Conversations on Activism: Innovation/Technology March 14, 2022

good evening my name is megumi masaki and i am coming to you from brandon manitoba we are on treaty two lands um and these lands are the traditional homelands of the dakota anishinaabeg denne denikri um sorry oji kri dene and meti peoples i'm very grateful for their ongoing patience and hospitality i have the honor of introducing suzanne kite who will be our moderator for this evening suzanne or also known as kite is an oglala lakota performance artist visual artist and composer raised in southern california with a bfa in cal arts music composition and mfa from bard college's milton avery graduate school and is a phd candidate at concordia university kite scholarship and practice highlights contemporary lakota epistemologies through research creation computational media and performance recently kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances carbon fiber sculptures immersive video and sound installations as well as co-running the experimental electronic imprint unheard records welcome suzanne kite hi thank you all uh for inviting me to discuss with these super interesting sound artists today i'll say hamatakyapi susan karamachi oglala himacha um chante washed hannah pechi relatives i shake your hands with a happy heart i am currently on muskie creek reservation el wati so i'm in tulsa oklahoma i am [Music] super excited to talk about the works that were submitted in the screening that was is available on youtube and um i have prepared some questions and discussed to discuss with the artists and i i think the way we'll do this is i'm just going to repeat some of the questions from the video that i originally prompted everybody with these questions were what who's the first non-human you came to know what is unknowable in your practice how do you define listening are all these things audible so those were kind of the core questions um that i i wanted to pose and i guess just before we do like an open discussion i wanted to individually ask questions to each of the artists um and to give everybody a chance to introduce themselves in their in their own way um so yeah i actually wanted to if it's okay start with theresa um because i hi i have some questions about your uh this term this term ecological performativity that you use uh and i understood it as like a thing the things between being hood so interactions between things to to allow for co-creation and um i guess one of my questions was it sounded like you you talked about your work as a as an arc and you know this a piece you made at the beginning and a piece that you pieces that you're making now and i wanted to know what the process was of moving your practice from maybe a more human-centric vision to or or ear let's say to non-human ontology centered what what dislodged your thinking how did it transform over time thank you for the question susan um suzanne probably sorry um i'm coming to you from montreal uh jjigae i'm originally from newfoundland uh the traditional territory of the gothic and the miguel ma and uh to answer your question the trajectory of specifically what i mentioned in that video i've been involved in a lot of field recording for a very long time just going out about in the world gathering audio visual material pretty much an impropository process almost like a process of emergence emergence and during that time i started to become curious you know going into these different environments whether it be an airport or a forest just all these different places um how i i became curious to try to to involve other um material from these environments like let's say if i'm in um one example would be if i'm like in the los angeles airport how could i use the data from the flights being landed in that place so i just wanted to find ways to engage different elements from the different environments be it human or environmental data sets and that led from me doing fixed media works to diving very deep into creative coding processes to engage with these different data sets or live stream environmental data so basically it it it emerged out of just being out and about in the world uh engaging with the stuff of the world and then the process then of when the works are being made and engaging with the different materials that the language started to change of how i started to describe uh you know what i was doing or contextualizing it and that did come about because i did a phd and you are required in that kind of um environment to contextualize your you know contextual related practice and that led me to finding different thinkers far outside the music lexicon of thinking and more into a philosophical stream which led me to land on what i ended up describing as an ecological performative practice yeah that's really interesting that i i actually overall like engaging with everyone's work i i don't think anyone is using the word empathy i mean correct me if i'm wrong if it came up in any of the event i don't think it did i mean stop me if you did because i think that's one interesting thing that i've found actually when i was in large groups of like vr and a and like people where the word empathy would come up as a goal for the audience which i don't underst i don't understand why that always gets wrapped up environmental stuff like somehow if you can force people to respect something that that they'll respect like respect isn't a choice um it's like a trigger so which so i found that um interesting and and that leads me to my next question for you teresa about um so when do you how do you feel your audience what do you feel your audience does when they experience like things like large data sets of weather phenomenon does it uh does it change minds like how do is it like a physical experience um what do you think it is it does what is it doing with like the audience because often we get this as composers we get a lot of pressure about like oh what does your music does your music make people dance or feel like good or does your music make people feel bad like i mean i like i like noise stuff so i like to be made to feel very bad sometimes so yeah i just like and the data sets it's hard because we're trying to make them [Music] experienceable yeah i think it would uh it would have to be my answer would have to be very specific to the different pieces because each piece is really different like as soon as you use the word and i think i'm going to stop using this eventually when i figure out a better way to say it as soon as you use the word data people are thinking that you're evidencing the data and that's not what's happening in the work um so if i think about the different works uh specifically the last four works i did that did use like um live stream wind live stream ocean data and also a piece where the gallery visitors their heart rate uh triggered aspects of the installation uh first off the the the initial response from the the from the the audience is the they're curious