Concrete entanglement Site-Specific Installation of an Architectural Machine

Human activity increasingly moves to the electromagnetic domain, to the transmission and (electronic, computational, algorithmic) processing of signals which are imperceptible by the human sensory apparatus. We perceive just a fraction of the full spectrum of activity that surrounds us every day. Electromagnetic signals can be converted into perceivable information only through technological mediation (screens and loudspeakers at the ends or moments of transduction).

At the same time, Western society is predominantly occularcentric, giving primacy to vision over the other senses, while the inner workings of the media technologies we engage with become increasingly invisible. The signals through which these machines function, the carriers of information, entail the modulation of carrier waves (electromagnetic energy). A focus on sound and signal processing, on acoustic and electromagnetic waves, provides an opening into the machinic or ontological dimensions of media in relation to us and our environment.

The proposed artefact is a site-specific sound installation that seeks to explore the concrete entanglement of bodies, media technologies, and lived environment by making audible some of the given site’s sonic (or spectral) complexity, by modifying this sound environment, and by actively engaging the listeners in the process of modulation. It is an architectural machine2 which is installed in the exhibition space (it is, as it were, plugged into the physical space, into material structures and existing circuits on site).

More concretely, the installation consists of a technical system of transducers (microphones, loudspeakers, and tactile transducers) and processing units. Various types of microphones pick up activity in a wide spectrum, ranging from acoustic and mechanical to electromagnetic waves, and convert them into audio signals. In turn, loudspeakers and exciters or tactile transducers convert signals back into mechanical energy, into sound waves and tactile vibrations.

Acoustic and imperceptible waves, sound leakages from adjacent spaces, and structure-borne vibrations, produced by human and non-human activity, are converted into electrical signals, processed instantly, in ‘real time’, spatially distributed and transduced back into the acoustic environment. The spatial configuration of transducers allows specific feedback loops and avoids others. Audio signals are processed in such a way that they mutually affect each other, allowing for new sonic and spatio-temporal relationships to emerge. The audience affects the sound environment in various ways (as sound sources, through movement and position, diffusion and absorption in relation to acoustic feedback) and is invited to explore relations and co-constitute the sound environment (co-create the continuous spatial sound composition).

Because the installation is site-specific, the set of transduction circuits (the inputs and outputs their positions in space – see [ 1–3 ]) and processing patches (routed channels, modulation links, functions – see [ 4 ]) are determined through an acoustic exploration and analysis of the given site, which includes identifying signals and sound sources by means of listening through various types of microphones.

Transduction circuits and processing patches

This site-specific installation only processes concrete sounds present on site in real time: it does not use fixed media (such as pre-recorded material) or synthetic sound (oscillators). Input signals are processed and audio channels and modulation links are routed by means of processing patches. The combination of transduction circuits and processing patches allows for the emergence and exploration of new sonic and spatio-temporal relationships. Various input signals are treated as sound material and/or converted into modulation signals in order to draw different dynamic relationships.

Modulation signals are produced through detecting variations (in amplitude, phase, harmonic relations) of the input signals. Combined with the spatial position of the transduction circuits and the activity and movement of bodies, dynamic relationships become audible. Listeners can engage in the process of modulation.

Logic gates and functions trigger more instantaneous responses or spatio-temporal changes. For instance, when an input signal passes a certain threshold level or when multiple sound events occur at the same time, another process or spatial distribution is triggered. Or when an impulse is detected (at a regular or irregular time interval) from one input, a value from another input is sampled and hold until the next detected impulse occurs. Probable values and time intervals are mainly extracted from the input signals but to be able to affect, to modulate the (probability) density of amplifications and spatial distributions, additional irregular time intervals or random values are generated. No synthetic sound (produced by oscillators) is added, but waveforms are extracted in short time intervals from the input signals to generate new oscillations or emphasise textures.

The techniques are in themselves not new but draw on a long tradition in sound art and experimental electronic music composition. The original or experimental quality lies in combining a spatial, sonic, and diagrammatic approach which derives from a focus on signal processing.

