1 00:00:21,960 --> 00:00:27,870 So good evening and welcome to today's live launch of the Formula of Giving Heart. 2 00:00:27,870 --> 00:00:33,690 This event is part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding projects for the future. 3 00:00:33,690 --> 00:00:44,070 Stephen Schwarzman, Centre for the Humanities. I'm Darcy Springle, and it is my pleasure to share with you this this event this evening. 4 00:00:44,070 --> 00:00:47,850 We're all social distancing while safely live streaming this event. 5 00:00:47,850 --> 00:00:51,750 And we hope that you're all safe and well wherever you are in the world. 6 00:00:51,750 --> 00:01:00,600 And before we start this evening's events, I would like to remind you that you can share comments and questions for our panel in the box. 7 00:01:00,600 --> 00:01:09,750 So first, I would like to introduce our artists. Adele is an interdisciplinary artist raised in Egypt and currently residing in London. 8 00:01:09,750 --> 00:01:19,260 Is hybrid practise includes computational media, sound, generative images and sculpture and working with political and comparatives. 9 00:01:19,260 --> 00:01:27,750 His aesthetic research contemplates two interdependent abstractions immorality of time and sovereignty of space, 10 00:01:27,750 --> 00:01:34,860 which explore the balance between intelligence, emotions and moral judgements in both digital and physical realities. 11 00:01:34,860 --> 00:01:40,230 He had a recent solo show at over an institute in Copenhagen. 12 00:01:40,230 --> 00:01:51,150 He also participated in group exhibitions at the Saja Art Foundation Mosaic Rooms Gallery in London and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. 13 00:01:51,150 --> 00:01:59,880 He also has an upcoming show at the 5th International Biennial in Casablanca, Morocco, and the residency at Finland. 14 00:01:59,880 --> 00:02:07,920 He studied computer science at a city in Egypt and found art at the University of the Arts in London. 15 00:02:07,920 --> 00:02:12,780 And so we're very happy to have followed as a visiting fellow in the humanities this year. 16 00:02:12,780 --> 00:02:21,720 We originally developed our application together prior to the pandemic with the hopes of having an in-person music performance and exhibition, 17 00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:28,740 a research talk and a student workshop. Unfortunately, we had to completely rework those plans. 18 00:02:28,740 --> 00:02:33,330 And I'm very grateful to George and to Fellows for having stuck with the project, 19 00:02:33,330 --> 00:02:39,750 especially had two completely recontextualize his work in relation to the new digital medium. 20 00:02:39,750 --> 00:02:47,640 And so the visiting fellowship transformed into one that was kind of producing an entirely new work that engaged with its current model, 21 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:56,730 which is really exciting. And so before we get into that work, I want to introduce briefly the rest of the panellists in the order of presentation. 22 00:02:56,730 --> 00:02:58,620 So since I will be presenting first, 23 00:02:58,620 --> 00:03:06,420 I'm going to introduce myself so Underseas Springle and junior research fellow in music at St. John's College here at Oxford. 24 00:03:06,420 --> 00:03:13,770 My work examines contemporary popular music in Egypt at the intersections of technology, capitalism and politics. 25 00:03:13,770 --> 00:03:18,840 I spent the last decade doing ethnographic research on the independent music scene in Egypt, 26 00:03:18,840 --> 00:03:23,610 focussing especially during and after the time of the 2011 revolution. 27 00:03:23,610 --> 00:03:25,950 And I'm currently back in Egypt now, 28 00:03:25,950 --> 00:03:34,530 continuing this work with the new focus on music streaming and digital technologies as they index revolutions of power between global north and south, 29 00:03:34,530 --> 00:03:43,940 and as they may perpetuate inequalities related to the issues of race, class, gender and so on amongst listeners and users in the Middle East. 30 00:03:43,940 --> 00:03:47,240 And our second panellist is, first of all, Sterling, 31 00:03:47,240 --> 00:03:54,920 she is a musicologist specialising in ethnographic approaches to music and sound, art and contemporary urban environments. 32 00:03:54,920 --> 00:04:02,660 She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow on the I.R.S. funded Project Centre of Cities towards Sonic Urbanism, 33 00:04:02,660 --> 00:04:06,290 based at the music faculty at the University of Oxford. 34 00:04:06,290 --> 00:04:12,980 Her research explores the social relations and coalitions that music and sound produce in their life forms, 35 00:04:12,980 --> 00:04:21,980 focussing particularly on the potential for such coalitions to transform or reinforce existing social and spatial orders. 36 00:04:21,980 --> 00:04:31,610 And our third and final panellist is Christopher Howorth, who is a senior lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham. 37 00:04:31,610 --> 00:04:36,710 His scholarly interests lie and the broad areas of electronic music and sound art, 38 00:04:36,710 --> 00:04:43,640 which he researches using a mixture of historiographical, philosophical and ethnographic research methods. 39 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:48,030 He is currently researching the short lived Soaper theory moment that accompanied 40 00:04:48,030 --> 00:04:52,460 the mid 1990s hype for the Internet and the World Wide Web in Britain. 41 00:04:52,460 --> 00:05:01,310 And he was previously an HRC early career leadership fellow on music and the Internet towards a digital sociology of music. 42 00:05:01,310 --> 00:05:09,680 He also composes computer music, often incorporating principles from psychoacoustics music, psychology and cybernetics. 43 00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:16,910 So how the next hour or so is going to work is that each of the panellists will give a short presentation. 44 00:05:16,910 --> 00:05:21,230 Then, after all, the presentations will give fellow the chance to respond. 45 00:05:21,230 --> 00:05:27,410 Then we will open it up and take questions from the audience so these questions can be for the artists, 46 00:05:27,410 --> 00:05:32,090 the work, or they can be as a response to any of the panellists. 47 00:05:32,090 --> 00:05:36,350 So please feel free during any of the presentations to write your questions in the 48 00:05:36,350 --> 00:05:41,180 chat box and know that we will get to as many of them as we can and at the end, 49 00:05:41,180 --> 00:05:49,970 after all the presentations have concluded. So I'm going to kick things off with my own presentation, 50 00:05:49,970 --> 00:05:58,790 which is going to connect phalloides work to my own research in Egypt over the last decade and two notions of the political. 51 00:05:58,790 --> 00:06:02,630 So I want to draw attention to the way that for many in Egypt, 52 00:06:02,630 --> 00:06:10,520 this recent experience of isolation, of absence and disruption long preceded the current pandemic. 