they become curious in what's happening uh and then they become intrigued and then when they realize that um that it's like the movement of the ocean that's creating these different things in front of them they feel uh i'm just trying to remember what some folks said they feel more engaged with what's happening in front of them that they have a different conversation with the work also too because these works are non-linear there's no beginning middles and ends they have a different relationship to their participate to their engagement with the work that they don't have to you know you're not sitting in a concert hall waiting for the piece to start and then finish the more specifically the one piece that specifically use the heart rate of the gallery visitors they felt more embodied with the piece because their heart rate was actually triggering a number of visual effects within the overall system so i think that's two things there's a different engagement and also just a suspend a suspension of linearity thanks for the question yeah i i think on what you bring up hopefully we can talk about in some other other works um because time is actually a really palpable material in a lot of the video that people presented and i actually this kind of brings me to my question i wanted to ask helga about about your work and you know in in thinking through what you were showing and in this kind of pathway and it was great to see the map because we were able to see just the vastness of the possible listening space and and if we bring in this concept of time you know as much as we listen to it it's just a fraction of the possible i mean the plants won't be there for infinity but the pot near infinity possible that we could listen to that space um but actually i had a question about um about you use this term rescaling and i i really enjoy thinking about when we make artworks or do actually a lot in performance but maybe in anything sound time-based they're they're microcosms of something else and when we listen in we're jumping in a timeline and then jumping out and i i guess i wanted to know how you see these interactions at like like what are the possible scalings um and and i think maybe something about that looking at the map like took me there because i know that you know all this stuff about maps like the borehazian map the unknown unconscionable map you know the map can never represent the thing but then there we go and we're the closest we can possibly be to a plant so yeah um if the quest is a vague question but it's something like how do you see your you listening to your plants as a microcosm of something larger like the whole earth and please introduce yourself um yeah for sure um yeah i i like the i like the vagueness because it's kind of like a vague and also hyper specific thing which is akin to scaling right where it's kind of this idea of like wanting to be able to sum things up neatly um i'll i'll yeah i'll first introduce myself which is that i'm helga jacobson i'm an artist who's uh situated on treaty one territory in winnipeg manitoba um my practice uh does a lot to play with sound although i'm not a composer or necessarily a musician i come at it more from a transdisciplinary stance i'm always really honored and thankful to be in these spaces with these people talking about composing ways i'm like okay it's not just me as an outsider you guys are really thinking about this and like it's yeah it feels really exciting to me and and i feel honored to be here um yeah scaling i think you know there there's something that that i've been thinking a lot about in my practice is kind of you know that joy that you had when you first watched that eames power of 10 video where it's like oh yeah i can neatly cleanly understand these cores up and into myself and wow it's just so organized and clear and precise and that's just not the way that it is i mean um whether it's time or whether it's um you know trying to understand uh a certain species of plant or or any of this um there's no real way of pinpointing and so i really like to situate myself and my practice within kind of that murky territory between things so that kind of like interstitial space of like of um kind of what uh yeah i guess like don haraway talks about a lot where it's you know those murky mucky spaces where true evolution happens where things aren't so clean cut between um you know one skill or another and for me i think there's there's that physical kind of scaling but then there's also kind of emotional scaling and i i also i'm not i'm not interested in in this you know trying to create empathy for plants when they're they have just such a different existence all on their own and i think um you know instead trying to rescale your relationship to them so trying to really sit with and be with and to to make with these things these beings and these um you know a field or what have you and really trying to figure out the scale of yourself within that moment that time that exact um space that you're in um and also recognizing that it's changing as as it's going and i think one of the videos on the map that that i shared in in the documentation for for this project um was uh in my front yard where i tore up all of the turf and turned it into a meadow and tried to bring it back and and celebrate the the pollinators that were kind of gathering in that space and so a lot of the videos have all of these different native species of bees and and trying to just think about that space as it was coming and going and and um and just constantly moving and recording it was kind of a nightmare because uh it was uh you know really chaotic when the bees were in it but but i also wanted to find a way of of translating that uh where it's not like i've i've done you know plant recordings in in interior spaces where it's really easy to kind of understand the bioelectric capacitance and the variables that are happening within that single structure and then taking it out into a field and doing kind of this bizarre field recording um in a way yeah it was it was a really interesting thing to think about scaling and i don't i don't think i have a very clear answer but i i hope that that meandering kind of answers a bit of what you were you're asking yeah i have um one more question i was i've been working on for way too long um on these set of interviews um one one is with um uh zoe todd and am kassinger they write amazing uh texts about field recording and one thing in the in the conversation that came up over and over was um how it could be possible to develop a practice of of sitting so long with a possible field recording space that you can understand whether you're welcomed there or not which is a very like it can be very esoteric and difficult thing to pinpoint or to allow rejection to be possible and and i guess when i was like watching that video i was thinking about how you showed us some very specific technical methodologies for listening to non-humans through