auditive, “the gesture of listening to music,” with his predominantly visually thesis of a “crisis of linearity,” which is read as a powerful media-philosophical and epistemological model. Instead of viewing Flusser's ocularcentrism in the “crisis of linearity” as a shortcoming, Flusser's work on sound and music can be applied to speculate on the radical potential of a sonic dimension in his media-philosophical model. Using the example of archaeoacoustics, I examine the gesture of listening as a challenge to contemporary epistemological paradigms, and assess its implications for a sonic media archaeology

"Music", "Chamber Music" and "Hörigkeit" in Flusseriana: An Intellectual Toolbox

Three lexicon entries in the publication Flusseriana: An Intellectual Toolbox Freestyle thinking – that is Vilém Flusser’s intellectual modus operandi: challenging and offensive, paradoxical and audacious. His thought knows no disciplines or subjects, nor does it pay tribute to other academic frameworks or rituals. Above all else his thought wants to intervene in ongoing cultural and artistic processes and influence them. In order to achieve this, no closed theoretical systems are necessary, only open, operative structures. The Flusseriana is a toolbox capable of being developed and expanded. It contains more than 200 “thinkthings” (Denkdinge) of all kinds: particularities like “Indian Summer,” “Atlas,” “Submissiveness,” “Animal,” or “Mediterranean Sea”; condensed Flusserian thought concerning the big eternal questions such as “History,” “Language,” “Myth,” and “Religion”; the central concepts of his media analysis, including “Apparatus,” “Abstraction,” “Cybernetics,” and “Telematics”; as well as Flusser’s own neologisms – “Communicology,” “Universe of Dots,” the old and the new “Imaginations.” More than 100 authors produced the entries under these lemmata. That is dialogic practice – entirely in the spirit of the philosophical writer from Prague

The Dimension of Sound in Flusser

The dimension of sound has long been considered completely missing from Flusser's thought, thus most Flusser research has not dealt with the auditive in his work so far. This article has a two-fold approach to counter this common perception; firstly, by looking at three (German) texts in which Flusser deals with music and sound directly – “Chamber Music”, “The Gesture of Listening To Music” and “Hörigkeit/Hoerapparate”, and secondly by looking at Flusser's key text “Crisis of Linearity” which largely ignores sound. The former tackles these lesser known texts to examine how Flusser actively (though rarely) applied music and sound in his work, whilst the latter uses methods of sound studies to critique the absence of sound in his important media-philosophical thesis. Flusser's writings on music and sound are both striking for the contemporaneity yet problematic for their demoded appearance of concepts such as “pure music”. Insights from contemporary sound studies question the dominance of the visual in Flusser's work and the epistemological consequences this might have

Sounding Cyber*feminist Futures. Speculations on Sonic Unknowns

What can the legacies of cyber*feminism offer towards thinking about sonic futures? Cyber*feminist thought and action since the 1990s has demanded that the intersections of gender, race, class and ability be included in the often allencompassing enthusiasm which dominates debates around technology. Crypton Future Media’s hugely successful virtual pop star Hatsune Miku’s character name Future Sound of Pop Music, Bern 2017 translates literally as “the first sound from the future.” Taking Miku as an example, I will examine what tropes of its history as a vocaloid software combined with successful marketing strategies have led to its huge popularity. Miku as a vacant feminized technologized vessel in which the voice plays a central role has a history which can be traced back at least to the sexist science fiction of August Villiers de L'Isle-Adam’s 1886 novel “The Future Eve”. Undeniably, technological innovations shape pop musical aesthetics, however my lecture aims to explore from a cyber*feminist position which tropes have transformed and which have, according to history, unfortunately remained the same in the larger ecologies of popular music. In line with a tradition of feminist speculative thought, I suggest that greater attention to the inequitable politics and economics of music technology production today will be vital in challenging notions of music technology in the future