53 00:06:10,520 --> 00:06:12,230 I've had several friends from Egypt. 54 00:06:12,230 --> 00:06:19,670 Tell me, for instance, that the covid-19 lockdown's reminded them of curfews implemented during the 2011 revolution. 55 00:06:19,670 --> 00:06:27,950 And so for the next few minutes and I'm just going to explore some ideas around these temporal and affective juxtapositions, 56 00:06:27,950 --> 00:06:33,320 these overlapping with the 2011 Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. 57 00:06:33,320 --> 00:06:41,150 So I do so to help focus our attention on the ways that global political events such as the current pandemic are uniquely 58 00:06:41,150 --> 00:06:50,530 experienced each time and place due to the way that they animate and have an archive of affective memory that lives in the body. 59 00:06:50,530 --> 00:06:59,950 So in the formula of giving heart, we see the performer Fadell wearing a gas mask that covers the eyes, nose and mouth, we could, of course, 60 00:06:59,950 --> 00:07:09,820 be such a mask as evoking the contagion and now mandatory mask wearing of our present uncertain moment, our reality reverberating around the globe. 61 00:07:09,820 --> 00:07:14,830 Such a mask was also a visible symbol of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, 62 00:07:14,830 --> 00:07:23,380 when millions of protesters marched through an occupied Egyptian streets where they were met with tear gas, bullets and takes some. 63 00:07:23,380 --> 00:07:32,080 Just going to share my screen. We have a bit of an image with this. 64 00:07:32,080 --> 00:07:42,340 So hopefully you can see that. So here we see graffiti by the artists left from that time depicting Nefertiti wearing a gas mask, 65 00:07:42,340 --> 00:07:46,540 the ancient Egyptian queen standing in as a symbol of the Egyptian nation and 66 00:07:46,540 --> 00:07:51,600 people as they struggled for political freedom against a corrupt military regime. 67 00:07:51,600 --> 00:08:00,030 In this context, then, the gas mask was a symbol of empowerment, specifically of the people's power in the formula of giving heart, 68 00:08:00,030 --> 00:08:04,230 I couldn't help but feel these multiple temporalis and effective regimes, 69 00:08:04,230 --> 00:08:08,670 not only of ancient Egyptian heritage with the contemporary political reality, 70 00:08:08,670 --> 00:08:14,820 but also of the gas mask as a symbol both of one's inherent bodily vulnerability and of 71 00:08:14,820 --> 00:08:21,120 one's inherent bodily power as being part of a larger collective of the people against, 72 00:08:21,120 --> 00:08:24,900 for instance, a political regime. 73 00:08:24,900 --> 00:08:34,380 The formula of giving heart likewise draws our attention to how much we rely on a kind of recurring normatively in our temple. 74 00:08:34,380 --> 00:08:38,160 Perhaps the best exemplified in the concept of false. 75 00:08:38,160 --> 00:08:46,530 So the performance is marked by the hitting of metallic sounds as well as the visual biodata of the performers Harpreet each, 76 00:08:46,530 --> 00:08:51,180 which seems to suggest a sort of loose pattern of clarity for many. 77 00:08:51,180 --> 00:08:56,520 The recent pandemic could likewise be described as a period of losing the pulse of everyday life. 78 00:08:56,520 --> 00:09:01,980 There have been marked absences in our lives, activities we cannot do, people we cannot see, 79 00:09:01,980 --> 00:09:08,080 and feelings of confinement in places and conditions that are beyond our control. 80 00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:14,530 So in the artistic world in Egypt that I'm currently researching, notions of sleeping, disappearing, 81 00:09:14,530 --> 00:09:22,120 absence, confinement and silence have been major concepts of interest across a variety of artistic mediums. 82 00:09:22,120 --> 00:09:32,630 And I've been focussing especially on the emergence of these themes within the last six years when the military returned to power. 83 00:09:32,630 --> 00:09:39,560 So Fideles previous work, the essence of disappearing from the Kimosabe Rooms in London in 2013, 84 00:09:39,560 --> 00:09:45,740 for instance, directly explores this theme of disappearance so set in a dark room. 85 00:09:45,740 --> 00:09:50,810 The performance consisted of the Dow hitting or strumming a series of metallic objects, 86 00:09:50,810 --> 00:09:55,910 sometimes rhythmically but often not, and seemingly not intentionally so. 87 00:09:55,910 --> 00:10:03,530 The listener in such a performance is left to consider perhaps how everyday objects and materials can reverberate with sound. 88 00:10:03,530 --> 00:10:08,600 They can be, if not musical, then resonant in my research. 89 00:10:08,600 --> 00:10:17,840 Explore more broadly how it is that artists are conceptualising disappearance, absence and silence in the wake of especially traumatic events. 90 00:10:17,840 --> 00:10:26,270 So writing in the wake of the defeat of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, for instance, writer Hazem Unworldliness How to Disappear. 91 00:10:26,270 --> 00:10:32,360 This is a book, quote, designs a set of oral exercises that show readers how to disappear, 92 00:10:32,360 --> 00:10:37,400 reappear, join a group, leave a group and other necessary skills. 93 00:10:37,400 --> 00:10:49,310 So in the first exercise, how to disappear. You recommend sitting in a public place such as a park or cafe and shifting one's focus to what one hears, 94 00:10:49,310 --> 00:10:57,890 he instructs readers not to privilege any single sound or give the sounds any meaning, ruminating instead only on some quality. 95 00:10:57,890 --> 00:10:59,510 Eventually, he writes, 96 00:10:59,510 --> 00:11:06,530 you will find that your inner voice gradually diminishes and at the same rate by which you immerse yourself in your sonic environment. 97 00:11:06,530 --> 00:11:10,100 When you ultimately succeed in listening to the sound in its entirety, 98 00:11:10,100 --> 00:11:16,820 you will find that the distance between yourself and the spaces sounds has diminished and that you have become part of this case. 99 00:11:16,820 --> 00:11:23,310 You will find that no one around you notices your presence. Everyone will pass by without saying. 100 00:11:23,310 --> 00:11:26,520 So through this exercise one and throughout the rest of the book, 101 00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:34,350 one is meant to learn how to shed the ego and personhood to disappear by listening and learning, to listen to objects and materials around you. 102 00:11:34,350 --> 00:11:44,520 So I see some resonances here with Adel's formula for Giving Heart, which invites the listener to hear a variety of materiality of sound qualities, 103 00:11:44,520 --> 00:11:50,910 including the sound of the biosensors and the performance, the heart, rather than recognise, 104 00:11:50,910 --> 00:11:58,830 rather than listening only to recognisable sonic or musical objects. So I would rather close as kind of a question here. 105 00:11:58,830 --> 00:12:05,240 Does the listener disappear as they are immersed in these different kind of qualities? 