sensors and synthesizers and also the the process of walking the process of planting those are all like method actual methodologies and um i'm wondering if there are any other methodologies that um you know you utilize in your in your practice that we didn't see in that video and kind of in this realm of intuition as a muscle which i really liked um you know uh how it's if it's if you ever get the intuition of rejection from [Music] the natural we get that all the time i got thrown off a horse today i was like i'm done with the natural world i'm going back to my office oh yeah oh that's that's a good one i mean yeah getting stung or or things like this is your gardening where you think well but i'm like i'm like bringing you all of these nutrients and i'm you know treating my soil very well and i'm putting my consumption back into you and like why would you sting me like i'm here i love you and i think i think it's i think it's kind of this exercise in in trying continually to remove your ego and again to remember this much larger scale of being and and constantly re-situating yourself so i think like there are these signals but i mean yeah and no offense because wow getting thrown off a horse that's that's not very nice and and has has um you know a lot of feelings associated with it but but i think like you know in my example you know getting stung by a bee that's so small scale on this like larger scale experience of these plants that are you know perennial and and coming back and back and back and so i think like this fruit of this one moment that i'm listening to yeah i don't i don't take those little little moments too personally or something like that but i think i think that um yeah i've had really funny moments of of kind of intuition where you you when you walk into a space and you can feel like yeah okay the air is too thick here and it's and somehow i think in my work i i i do a lot of sitting in space and and and trying to understand the electric current that's running through the air and and seeing you know how my presence very really when if i leave um you know these kind of sensors out there's a very different thing that goes on if i walk away and and leave that there to do its thing than when i'm watching and so i think i think for me it can become a really overwhelming practice where where you know you try to remove yourself as much as you can but then you're also trying to reflect back and so then you do kind of need to be there so in in certain moments yeah somehow you you catch the atmosphere where you can realize like yeah okay it's i guess like for for lack of a better way of seeing it too wet in the air or to too many bodies around to catch the the kind of resonance of the plants themselves i had this exhibition in ottawa a few years ago where i i set up my my plant synthesizers in the ceiling of the space and i hooked them up to plants that were growing and living in the space that that were then returned to to owners who who um or guardians of of them um and so they were just kind of on display for a moment and i'd fine-tuned like i i had just spent so long i started to feel like i was like a mad scientist in the space like like i figured it out i know exactly the energy of each of these plants like it was perfect and then opening night came and all of these people came into the room and the plants were playing perfectly the soundscape was like perfect i was so happy and then slowly as more and more people came in it just short-circuited the system because there was just too much electricity in the space so the sound started going and i thought oh i'm a fraud like my my experiment like what did i do wrong and then slowly as people started leaving the sound came back and it was kind of like yeah okay it was just too excited for a minute and and like and that's okay but i think i think um yeah i i my my work and and how i engage with plants i try to make sure that in what ways i can understand i'm trying to be reciprocal with them and not trying to push them or or in atmospheres not trying to intrude and and there are clear indicators um of of when when that happens and also just some vibes or intuitive feelings after doing this work for a while um and and also some some knowledge around like i don't want to be recording in in in spaces that are endangered or where there are vulnerable plants or things like that so you kind of apply a number of different knowledges and then and then just try your best within it i suppose that's really interesting yeah thanks for sharing that example i always wondered how that if what kind of outcome it happens when there's a large room of people and and these sort of sensors but actually what you bring up is kind of an interesting i'm a big karen broad fan and i love their they're writing about you know in tank you know serious entanglements between time and space and i think that's always relevant i mean i could probably find a good reason to apply barad anywhere but i think especially in this type of thinking about how long term interaction with things is it does so much but as soon as you step away something else will probably probably happen um the gaze does disrupt and so does the tool and technology you're using to measure and so on and so forth um so that's a really good a really good point yeah thank you um so i wanted to i wanted to next um talk to annie um about your uh video and i i thought you know your video was actually to me the the most like sitting there and listening pot one possible because we we really just experienced the world with you like like i was just holding the camera myself um and i i just wanted to i guess start with hearing about you and your um the process of making the video like where you were what you're doing who you're talking to how long you're out there that sort of thing sure thank you kite um so i'm annie martin and i'm in lethbridge which is in treaty 7 and metis region 3 in southern alberta um so you're you're asking kind of something about process i think um i was really really in like moved and inspired by your questions and so i think that i took those as a cue to move forward with some things i'd already been thinking about namely how to have a real experience of the presence of a kind of mind of a plant but also networks of plants so i'm kind of taking an approach of very experiential approach how can i overcome my euro centric view that plants don't have mind or consciousness or sentience that they are somehow you know in the kind of european philosophical framework they plants are way down some kind of weird hierarchy below animals and way below humans and so i i you know i was my intention was really to from a first person perspective start to tease that open and asking myself how can i really experience a kind of um it can't be a conversation per se but a listening a reciprocal listening and understanding uh the presence of of a consciousness a kind of mind and i worked with cottonwood trees because