Myths of Echo

Three-part sound installation. ‘Cosmic Mothers’ exhibition, at Mimosa House, London, UK. --- A group exhibition featuring Bonnie Camplin, Annie Goh, Jackie Karuti, Janina Kraupe-Świderska, Alexandra Paperno. Curated by Daria Khan. The title of this exhibition is inspired by the enigmatic painting ‘Cosmic Mother’ (1970) by the Soviet artist Galina Konopatskaya (1911–1989). In the painting, the Cosmic Mother appears as an ethnically ambiguous, androgynous person holding a baby in their arms. Both mother and child wear astronaut suits and are floating in outer space. The composition echoes Christian Orthodox icons of the Madonna and Child found in churches, but instead of the traditional golden halo surrounding the Madonna’s head, the Cosmic Mother floats in front of planet Earth. This 1970 masterpiece belongs to the tradition of Socialist Realism, a style of state-sponsored art used to spread communist propaganda and atheist values in Soviet Russia. Konopatskaya’s painting suggests the holy Madonna should be replaced with an atheist image of a woman-astronaut. Her figure alludes to the first woman in space – the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 – and the supremacy of science and technology over religion. But women’s emancipation under communism was deceptive. The state needed women to enter the labour market, as well as to become mothers, in its quest to become the world’s leading power, during the Cold War. It demanded both kinds of labour, to conform to the state’s production and reproduction growth plans. Yet, what would happen if we set aside this context? If, instead, we chose to view the image through the prisms of cyberfeminism and queer science-fiction, and in doing so, build an alternative system of knowledge around it? Dispensing with its historical context might leave us with another, liberated image – a futuristic portrait of an almighty science fiction icon, a gender-fluid Goddess, a cosmic carer. This image acts as an invitation to re-imagine the history of art and feminism to our advantage. It asks us to reflect on the relationship between science, ideology, and the imagination. Could we view the Cosmic Mother as an optimistic premonition that speaks to a queer universe, a place independent of biological parenthood, where participation in the realms of science, technology and religion are no longer gendered and racialised – but equalised? Artists’ works in the show draw on cosmologies, science-fiction, esoteric practices and ancestral mythologies that deconstruct officially approved scientific discourse. Featuring video, sound, painting and drawing, the exhibition examines the way alternative knowledges and radical imaginations overlap across cultures and geographies, and act as a tool to resist a dominant world order of utility, convenience and standardisation. The exhibition was made possible thanks to Taus Makhacheva, Dominik Pajewscy, Grażyna Świderska, Mateusz Swiderski and Paulina Olowska

From White Brothers with No Soul to Feminist Prometheans: Lights Out at the White Supremacist Theory Disco

Annie Goh's recent critique of Xenofeminism explores the latest in a sequence of moves by which white feminist theorists have re-asserted new universalisms which thrive off but also re-marginalise the 'alien' identity of non-white and non-cis or non-straight others. This writing continues the project Goh began whilst working with Club Transmediale/CTM Festival Berlin of questioning complexifying the relationships to race and gender at the heart of the norms defining histories of club culture and electronic music. In conversation with Anthony Iles, Goh will attempt to work through the problems of who is, and who is not, written into or out of the dancefloor of history and what consequences this has for attempts to place emancipatory politics at the centre of the club's concerns

Flusser’s Sonic Modernity

This chapter addresses Flusser’s often neglected writings on music and sound as they relate to his understanding of modernity. Taking two lectures ‘On Music’ and ‘On Modern Music’ given in Sao Paolo in 1965 as its departure point, Flusser’s conceptualization of a sonic modernity is examined within his ‘communicological’ theory. Contrary to a McLuhanesque media theory of the auditive, I argue Flusser’s theorization is distinct due to his characteristic ‘groundlessness’ and seeks to destabilize, rather than restabilize, a liberal Western humanist modernism

Sonic Cyberfeminisms Collection for Cyberfeminism Index

Cyberfeminism Index is an in-progress online collection of resources for techno-critical works from 1990–2020, gathered and facilitated by Mindy Seu. Seu's ongoing Cyberfeminism Index, which gathers three decades of online activism and net art, was commissioned by Rhizome and presented at the New Museum in its online form, and its print form is a recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant

Appropriating the Alien: A critique of Xenofeminism

The Xenofeminist Manifesto claims, among many things, rationalism and technology as core to a renewed futurist feminist project. However, given the provenance of its moniker and its 'pro-enlightenment' position, Annie Goh asks, WTF exactly is XF

Introduction: Music and Sound in Vilém Flusser’s Work

Co-authored introduction to special issue of Flusser Studies