106 00:12:05,240 --> 00:12:08,600 So I I'm viewing or approaching the formal beginning part, 107 00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:13,220 then in conversation with a series of other distinct and unique works that explore 108 00:12:13,220 --> 00:12:18,230 themes of disappearance and absence following traumatic sociopolitical events. 109 00:12:18,230 --> 00:12:27,590 So these works that I'm in conversation with in my research include in our twenty eighteen musical album, Slumber Unworthiness, 110 00:12:27,590 --> 00:12:47,880 the Book of Sleep and Visual Artists for the Year eighteen exhibition When Dreams Call for Silence wants to start sharing this cue. 111 00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:55,320 So taken collectively, these works seem to suggest that silence and absence can be a creative practise of listening, 112 00:12:55,320 --> 00:13:02,920 of soft questioning and of self rediscovery after a period of intense trauma or rupture losing the pulse, 113 00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:10,260 then these artists might argue or might suggest can be a means of rediscovery and rebirth. 114 00:13:10,260 --> 00:13:15,960 So one thing that Federalsburg work brings to these conversations about absence within confinement, 115 00:13:15,960 --> 00:13:23,000 I think, is an incisive engagement with technology's role in shaping these experiences. 116 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:28,290 So technology is something that will likely shape how we rediscover ourselves, 117 00:13:28,290 --> 00:13:33,660 how we rediscover our pulse after this moment of collective uncertainty. 118 00:13:33,660 --> 00:13:40,410 So Fidele described the work not as a video piece, but as a, quote, loathsome performance with codes. 119 00:13:40,410 --> 00:13:48,230 So here the machine, which is ultimately a surveillance system, stands in the place of the absent audience. 120 00:13:48,230 --> 00:13:50,010 The machine is the audience. 121 00:13:50,010 --> 00:13:58,230 So music scholars such as drought and others have argued that the increased reliance on digital technologies for music distribution and consumption, 122 00:13:58,230 --> 00:14:04,470 for instance, have transformed music making into a technology of surveillance. 123 00:14:04,470 --> 00:14:12,180 So one example being music streaming platforms such as Spotify collecting our user data not only in relation to our sonic habits, 124 00:14:12,180 --> 00:14:15,030 but in relation to our everyday lives. 125 00:14:15,030 --> 00:14:23,610 So whereas this is often framed as a somewhat recent phenomenon in much English language scholarship on music streaming in many parts of the world, 126 00:14:23,610 --> 00:14:30,990 listening and artistic performance have long been political tools of surveillance, for instance, for state regimes. 127 00:14:30,990 --> 00:14:36,660 So technologies and technologies such as streaming platforms today likewise are 128 00:14:36,660 --> 00:14:43,920 increasingly encouraging artists themselves to use this data collected as surveillance, 129 00:14:43,920 --> 00:14:52,140 as a means of transforming their artistic practise. For instance, in order to better meet the needs of their customers and their audiences. 130 00:14:52,140 --> 00:15:01,440 So, in other words, there seems to be and and Adele's work seems to be suggesting this kind of artistic performance for machines. 131 00:15:01,440 --> 00:15:05,040 And so just kind of wrap up some of my thoughts here. 132 00:15:05,040 --> 00:15:15,450 I wonder if that might comment on the process of conceptualising and artistic and performative work with the machine as audience in mind. 133 00:15:15,450 --> 00:15:25,560 So how does this fact inform your artistic practise as an artist who who has practised and performed in a variety of political contexts? 134 00:15:25,560 --> 00:15:34,920 So does the machine here in your perspective serve as a kind of stand-in for some kind of absolute or great power? 135 00:15:34,920 --> 00:15:40,890 And if finally, if this is indeed the direction that performance might be moving, what, if anything, 136 00:15:40,890 --> 00:15:48,760 is really new about this idea of performing for a machine from your perspective as an artist and as a performer? 137 00:15:48,760 --> 00:15:57,780 So I will end there and I will pass it on to Chrissy, who is our next presenter. 138 00:15:57,780 --> 00:16:04,710 Thank you. Oh, thank you. Hopefully I'm now unmetered. 139 00:16:04,710 --> 00:16:06,750 Thanks so much, Darsey, 140 00:16:06,750 --> 00:16:19,860 and thanks for inviting me to be part of the panel is it's a real pleasure to talk with all of you and thanks to Halad for sharing his work. 141 00:16:19,860 --> 00:16:28,890 So I, I wanted to to pick up mainly on themes of of sound and space in relation to Kelly's piece, 142 00:16:28,890 --> 00:16:38,160 but also more broadly with respect to music and sound culture and our kind of current historical moment. 143 00:16:38,160 --> 00:16:40,860 So starting with something from the film, 144 00:16:40,860 --> 00:16:51,720 I think one thing that I found very striking about the piece was the way that sound is used to create an atmosphere of of confinement, 145 00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:57,690 but also how a sound kind of becomes almost an escape from that confinement. 146 00:16:57,690 --> 00:17:08,490 And for me, this was kind of achieved through this constant kind of liminal space between pulse and kind of arrhythmia or rhythm and non rhythm, 147 00:17:08,490 --> 00:17:13,350 which kind of goes back to what to what Darsey was saying. 148 00:17:13,350 --> 00:17:23,850 So in the piece, the sonic portrayal of the cage and the human interaction with it starts off as quite sonically sporadic and rhythmic, 149 00:17:23,850 --> 00:17:32,250 but at the same time very spatial and very corporeal, the kind of reverb trios that come with physically running your hands across the bars, 150 00:17:32,250 --> 00:17:38,430 the clatter of shaking metal and the very bodily kind of percussive performance. 151 00:17:38,430 --> 00:17:44,160 And these moments really give a sense of how sound is inscribed with information 152 00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:50,640 about the surfaces and textures and spatial dimensions of a physical environment. 153 00:17:50,640 --> 00:17:59,340 And I couldn't help but think here of Laurence Abu Hamden's investigation into said Saidnaya prison in Syria, 154 00:17:59,340 --> 00:18:06,780 where in the absence of visual documentation of what went on inside because the detainees were blindfolded, 155 00:18:06,780 --> 00:18:12,660 Abu Hamdan worked with survivors to draw out their memories of sound inside the prison. 