the river valley here the old man river um uh valley is uh populated by cottonwoods in fact they're really integral to the to the environment and kind of hold the riverbanks and so on which kind of comes up in the in the video um and i i started really early in june not june 1st but i think it was the second or third and i committed to walking every day and also sitting in those in this particular mostly in one particular area which is a nature reserve so you get a really beautiful kind of range of ages of cottonwood trees from seedlings and young trees to very old trees that have you know dropped a bunch of limbs and are kind of um probably over 100 years old but interestingly it was also bounded by the high level bridge which is that big railway bridge and highway 3 so it was a pocket of relatively naturalized or undisturbed cottonwood forest that was clearly fenced in by human infrastructure and i found that particularly hard to overcome for myself especially on the level of sound because often you can hear highway traffic and you see the train and hear the train going by so mainly i was walking there and you know probably about an hour every day and um i did i chose to use my phone camera because i wanted that to simply be a witness and not to really get too involved with um the idea of capture so much as just having a witness who kind of came with me and then was able somehow to i was able to share these kind of little snippets and fragments of um what what i experienced what i saw and and you know the sort of attempt that i made to to be in touch with um with these beings in a sense and with an understanding their their interconnectedness as well and that the people walking with me were friends particularly miguel solis who's a friend and a student graduate student here who i've had a lot of conversations with about about a kind of intimacy with intimacy with uh what so-called natural world intimacy with plants intimacy with with with the land of the earth um that's kind of his his area of interest yeah and then um uh based on that i i really um wanted to hear about the point in the i don't know if it was you or someone else the point in the video where there's like i guess what's akin to yoyking or responding to nature sounds with nature sounds um yeah is that you or is that um is that are you responding to the bird that was our guest and i had a lengthy conversation that was in the background and wasn't in the video with um with a collaborator and fellow who's a musician which i am i'm actually not a musician about the possibility of singing to trees or singing with trees and she was kind of adamant that that was going too far and especially not to take a composition there and sort of present a composition to a tree but at one point sitting sitting in that place with this one particular tree that i'd spent a lot of time with i just felt like i could i could kind of pick up on something and give it back to that tree it was like my emotional response to the presence of the tree so that was me kind of soto just under my breath kind of singing or vocalizing something was just it was fully improvised and i actually kind of you know regret that i didn't do that more because i think the reason i didn't is i i lacked the kind of courage to do that but i think um somehow that that could have that could have happened more and my and then this other question i have for you was about like how you see because you said you're not a composer um the how you see this kind of experiment or going out with the cottonwoods in relation to the rest of your practice like do you did it affect it did it change does it fit in easily with the rest of the kind of work you make yeah i think i think it doesn't look materially like the other work most of the other work i've made um i you know mainly because i tend to work with material practices that have that are tactile and have a kind of that are not media based but i um i think it ties really closely into a a kind of parallel practice that i've been pursuing for almost 20 years which is conducting listening walks and it was kind of like it was like like taking a group of people on a field recording like having the experience of when when we're in our in our ears and we're in an environment field recording um but without any without any microphone without any recording device but going and with a heightened sensitivity to um to sonic space and to different environments and walking through them and experiencing them that way so i think i was kind of taking that practice and method and bringing it to the trees but i i mean i i find it interesting to like to hear from helga about like the intricacy of the technology that you use he'll helga to like pick up on plants um electromagnetic signatures and and um so i guess the question i had was like how i loved your question um are all things heard audible kate kite because um that that's a question i've i've worked with a lot too in the background um is you know are there are there ways we can hear with with senses that are really subtle that don't move through the ear but we're nonetheless hearing something and so it kind of goes into the realm of it goes into the realm of kind of the supernatural it could go into the realm of haunting um intuition some kind of psychic dimension of of energy and i find all those things really interesting to just kind of push the boundaries of the notion of um sensory sensitivity and the sensitivity the potential sensitivity and listening that could we could cultivate yeah it's interesting you bring that up because um i uh recently wrote an article which is kind of irrelevant somewhat it's not irrelevant but it's if you want to check it out it's about hauntings and spiritualism and kind of that history and um it's the ucla journal of research of america american indian research journal something like that um it's called the lakota relationships with the stars and american relationships with the apocalypse and the because i think that there is a really interesting intersection between listening and histories of listening and um and political histories and this kind of experience of um like settler experience of nature and how that's shifted over time so yeah i i find that you know really really interesting and i have i have another question i'll i'll come back too but thank you so much um annie for for all that um and now i i've saved amy for last because of how close are um you know closer in the more tech realm and and computational non-human ontology so yeah my questions are are questions that i have constantly in my work as well um amy about um how do you perceive or viscerally experience computer communication um it's like the kind of bane of my existence is to it's just to know that um i'm in this like causal loop of i wrote i made the data set i i chose the algorithm and can i say it says and can i say that decision making is happening um and then yeah and i guess the question with that is like and