Amplified realities

The broader research explores the shifting relations between bodies, media technologies, and lived environment – the concrete entanglement between abstract space-time and social realities – through a spatial and diagrammatic approach based on sound and signal processing [ 5 ]. It takes a transdisciplinary path across architecture, philosophy, sound studies, and sonic practice. Theoretical and design-driven research are intertwined.

The starting point is the notion that the human use of electromagnetic energy as carrier of information [ 6 ] – which is basis of signal processing (from early electric telecommunication and radio to ubiquitous computing) – radically transforms and complicates the relationships between bodies, media technologies, and lived environment. Transmission with the speed of light modifies proximities, allowing for seemingly unconfined communication and remote control, changing habits and perception. Coupled with the increasing precision of clock time, signal transmission enabled radio-navigation and complex sensing and automation systems. The increasing dependency on media technologies to carry out or automate activities (to sense, build, and change our environment) and the interdependencies between them, coupled with the decreasing clarity of their inner workings, which is in part inherent in their expanding complexity, creates the condition for unprecedented forms of automated subservience and ubiquitous control.

Ubiquitous computing and algorithmic processing change the modes of governance. This process cannot be understood solely in terms of signification, representation, or the discursive. It is needed to also recognise the material, ontological, or machinic dimensions – the asignifying semiotic apparatuses, the signals and algorithms.

Automated subservience and the convolution of cybernetics and capitalism

Maurizio Lazzarato, following Félix Guattari, describes how present-day capitalism does not only function through “social subjection” (significations, representations, discourse) but also through “machinic enslavement” based on “asignifying semiotics” (diagrams, algorithms, signals).3 It needs to control asignifying semiotic apparatuses in order to more easily circumvent laws and institutions. The efficiency of these apparatuses lies in the automation of evaluation and their ability to automate decision-making, to depersonalise and depoliticise power.4 “Diagrams provide the thresholds of proto-subjectivity from which human subjectivity determines its choices.”5

Gary Genosko explicates asignifying semiotics through acknowledging the “machinic qualities of signals.”6 He takes as point of departure Umberto Eco’s definition of signals as “units of transmission which can be computed quantitatively irrespective of their possible meaning” but moves to a more progressive understanding.7 Also drawing on Eco’s definition, Antoinette Rouvroy states: “Raw data function as de-territorialized signals, inducing reflex responses in computer systems, rather than as signs carrying meaning and requiring interpretation.”8 She argues that this condition of “algorithmic governmentality” implies a shift from targeting actuality (facts) to targeting potentiality (relations). For example, page ranking based on the number of hyperlinks rather than on content, or profile-based advertisements. In short, the utilisation of predictive algorithms anticipating events in real-time and affecting one’s choices at a preconscious stage, for Rouvroy, tends to prevent no less than the very possibility of critical thinking – that is, the process of individuation.

The design-driven research component does not directly address this problematics or provide any answers, but allows for the exploration of the machinic or asignifying dimensions in the production of subjectivity.

Architectural machine

Through a series of installations and compositions, the research seeks to develop an abstract machine which enables processes of reterritorialisation by modifying existing sites sonically. Each project modifies a sonic space, exploring other forms for or latent potentials of that given space by rerouting its circuits and producing new material configurations and spatial articulations of sound. The architectural machine is itself composed of multiple machines, and learns to adapt to and intervene in different environments. Through an iterative process of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation, which involves various sites, it is conceived, constructed and effectuated.

The works aim to contribute to exploring possibilities for another space, another thinking, which moves beyond the inevitability of subservience to the dominant mode of subjectivation, without slipping into binary opposition or, on the contrary, postmodern, depoliticised and uncritical relativism. The social relevance, or urgency, lies in the aforementioned problem of automated subservience and ubiquitous control inherent in the concrete entanglement between bodies, media technologies, and lived environment, which should be understood as continuous and reciprocal process of formation.