156 00:18:12,660 --> 00:18:19,350 So what he calls the ear witness testimonies and his documentation, 157 00:18:19,350 --> 00:18:26,790 it brings home this kind of troubling notion that under conditions of physical incarceration and visual deprivation, 158 00:18:26,790 --> 00:18:31,830 sound becomes this way of orienting yourself in space. 159 00:18:31,830 --> 00:18:39,720 So the space of confinement is defined less by its physical architecture than by its acoustic architecture and its reflective surfaces. 160 00:18:39,720 --> 00:18:44,610 And the way that sound collides with those in your piece, 161 00:18:44,610 --> 00:18:52,080 I found the very kind of spatial sounds of confinement become more and more kind of viscerally 162 00:18:52,080 --> 00:18:58,680 confining through this quite relentless kind of clattering and hitting of objects. 163 00:18:58,680 --> 00:19:03,180 Until a certain point for me, they started to become something else. 164 00:19:03,180 --> 00:19:10,440 So something more rhythmic and more patterned that I could recognise and I could almost in train to. 165 00:19:10,440 --> 00:19:16,920 And to me, this kind of reflected some of the perceptual shifts that I experienced with the pandemic in the U.K., 166 00:19:16,920 --> 00:19:27,810 this kind of inward turn away from the complex kind of external rhythms of pandemic life and towards the body and its internal rhythms. 167 00:19:27,810 --> 00:19:34,920 But equally, this as part of a kind of new state of exception, to use a gambin term, 168 00:19:34,920 --> 00:19:45,210 which increased kind of state and peer surveillance of our bodily functions and kind of sanctioned the increased gathering of biodata. 169 00:19:45,210 --> 00:19:51,630 At the same time, the way that the kind of clattering cage sonic space morphs into this more percussive, 170 00:19:51,630 --> 00:20:01,170 more rhythmic performance in the work for me really brought to light the kind of intensely effective physiological qualities of rhythm. 171 00:20:01,170 --> 00:20:11,580 I was reminded of Raymond Williams's notion of rhythm as, quote, transmitting a description of experience not merely as an abstraction or an emotion, 172 00:20:11,580 --> 00:20:19,890 but as a physical effect on the organism, on the blood, on the breathing and on the physical patterns of the brain. 173 00:20:19,890 --> 00:20:25,170 In the kind of threshold space that you create between something sonically quite chaotic 174 00:20:25,170 --> 00:20:30,570 and viscerally stifling and something more horizontal and kind of rhythmically aggregated, 175 00:20:30,570 --> 00:20:36,240 I was reminded how powerfully sound can modulate our bodily states. 176 00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:43,340 Going back to, you know, what Darcy was saying, its ability to move us from from one state to another. 177 00:20:43,340 --> 00:20:48,210 And I guess I wanted to ask you a bit more about what it is for you that sound can 178 00:20:48,210 --> 00:20:55,590 communicate that differentiates it from maybe other media like so images and, 179 00:20:55,590 --> 00:21:03,420 you know, do you feel that sound can convey something that language or even narration can never quite do justice to? 180 00:21:03,420 --> 00:21:12,750 And related to that, how do you see the sonic and the visual elements of the piece as kind of interacting this kind of switch from the very spatial, 181 00:21:12,750 --> 00:21:25,800 three dimensional sonic space of the cage to the kind of flatter, more two dimensional sound of the of the biodata and and text to speech narration. 182 00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:36,660 And then the second theme that I just wanted to touch on has to do with the shifting spaces of sonic and visual performance throughout the pandemic. 183 00:21:36,660 --> 00:21:42,600 So some of the questions that I've been kind of asking myself are, you know, 184 00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:48,150 what does it mean to participate in a musical or a sonic event through a screen? 185 00:21:48,150 --> 00:21:56,100 And, you know, what has it meant for musical and sonic publics to lose their physical presence and their spatial propinquity? 186 00:21:56,100 --> 00:22:07,020 And what's happened to the kind of visceral forms of musical collectivity that gain their social political force through the space of appearance? 187 00:22:07,020 --> 00:22:19,290 I've mostly been thinking about these questions in relation to my work on electronic dance music in the UK and other forms of music. 188 00:22:19,290 --> 00:22:23,070 Noticing how, as Ben Acid's points out, 189 00:22:23,070 --> 00:22:28,530 the migration of musical culture online during the pandemic in many ways accelerated 190 00:22:28,530 --> 00:22:33,630 currents that were already underway with live streamed platforms like Boiler Room, 191 00:22:33,630 --> 00:22:44,130 for example. So ideas about the dematerialisation of collective musical experience through this kind of BAJRAM participation, 192 00:22:44,130 --> 00:22:50,850 the intensification of the technical aspects of musical performance through the positioning of cameras over their musical 193 00:22:50,850 --> 00:22:58,350 equipment and the ambivalent role that the live stream plays in widening access to musical culture on the one hand, 194 00:22:58,350 --> 00:23:03,450 while consolidating power amongst big tech on the other. 195 00:23:03,450 --> 00:23:04,740 Watching Carla's piece, 196 00:23:04,740 --> 00:23:14,850 I found it sort of interesting to reflect on the potential so differences between the digital experience of music and of audio visual art. 197 00:23:14,850 --> 00:23:16,710 And Ben's article that I just mentioned, 198 00:23:16,710 --> 00:23:28,560 he describes how during a live stream he spots a friend in the chat box and they perform this ironic kind of dance floor interaction. 199 00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:32,250 And though, you know, though the pandemic presented few alternatives, 200 00:23:32,250 --> 00:23:39,510 I think this it kind of highlights for me the absurdity of attempting to replicate the kind of sensorial bodily, 201 00:23:39,510 --> 00:23:46,470 vibrational and intensely social experience of live music through electronic space. 202 00:23:46,470 --> 00:23:54,660 And perhaps one of the most interesting outputs from the dance music sector during the pandemic was Detroit techno producer Carl 203 00:23:54,660 --> 00:24:03,660 Craig's sound installation that addressed the kind of loneliness and tinnitus that often follows collective musical euphoria. 204 00:24:03,660 --> 00:24:10,890 On the other hand, experiencing your colours audio visual work through a computer screen in the domestic space that 205 00:24:10,890 --> 00:24:18,330 I've spent most of the last year in a kind of mediated experience in a way that both exaggerated 206 00:24:18,330 --> 00:24:24,990 the kind of general sense of claustrophobia and also served as a reminder of the kind of gross 207 00:24:24,990 --> 00:24:31,020 inequalities that the pandemic has exposed and the privilege of locked down and of remote, 208 00:24:31,020 --> 00:24:33,390 you know, engagement and working. 