then i know okay decision making is happening we're seeing it we're interacting with it but then it's can i say for certain that like interiority or animacy is there if i can't really if i can't perceive fully whether the computer can choose whether or not to participate i guess that goes for plants too any non-humans that don't have language that we have like is agency there i don't know but those that was kind of my first and please introduce yourself thank you susan um uh i'd love i love that question i won't be able to address it in in the terms that you do because of course you know i just loved your article about uh making kenwood machines and i don't have i think the same uh [Music] uh sort of language to discuss it as as you do in the in that article but i'll do my best um so i'm in i'm in magma i'm in nova scotia and i'm a composer and i love to make artworks in augmented reality and ar specifically ones that use the body to interact because we have more access to that kind of technology right now and what i i really love to do is make works that explore that sort of really bizarre fine line between the real world and the digital one i mean we spend so so much time with technology we're in that we're in the digital world right now you know discussing with each other over vast distances so so much of our life is spent in this so almost quasi-invisible now digital landscape and um that question you have about decision making i find that just such an uh fascinating question um because it's true how much of the artwork that we make in the digital realm how much of that decision is ours and how much of it is you know the the decision the affordances of the technology and the programming that we're using but also the you know you as we were talked about with you know other uh non-human entities that we work with the consciousness of them um i don't know uh suzanne if you have the same experiences of feeling frustration and trying to communicate uh with uh computers but as somebody who didn't know how to program or at all until a couple of years ago and sort of kind of scraped together a little bit of knowledge on how to do it i found it a very frustrating experience to try and basically learn a whole new way of communicating with devices with which i didn't have anything in common um and trying to i think maybe in a similar way to the other panelists here in in sitting with plants and trees and other non-human beings simply trying to comprehend what their existence is like is is a task until itself and i feel sort of same way working with computers and the digital the digital world um just trying to communicate or interact just to make those decisions to to that ends up being an artwork uh is sort of a feat unto itself and i don't know if that answers your question but that's my sort of experience with uh with working with computers and thinking of them as non-human collaborators yeah i mean it's a real question and i think that that is the root question of like is there artificial intelligence and or can we ever get it and my bigger question always is why do we want it that's a weird thing to want um but uh you know i i really liked um the aesthetic aspect of your work and how it is um possible to imagine those you know um i don't know how animate you think that you perceive them as but these like very animated like undulating things uh moving around in in many environments and um [Music] i i was just on a panel where we went deep into questions of we watched with a bunch i watched was watching with my hawaiian colleagues um the uh uh like the facebook presentation of their new project where you can speak into the metaverse what you want in an environment and it'll pop up it'll and so of course they populated a little a little hawaiian island which is very dark and weird thing to do to create immediately in a metaverse it's because he lives in in hawaii um and the but it brought to brought to mind all these ideas of disassociation and like what kind of i mean first of all the art that they made in that moment this like weird bubble world is very ugly and um and as much as you can interact in it i can i know what goes what's going to go on the metaverse is going to be the same as goes on everywhere else on the internet it's going to be racist classist homophobe all the bad things that we see come out and i guess i mean sorry to be so this is like totally the things i nerd out about but like the imagining your effervescent beings floating in the world and making music and how do you feel they how do you want them to be in the world and how do you want people your audience to to work with them and to encounter to come away with because i can feel like if i was working with it i would i feel like i would come away with like the feeling of this effervescent being well honestly my first reaction to your question was that it's purely selfish on my part it's pure selfishness because um well first of all the like the undulating globes that you sort of see and all of that is reacting to the distance between yourself and the digital object so you as the user when you're walking around you're making that happen um so i don't know i i i love that i like making things react to what i'm doing physically um i i like to be able to control that it's it's funny it makes me feel like maybe i'm in have some power in this digital realm well usually you know we do feel powerless because there's just this wash of like you say tons of bad things and sometimes the digital our digital lives just totally overwhelm us and we also sometimes can't get away from it as well so in some ways when in ukraine is i sort of feel like a little bit of of power again over these um digital objects so that's that that part of it and then the reason for creating it is in some ways um i'm trying to make something that uh is could not possibly be uh pulled into the capitalists uh it couldn't there you could never commercialize it i mean it's utterly useless to sell and anything to anybody it's just like the um uh using the technology for something other than to sell advertisements uh to sell products um to um do anything of that sort and so that's why i say that it's just selfishness because i just want to use what i see as a sort of magical thing to make something magical instead of something said of the opposite so i don't know if that uh if that makes any sense at all yeah i think i mean it does the the disassociation that we experience with the with the internet is so interesting and reminds me of i can't remember who said it i feel like it was my friend scott vanessa abandoned who's a anishinabe um artist and we were talking it must have been on a maybe it was an interview something about how talking about like very ancient forms of long-distance communication such as in the shaking tent and where you have this very physical realm of communication but there's already ethical ways of doing this like spiritual communication um that are available to us and yeah that always reminds me of when we were dealing with this question of like are we losing ethics by making things non-physical i always try to remind myself that we can do things that are non-physical in a good way it's totally possible um so i have some questions that are just for everybody and um you're welcome to jump in uh they're they're much more broad uh so this this question actually came up um we talked about the highway going by and annie's work train going by and um i was thinking about uh steve goodman's book sonic warfare and about how um the political comes into listening practices and um because obviously right now where we're at with uh listening to nature is it's like kind of race not to be too dark it's a little bit of race against time um every interaction and commodification of the natural world is a very um pertinent one so i just kind of wondering how people see their see the political in their work um maybe it's a location based thing maybe it's an audience sort of thing not everyone has to answer but if you have a because i've got lots more questions i'll keep prattling for a second if no one has it say a thing um which is um i think i think when um especially when you're a settler i think especially making sound with land um with stolen land i think it's it's um really important to be aware of where you're situated and why you're doing what you're doing and i think um you know what amy was talking about capitalism and and thinking about you know profiting off of the natural landscape that you're that you're in i think it's really important to be very critical and aware and i think um i think this is something that comes into my practice quite a lot where i i'm i'm i'm really not interested in speaking for plants i mean it would be easy to create a bot that would make poetry of electric impulse or something like this in sort of dataist kind of um regurgitation of syllables or something like that and that's not at all what i'm interested in um i think some of the the most furtive spaces that i've been in were working with i worked with the um i worked as at the artist in residence at a conservatory that closed and thinking about climate change through the lens of this building that um you know was a colonial structure that um the plants started like the roots of the plant started to collapse the building um because they'd just grown too big for the space and like the there's a palm that was like pushing the roof out and and sitting there and thinking with that in in climate change and in this crisis that we're living in um and and also this kind of bizarre landscape in this interior of this building that was purely fantasy it's it's these you know plants that could never exist outside in in any sort of natural world together and brought together as this kind of you know um oddity this space to be marveled at and then also just really enjoying it and being like oh i'm in winnipeg in the middle of winter and it's so nice to be here and and again just learning learning how to sit with that complexity and and you know not not shying away from looking at the darker sides that i think is incredibly important and also not trying to speak for other beings or or for other people and and trying to be um vinci and dupree talks about being a polite visitor and so learning how how to to to be with instead of trying to dominate or trying to you know control i think is is really important in my practice thanks hoka anybody else want to respond i'll read this crazy quote while we wait um i'm really obsessed with this essay called um and it's in a journal called environmental ethics it's called post-modern environmental ethics ethics says bioregional narrative by someone named jim chaney but in this text i i always come back to it because i really like this idea um that he proposes of bioregional truth that um and i'll just read a little bit of the quote um what has emerged is a conception of bioregional truth local truth or ethical vernacular the voices of health will be as various and multiple as the landscapes which give rise to them landscapes which function as metaphors of self and community and figure into those mythical narratives which give voice to emergence of self and community and um that always reminds me like when we're doing these lists like we're talking to other people who do like field recordings and listening walks and those um kind of like experimental sound methodologies about how it kind of sounds like we're all talking about the same places but we're really talking about it and we're talking we're talking we are all talking about good trying to listen in a good way and um and trying to be in some sort of ethical relationship and reciprocity with things around us that you know that this always comes up for me that we're listening to very different landscapes and so many different beings like none of it i don't think anybody necessarily was with the same species neces either from what i can tell um but you know that these ethics are emerge from the landscape themselves and then from like the unseen landscape is as well um so the anyone wants to respond to that that's that's uh the quote i wanted to share um but i have one like uh kind of an another question about um i gave some prompts to everybody and feel free to discuss whatever you want now um or to ask each other questions maybe we can talk about that tech question for helga but question about what kind of prompts we would give to yourself moving forward along these same listening lines so um and maybe we could sit with that question for a moment and i think i i'll just share what i've questions i'm working through right now in terms of um kind of sound projects and [Music] i'm writing a phd right now so i'm not supposed to ask any new questions for at least a year but um some of my questions are around how much i like why do i need to lean so heavily on the non-humans that i can see um such as rocks and plants and animals in order to access this like bioregional ethics [Music] because the other big question i've had for myself is like oh we're always said like we got to listen to the land listen to the land um that if anyone's seen uh adam and zach khalil's enough to say it's an experimental documentary there's a really awesome part where this guy is very inebriated and he's like you got to look at the land look at the land look at the land but then i realized in this process of listening that it's i'm never the goal is never to listen to like the physical non-human there it's this intra action thing maybe the in-between stuff those are the questions i have for myself right now i had a question for teresa if that's uh a lot i was really uh i really loved um your your video and also uh what you were describing uh earlier on in this talk and what i was curious about was what kind what kind of data are you not able to access that you would like to access i was just sort of curious uh if you could have any sort of data to