209 00:24:33,390 --> 00:24:44,340 And I guess this opens more broadly onto issues concerning physical and virtual space for, you know, while the pandemic is doubtlessly demonstrated, 210 00:24:44,340 --> 00:24:49,020 the kind of life saving relief that digital connectivity can provide, 211 00:24:49,020 --> 00:24:54,640 it's also drawn attention to the uneven distribution and access to network space. 212 00:24:54,640 --> 00:25:03,630 Thus, obviously, paradoxically, being scribing, geographic and concrete spatial divisions between north and south. 213 00:25:03,630 --> 00:25:07,950 And you know, more than this, I think as the past year has shown, 214 00:25:07,950 --> 00:25:13,890 electronic space can really only ever go part of the way towards challenging enforced 215 00:25:13,890 --> 00:25:19,150 kind of local separatism and other spatially proximate forms of social and political. 216 00:25:19,150 --> 00:25:26,110 Who's owning the urgency with which people have taken to the streets to protest in the last year 217 00:25:26,110 --> 00:25:33,460 indicates there is still physical bodies in alliance to use Judith Butler's term upon his existence. 218 00:25:33,460 --> 00:25:41,500 The publicness of a political cultural terrain depends, even while militarisation plays a crucial role in this. 219 00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:46,810 And just to bring this back to music and sound is sort of striking in turn to think about the 220 00:25:46,810 --> 00:25:54,580 kind of urban transformations or violations that may have taken hold in the absence of present, 221 00:25:54,580 --> 00:26:04,270 you know, often anti-racist, anticorporate musical spaces, which were already threatened by financial urban space before the pandemic. 222 00:26:04,270 --> 00:26:08,680 So as a as a kind of final question, I wondered what your thoughts, you know, 223 00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:15,760 had been about the reception and the audiences of the work and the kinds of spaces that it might be experienced in and 224 00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:24,490 how that did sort of didn't affect your your aesthetic choices and and how that might affect the work as a whole. 225 00:26:24,490 --> 00:26:35,240 So just a few thoughts for me. I think I am now handing over to Christopher. 226 00:26:35,240 --> 00:26:45,830 Hello and well, yeah, thank you, everybody, and thank you for sharing your work and. 227 00:26:45,830 --> 00:26:50,690 D'Arcy is already introduced me, 228 00:26:50,690 --> 00:26:57,440 and I won't say any more other than just to give a bit of context to what I'll say in 229 00:26:57,440 --> 00:27:04,300 the I'm currently working on a kind of edited collection on music and cybernetics. 230 00:27:04,300 --> 00:27:11,830 And since this is kind of in my brain at the moment a bit, it will inform my response to Harlettes work. 231 00:27:11,830 --> 00:27:16,220 And so I hope some of it is in some way useful. 232 00:27:16,220 --> 00:27:27,650 And so I'll start just to say a bit about cybernetics and then talk about how cybernetics gets into music. 233 00:27:27,650 --> 00:27:34,040 And from there, I'll come on holiday work and post some questions in relation to it. 234 00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:46,310 So cybernetics is often seen as quite an off-putting discipline associated as it tends to be with a kind of grim, 235 00:27:46,310 --> 00:27:52,730 grey Cold War military industrial atmosphere. 236 00:27:52,730 --> 00:27:56,240 And in many ways, this perception is true. 237 00:27:56,240 --> 00:28:12,800 I would say going back to its formation, it did form the beginning of the Cold War and has its roots in military research in the US base. 238 00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:22,880 What we can say about cybernetics is that it's just science of control and communication systems and the aspire to kind of generality. 239 00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:30,770 So the systems could include organic systems, biological systems, mechanical systems, computational systems, 240 00:28:30,770 --> 00:28:43,220 social systems and the ecosystem and more in terms of understanding cybernetics and what it attempted to do. 241 00:28:43,220 --> 00:28:54,980 It's helpful to look at the origins of the term in the Greek word key virginities, which translates to statesmen or orchestrator. 242 00:28:54,980 --> 00:28:58,970 And these terms are more useful, I think, 243 00:28:58,970 --> 00:29:09,590 for English speakers in terms of understanding the issues of agency control and complexity that cybernetic agents were interested in. 244 00:29:09,590 --> 00:29:21,530 If you think of piloting the plane, steering a plane, conducting an orchestra and the kind of control that one has in these situations, 245 00:29:21,530 --> 00:29:28,910 it's a much more complex matter than if you're simply in the orchestra playing a triangle. 246 00:29:28,910 --> 00:29:39,230 It's an emergent effect of lots of individual processes that all have a certain autonomy and could all break off on their own if they wanted to. 247 00:29:39,230 --> 00:29:46,100 And while a human operator sits at the centre of them, it doesn't necessarily have to. 248 00:29:46,100 --> 00:29:55,440 You know, you can have a completely auto poetic cybernetic system that operates independently of human control. 249 00:29:55,440 --> 00:30:02,730 And so this this notion of a kind of. 250 00:30:02,730 --> 00:30:09,750 More emergent form of control. You know, if you think of it in relation to electronic music, 251 00:30:09,750 --> 00:30:19,350 where cybernetic ideas have been very popular and it describes the kind of control that you might have over a modular synthesiser, 252 00:30:19,350 --> 00:30:27,150 rather better, I think, than, you know, you might understand the control you would have over a guitar or a piano, 253 00:30:27,150 --> 00:30:35,820 that sense of sort of steering something's steering sound, which has its own autonomous momentum and can continue without. 254 00:30:35,820 --> 00:30:46,800 The operator describes the kinds of systems that psychometricians were often interested in analysing. 