create an art work with i think more and more i'm i really wish that i could get the data instantaneously whether it's you know it's not specific to one thing but to actually get instantaneous uh the stuff that's going on around the world um again that ties into this that that performative what's the performative things that are happening in the world it's not that easy to live stream instantaneous data so that's where i'm really trying to push more and more to try to get to so if i'm using data that's an hour old or two hours old then it loses that that thing that performative thing and similar to you suzanne um karen barrard has played a huge role in my thinking her ideas of performativity extend to uh to everything i do and i've got this quote in front of me i'm just sorry i just even moved my light and i think she ties it up better because karen barrard she works in words i work in code so i need her to wrap it up for me she's got this quote you know she talks about the intra action rather than interaction which signifies the ongoing process of becoming and reconfiguring the world in a performative ontology and the quote is the world's radical aliveness comes to light in an entirely non-traditional way that reworks the nature both through relationality and aliveness the shift in ontology also entails a re-conceptual re-conceptualization of other core philosophical concepts such as space time matter dynamics objectivity subjectivity performativity so when i think about that and your question too i'm always trying to get closer and closer to things that are just happening right now that it's not me doing it or me trying to gather the data it's just like boom that's flowing uh working that code you know just the nuts and bolts of the i call it weaving i don't call it code because my code looks like a weeding basket uh getting that stuff to work is uh is a thing but you know my my curiosity is is peaks in that i really enjoy going into those worlds but it would be more and more trying to get things as they are happening is that is that sort of where you went when you were measuring um i think you were measuring guests heart rates yes that was an instantaneous thing that was like okay i i don't know what's going to happen well i i kind of knew that it would have some influence on something but i didn't quite know how that was going to happen and i like that performative conversation that's happened with all the elements that are that are in play the project i've been working on for a while now and i i i must say it's um and this is eleanor's left ellen waterman is left but she she hired me to do postdoc work in newfoundland and i started this conversation with the marine institute in newfoundland to set up a live streaming hydrophone and also live streaming data and that project is going to be launched this summer all i will say about that when doing these projects that go outside of the creative realm where you're trying to engage other practitioners takes all takes a lot longer than what i'm used to but i'm in that situation the the ocean data will be will be instantaneous and so will the live streaming hydrophone that's the stuff i'm trying to get to more because it's like ah or the other thing that they're in the arctic uh right now they're there's some researchers i'm in conversation with they're they're trying to um launch these autonomous data streams and i'm trying to have conversations that i can tap into those streams for the changes that are taking place thank you i i'll actually add one more tiny thing that's actually kind of important to the practice when i when i s go about go about in the world i i never know what's going to happen in the artworks it's really a process of emergence uh so when you sit when you ask me what specific data i want i think that'll just depend on what happens in the world and where i end up going and what's going on in the world or or the the location it's very situational thanks for the question anybody else want to respond or have questions going forward for themselves i kind of i'll i'm just going to throw this into the into the conversation because specific specifically to your question about the political and i know my students i teach at concordia university in the communications department and the music department and um and our first paper that we we looked at was making kim with the machine this may come out as contradiction but i'm just going to do it i've specifically gone out of my way not to include political rhetoric in my work i thought it was necessary yes somebody else could look at my work and contextualize it from political discourse ah it's hard for me to word this sometimes i i just have felt that the space that i'm involved in the conversation i felt that bringing things to the political like was reducing it to the human and i just felt really uncomfortable with that so i'll just throw that on the table even though my students will say your work is so political i'm like you can say that but um i have very consciously uh selected not to use the word political ever when talking about my work that that's i think that's interesting and a good and a good point because um i realized in my entire dissertation i have not used the word political once and i'm actually really proud of that but that's because um when we're dealing with environmental destruction it's all it is it's purely political it's almost i wouldn't say it's across the board for everyone's artworks all the time that deal with environment and stuff sometimes it's very ignorant um and ridiculously ignorant of the political implications um some artworks i see where i'm like what is empathy gonna do here if we see a tree in vr i'm not really sure um but uh you know the inherent there isn't of course there's an inherent politicalness to um forcing the ear to shift to a different place um that's not to say some people do it more clearly than others or depends on the goals of your amy i think you were gonna say something oh i was just gonna ask whether uh it would be correct to characterize it as you're sort of using the data for your own purposes so it's like um somebody else had talked about ownership of plants or of non-human entities and that it when you made your comment it just sort of struck me that uh it's it's sort of exerting exerting your human power over it and using it for you know your own purposes to make it political in that way but maybe i'm not characterizing it in the wrong way yeah i i'd actually say that i actually feel uncomfortable i feel uncomfortable saying that that i'm uh i mean we all cr we're all creative practitioners engaged in in the world we are in the world within it uh i just feel that like the easiest way to to to contextualize this is that it's it's just a co-creative process with the world around me so uh i don't feel it's me my power uh it's that to me i actually feel really uncomfortable with it's much larger than than i oh no i meant i mean when you're saying that you felt uncomfortable putting politics into it yeah okay thank you i i was i was uh i expressed that very badly it's all right we're all good yeah i have um i guess i have another prompt to throw out and feel free to anybody respond to whatever part of the conversation you'd like to i i guess i was thinking about how um i i really recommend if people haven't read it read the um dylan robinson's book um and hungrylist yeah hungry listening and a lot of the times that i've seen i guess all the past like few times i've seen dylan that there's um and i i cannot remember the name of the lawyer hopi lawyer who's on the who deals with listening and um really can't remember his name but uh this idea that what we're doing when we're listening to the on to and prioritizing listening to non-humans is we are making an argument an ontological argument and this is from from my work my perspective but maybe i feel like when we do that together we're making ontological argument we say be there are beings outside ourselves and that and i think i guess the way i'm seeing as these things are political as in terms of if there are beings outside of ourselves that means they might have agency capitalism can't own them and um and destroy them and and then therefore they deserve laws and human rights as if they're humans and that and then we just just if that is the case then it's all it all the system around us collapses if that becomes true and so in that matter like facts around listening create truth and i think that's what's really interesting to me about listening works throw that out there if anyone has um annie or helga you're welcome to respond to well i love um i love thinking about the secret life of plants and um which is just such a lovely experience and watching and listening to stevie wonder hello um but i think um i think yeah yeah with regard to agency and capitalism within understanding plant sentience i think it's really interesting to think that you know even baxter back in like you know the 70s was was doing this work with lie detectors and plants and recognizing plant sentience and thinking about um you know there there have been a number of of people who have come forward with applications of that kind of idea around um around being able to control you know triggers so so and how can we apply those with regard to our our relationship to our plants so as you're driving home your plant recognizes you're coming home and triggers your garage door to open for you sort of thing and there there have been a number of people who have tried to apply that kind of understanding that baxter was having around um and not just baxter but as as a very easy example of um of plant sentience and it's just something that just doesn't seem to be like a thing that people are going to capitalize on and then thinking about the ethics and laws around around if if we recognized um and who is we in this context but if politically there was a recognition that um you know plants have rights and and these sorts of things what that could do and and it is it's funny to think that all of this history has happened with regard to plant sentience and we're still at this point it's i i don't have any sort of answer for it but it is kind of strange that that it supersedes um yeah kind of this moment that we're in i'll just jump in and if anybody has questions who's in the zoom or watching the facebook please write them somewhere so they can be relayed to us i think a question that i'm exploring um now kind of coming out of this um that is mainly uh i think a thinking question um at this point is if if we acknowledge the non-non-human sentience so beyond human more than human uh consciousness sentience is it possible to go even further and to acknowledge the non-existence of a discrete self i mean that's really risky in terms of asserting any kind of right to you know human rights to any individual human being but in fact i'm interested in thinking toward like a kind of like like a buddhist nondual non-duality uh but some kind of sense of i am not the the fact that i walk around thinking i am a discreet thing which has boundaries of my skin um is actually a a a an error it's uh it's it's an error that i've inherited from my culture and it's harmful and that's just kind of where i'm just pushing at that like there are a lot of there are a lot of risks involved in thinking that and thinking toward that but i i also really i think that's where where it's going or where it has to take us in some sense so a kind of mutu mutuality interconnectedness that or even beyond that because industry connectedness is like here's a node here's a node and they're connected okay yes they are like we're we are connected to other species that live in our bowel biome in our gut biome to on our skin you know plants exude the air that we breathe so we are like parasitic to plants sucking up the oxygen you know there's all this kind of connection but but even further than that just the very idea of like i am a discreet mind bound yeah that was super interesting the i think the i think about um kind of what i have learned from rereading a million times lan simpson's as we've always done which is a really excellent book and um and i think about kind of what blew my mind in that book which i knew but somehow i i misinterpreted for a long time this concepts of individuality and how they shift across cultures and because i feel like that senses of individuality are bioregional they really do change extremely going from one community to another and and just as this this kind of specific neoliberal individualism we have to experience now and um comes out of a specific history in western europe the different types of individual like i i'm i always kind of believed the weird pan indian like every like super communal sort of concept without thinking about it when it's true we all in my community we have very individual relationships with with non very individual religious practices it's very it's really an individual it's and communal but it's not like this like kind of blanket disappearing into the into the non-human world so anyway that i mean i think that's what's so important about listening is is it is individual um but helps you access the the outside but um i really like that i have my own ears um in in a lot and the philosophy i've been in like a philosophical way like and i guess thinking about what everyone said so far about how i i really feel that what is the ethical ontological world that we're talking about is dependent on what jolene ricard calls the cosmology scape where it's like this entire whole um that leans heavily on the non-human to to define that where that interaction is any other thoughts bubbling up i gotta look that up cosmology escape i think i'm the only person who's i've looked it up a lot and i i say it over and over but jolene ricard said it i swear okay she said it she said it at a conference symposium in banff

2022-05-27 02:22

Other news