255 00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:51,930 Now, cybernetics was unusually interdisciplinary, 256 00:30:51,930 --> 00:31:00,150 but musical and cultural systems weren't the initial sorts of things that sanitation's were interested in. 257 00:31:00,150 --> 00:31:12,720 So Norbert Vyner, the founder of cybernetics, had done war related research for the United States going back to before they entered the war. 258 00:31:12,720 --> 00:31:19,410 And one of the systems that Vyner pioneered early on was an antiaircraft fire control system, 259 00:31:19,410 --> 00:31:25,560 which was a gun with a human operator that could anticipate the position of an enemy bomber, 260 00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:33,900 taking into account the time the missile would take to reach the enemy bomber, environmental factors and so on. 261 00:31:33,900 --> 00:31:44,880 So it is just important to sort of situate cybernetics inside of that context that it emerged from, I think and within that early research, 262 00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:54,000 it was often the case that these systems that were components of humans and machines were in terms of the way they were model. 263 00:31:54,000 --> 00:31:58,860 They were assimilated to one kind of mechanism to understand it. 264 00:31:58,860 --> 00:32:06,720 So in the case of this anti aircraft bomber, it's a kind of survival mechanism, the kinds of things, 265 00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:11,820 regulatory mechanisms that you get in, things like thermostats that we're used to, 266 00:32:11,820 --> 00:32:18,060 that with this sort of frame of reference for understanding this whole kind of assemblage of human and 267 00:32:18,060 --> 00:32:25,410 technological components and representing human psychology and human kind of desires once was deemed too difficult, 268 00:32:25,410 --> 00:32:30,030 really, within this scenario. 269 00:32:30,030 --> 00:32:39,030 So cybernetics starts to make its way into the experimental arts in the 1950s and then by the 1960s, it's fairly pervasive. 270 00:32:39,030 --> 00:32:49,260 And a canonical example of cybernetics and experimental music is the work and music for solo performer by Alvin Lusia. 271 00:32:49,260 --> 00:32:56,040 And in this work we see a similar simulation of the human to the mechanical. 272 00:32:56,040 --> 00:33:07,140 In the piece, Alvin Lukas Alpha brain waves are analysed using an EEG sensor and this low frequency that between sort of eight and 12 273 00:33:07,140 --> 00:33:17,390 hertz is amplified using a dial system that's to the ears to hand as alcoholic's sits down with this system on him. 274 00:33:17,390 --> 00:33:21,690 And then that's sent to a loud speaker where it produces a low frequency, 275 00:33:21,690 --> 00:33:29,610 reproduces low frequency that causes the kind of cone in the loud speaker to vibrate back and forwards slowly. 276 00:33:29,610 --> 00:33:37,560 And this loudspeaker is placed face up and there are percussion instruments on on them, sort of hand-held percussion instruments. 277 00:33:37,560 --> 00:33:43,560 So the whole thing is a quite complex chain that Lucier is sort of to use Douglas 278 00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:50,310 Karns terms in circuit with providing the the the sort of input frequency, 279 00:33:50,310 --> 00:34:03,180 if you like, but also the kind of regulation. And if he is sort of distracted by the sound of the percussion instruments in the room, then, you know, 280 00:34:03,180 --> 00:34:13,840 if he opens his eyes, the frequency, you know, increases and he loses the alpha wave state and the effect is lost. 281 00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:21,690 So it's this careful, subtle negotiation of the of the environment. 282 00:34:21,690 --> 00:34:26,400 But the brain is very much not a of representational thinking device. 283 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:30,600 It's a it's a frequency generator that's acting. This is sort of. 284 00:34:30,600 --> 00:34:35,690 Yeah. Sort of servo mechanical control system on the peace. 285 00:34:35,690 --> 00:34:46,650 And and I think there are similarities really with the way that the brain and the human form is conceptualised and between the human 286 00:34:46,650 --> 00:35:00,930 in the lickspittles and the human in the anti-aircraft guns system of finance in college piece the the heart joins the brain, 287 00:35:00,930 --> 00:35:11,550 if you like, is a source of. At least from what I can understand, so biosensors on the heart provide the pulse for the acoustic sections of the piece, 288 00:35:11,550 --> 00:35:17,760 and they also create interesting sorts of athletic sized signal representations that we see. 289 00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:27,210 So you can see these signal representations that are probably we're not it's not clear to the audience what they represent, 290 00:35:27,210 --> 00:35:34,080 but they're bio signals, presumably heart all brain data. 291 00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:45,480 And so there are similarities, I would say, with Lucias work, firstly, in the sense that there's a kind of scientistic aesthetic. 292 00:35:45,480 --> 00:35:56,040 And so in Lisas, this site of a kind of, you know, performer with this medical device on the skull stain. 293 00:35:56,040 --> 00:36:01,980 Absolutely. Still, it's somewhere between a sort of scientific experiments and the science. 294 00:36:01,980 --> 00:36:14,610 And then in how it's worked, there's this sort of data aesthetic and calling to mind, you know, medical representations of biodata. 295 00:36:14,610 --> 00:36:19,140 And then another similarity, I would say, is the presence of sort of. 296 00:36:19,140 --> 00:36:25,440 Percussion where? I'd be interested to hear what Howard says about this, 297 00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:31,820 but it might be seen as a sort of symbol of human scale sound and agency 298 00:36:31,820 --> 00:36:37,190 against the sorts of potentially autonomous instruments of industrial science, 299 00:36:37,190 --> 00:36:44,880 which are the sorts of bio capture devices. 300 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:53,700 There are also interesting differences, I think, between formulative and music for solo performer and one that really stood out to me and again, 301 00:36:53,700 --> 00:37:02,460 I would like to hear more about from Harlette is the presence of the serpent and the forms of the spells and the role they play, 302 00:37:02,460 --> 00:37:10,560 because in the way that cybernetics has been sort of taken up within electronic music, 303 00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:21,870 it tends to be in feedback, concepts of feedback or feedback systems, notions of distributed agency. 304 00:37:21,870 --> 00:37:31,450 Distributed cognition as well are all ways in which cybernetics sort of takes shape within electronic music. 305 00:37:31,450 --> 00:37:40,080 And symbolism like this is not typical, I would say, but it was something that Norbert Vyner was interested in. 306 00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:46,200 And references to demons and sorcery do appear very frequently in his writings. 307 00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:51,720 So I have a quote here from the human use of human beings where he says, 308 00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:58,560 amongst the gentlemen who have made it their business to be our mentors and who administrate the new programme of science, 309 00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:04,020 many are nothing more than apprentice sorcerers fascinated with the income tension. 310 00:38:04,020 --> 00:38:09,150 So incantation which starts at devilment that they are unable to stop. 311 00:38:09,150 --> 00:38:20,430 Now, Vinings fear of a kind of demoniac cybernetics reflects the position of scientific pacifism that arrived at later in his career, 312 00:38:20,430 --> 00:38:30,510 where he rejected his early work for the US Defence Department and increasingly comes to present cybernetics as a struggle. 313 00:38:30,510 --> 00:38:40,770 If you like to hold on to a normative conception of the human against a world of entropy, chaos and potential optimisation. 314 00:38:40,770 --> 00:38:50,880 So what I'm kind of trying to elaborate, really, at least within cybernetics and obviously it's a huge area that I can only do full justice to. 315 00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:59,310 But is that as well as the being shifting systems in play Eco-Systems technical systems, organic systems, 316 00:38:59,310 --> 00:39:07,680 there's also a shifting concept of the human from one that regulates the machine and is conceptualised as on a par with it, 317 00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:19,860 with the anti-aircraft gun sort of system to one that needs to be preserved from its alienating kind of demonic effects, 318 00:39:19,860 --> 00:39:30,540 the demonic effects of sort of techno science. And I suppose what I'd like to know is whether any of this resonates with how it works. 319 00:39:30,540 --> 00:39:42,030 Also, does anything change when we sort of transplant this from Western science to Egypt to North Africa and, 320 00:39:42,030 --> 00:39:46,230 you know, with the presence of the symbol of the serpent? 321 00:39:46,230 --> 00:39:55,410 And do we need to think more about the concepts of the human that cybernetics tries to universalise? 322 00:39:55,410 --> 00:40:09,000 So, yeah, I'll leave it at that. So thank you, Christopher and Christopher. 323 00:40:09,000 --> 00:40:09,700 It's really, 324 00:40:09,700 --> 00:40:21,330 really fascinating discussions now going to turn it over to credit to give him a chance to respond to any of the many questions that were set his way. 325 00:40:21,330 --> 00:40:24,200 So I've written some notes on some of the questions. 326 00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:36,690 It's like you were to have had so happy to to to send any reminders or feel free to just jump in, whichever questions you answer him first. 327 00:40:36,690 --> 00:40:47,500 Yeah. Thanks to all you doing. It's very insightful responses and and also like it gives me. 328 00:40:47,500 --> 00:40:58,600 Different perception of of of my own experimentation in way and, uh, yeah, I would love let's go into it directly. 329 00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:03,550 I'm interested in many points and I would start with the same sequence. 330 00:41:03,550 --> 00:41:15,250 I would start with Sudarshan and we go to a restaurant. So, uh, I think like, uh, with what you say, Darsey, like mainly what interests me. 331 00:41:15,250 --> 00:41:22,740 And I think you close it with the question that, uh, about like. 332 00:41:22,740 --> 00:41:26,730 Exactly like what we are experiencing with the machine, 333 00:41:26,730 --> 00:41:35,010 like how the experience of the production between an artist and a machine in terms of performance art and what is the political 334 00:41:35,010 --> 00:41:45,780 notion between between as an artist and a machine within these circumstances of the pandemic and how it relates with similar. 335 00:41:45,780 --> 00:41:52,650 Similar kind of political rupture in a way that happened in the Egyptian revolution. 336 00:41:52,650 --> 00:41:58,040 And what are the similarities and differences in terms of. 337 00:41:58,040 --> 00:42:06,230 Of absence and disappearance, the options of disappearance, does the listener disappear? 338 00:42:06,230 --> 00:42:18,980 Uh. Through the pieces, I'm not suggesting anything I'm questioning through the practise itself, 339 00:42:18,980 --> 00:42:26,120 but within the listening and the practise of listening itself and the notion of disappearance, that's very interesting. 340 00:42:26,120 --> 00:42:30,980 And and I see it maybe because it's very fresh. 341 00:42:30,980 --> 00:42:41,930 I just like both bones. And it came across yesterday on on in Sufism, for example. 342 00:42:41,930 --> 00:42:50,150 And you have in Sufism the concept of a hijab, the veil, 343 00:42:50,150 --> 00:42:58,970 which is like at a certain point of transcendence when the veil is released and you can see the beauty of creation, 344 00:42:58,970 --> 00:43:03,430 which is a certain level of transcendence. Uh. 345 00:43:03,430 --> 00:43:12,130 It comes from listening before before the visual, and it kind of grabbed me in a way, because this is how I feel, 346 00:43:12,130 --> 00:43:18,010 I feel and this is all I could could could trust with answering or sort of responding to 347 00:43:18,010 --> 00:43:24,250 Christobel in terms of like the audio visual and sound and in terms of production or whatever, 348 00:43:24,250 --> 00:43:29,650 or as an artistic practise. I always feel that listening state is brings me the visual, 349 00:43:29,650 --> 00:43:36,940 like the listening state is the main introduction to to to have the vision in a 350 00:43:36,940 --> 00:43:45,460 way it takes to a certain spiritual state and that it is immersive and collective. 351 00:43:45,460 --> 00:43:54,470 And this is where I struggled in the piece. Is the collective listening as a performer? 352 00:43:54,470 --> 00:44:07,900 That's the main thing. More than the musical composition. It is the collective listening activity that it is ritualistic even before the the the, uh, 353 00:44:07,900 --> 00:44:19,490 the the the linguistic communication is the ritualistic sonic practise that it's embedded in our human culture. 354 00:44:19,490 --> 00:44:27,980 And and this is very interesting with the with the whole industry of of of music and arts, 355 00:44:27,980 --> 00:44:34,730 which I don't relate to, by the way, although like I come from music as a musician. 356 00:44:34,730 --> 00:44:41,180 Yes, that's my background. But I don't relate to the music industry. And so, for example, 357 00:44:41,180 --> 00:44:52,400 like reflecting on the income encapsulation of time and space and in the music in the in the pandemic and everything became on YouTube, 358 00:44:52,400 --> 00:45:01,430 everything became on Spotify, everything became like this is a formation of the, uh, it shapes the production process. 359 00:45:01,430 --> 00:45:05,570 Even even after one, there will be physical, it will be shaped. 360 00:45:05,570 --> 00:45:07,490 We found in history many examples. 361 00:45:07,490 --> 00:45:18,370 And that like how technology could shape you can find it like deep in a way it was invented, invented, invented or formed by this, uh. 362 00:45:18,370 --> 00:45:26,500 By political conflicts, from the economic crisis, from the war, the Second World War, you have the people shaped, you have the for example, 363 00:45:26,500 --> 00:45:39,500 the musical composition was squashed into a linear temporal experience in a way like it's very linear from start to end. 364 00:45:39,500 --> 00:45:44,380 This is by the invention of documenting and recording the music in a way. 365 00:45:44,380 --> 00:45:53,020 So saving and documenting music, kind of this technology also limited and unshaved, the production. 366 00:45:53,020 --> 00:45:58,630 I don't want to say no to shame the production of music and how the musician works. 367 00:45:58,630 --> 00:46:10,870 The invention of piano totally changed the whole world in terms of the the varieties of scales and frequencies that the 368 00:46:10,870 --> 00:46:19,750 humans used to play all around the world and the invention of piano with the colonial structure and colonial exploitation. 369 00:46:19,750 --> 00:46:25,720 It also eliminated many, many sonic cultures. 370 00:46:25,720 --> 00:46:31,570 So technology always like shaping in the form of production and we are witnessing this today. 371 00:46:31,570 --> 00:46:38,230 We still don't understand where it will go or how it will be shaped in terms of a musical production. 372 00:46:38,230 --> 00:46:46,780 We can see it as an experience, as a listening experience, as an audience, as as a consumer, let's say. 373 00:46:46,780 --> 00:46:54,880 And I say consumer in terms of of of of, uh, the services of these applications. 374 00:46:54,880 --> 00:47:06,730 Uh. But in production, I'm sure it will give them a totally new culture of music after the pandemic or whatever, 375 00:47:06,730 --> 00:47:12,240 how how many years it will take, it could be a generation or two. Uh. 376 00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:22,550 But in a collective listening experience, for me, this is something totally different than the music industry and the way of production and. 377 00:47:22,550 --> 00:47:34,610 And for me, like listening experience is is a spiritual and the spirituality of this experience, it's collective as a ritual. 378 00:47:34,610 --> 00:47:38,600 And music used to be part of a very important part of that, 379 00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:53,030 and it's kind of a big distance and got through throughout history and through the entertainment industry that dominated the music culture. 380 00:47:53,030 --> 00:47:57,300 It separated the collective listening experience from. 381 00:47:57,300 --> 00:48:06,280 From music, so in in the piece itself, to choose to grab the listening collective experience, I didn't have a big struggle with it. 382 00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:12,230 And this is my first engagement since the pandemic started, 383 00:48:12,230 --> 00:48:19,740 I had a very clear decision that I do not want to engage in the world of cyber in terms of art, 384 00:48:19,740 --> 00:48:21,900 because I see the medium, 385 00:48:21,900 --> 00:48:34,890 the main medium that I work with is in space and in terms of inspiration is mainly the space and time and performance also like space and time. 386 00:48:34,890 --> 00:48:42,240 So these are the two main mediums that, yeah, I can I can work with objects, 387 00:48:42,240 --> 00:48:48,120 but the objects are that it is only the space and this is how I listen with everyone. 388 00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:52,950 I'm not performing to people. I'm performing with people. 389 00:48:52,950 --> 00:49:02,960 So. Transforming that into a screen experience, uh. 390 00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:07,040 Me personally, I'm not convinced with it, and that's for me, 391 00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:14,540 the formula of giving heart is not a complete it's a it's for me it's an archival material. 392 00:49:14,540 --> 00:49:22,610 It's like sketches. And that's a very beautiful point for me when you started to compare between some sound and audio visual. 393 00:49:22,610 --> 00:49:32,190 So in that sense, I do understand the experience on on on laptop, on the same desk where I work every day. 394 00:49:32,190 --> 00:49:41,240 It's it's very different than I go to a certain space that has its own metaphysical culture that I'm working with. 395 00:49:41,240 --> 00:49:47,570 And and and everyone is working at it, like the listener that every listener is working with, 396 00:49:47,570 --> 00:49:56,960 not only the, uh, the the musician or the performer, it's everyone attending is part of the piece. 397 00:49:56,960 --> 00:50:06,890 And this is the listening experience that would make I would I would rely on on the fresh ideas that came 398 00:50:06,890 --> 00:50:15,650 from yesterday is the notions of of absence and being hidden and ill Sufism into to to to the moon. 399 00:50:15,650 --> 00:50:24,110 Again, it comes from the listening experience and and this is the notion of hidden, hidden and absence. 400 00:50:24,110 --> 00:50:29,540 And that is not is not comes politically. 401 00:50:29,540 --> 00:50:33,320 This is a response when we compare, for example, between the revolution. 402 00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:43,040 So I'm crossing many ideas, responding to those, if you like, from from the revolution to till today, for me, personal experience. 403 00:50:43,040 --> 00:50:49,640 Uh. Politically, I I defer to the medium itself. 404 00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:54,950 Yeah, a political art, in my experience is, 405 00:50:54,950 --> 00:51:02,540 is that the relation between me and the medium more than the political the political environment 406 00:51:02,540 --> 00:51:09,380 where I'm in definitely the political environment shapes my relation with the medium, 407 00:51:09,380 --> 00:51:18,650 for example, here and locked in a space I'm working with a lot space shapes the technologies with with what I'm working with. 408 00:51:18,650 --> 00:51:24,800 But I prefer like the notions of absence in terms of the experience between me and the medium. 409 00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:34,850 This is like mainly with with what I'm working more, for example, than the memories of the Syrian prisoners of war, 410 00:51:34,850 --> 00:51:45,270 that in that piece he worked on their memory and being locked up and being absent from society. 411 00:51:45,270 --> 00:51:53,700 I. I prefer to mourn the absence of my own experience is being hidden in the transcendence 412 00:51:53,700 --> 00:52:02,460 by through listening and and my awareness to the to to to that or how I tripped in that. 413 00:52:02,460 --> 00:52:07,200 In a way, it was the political situation at the time of the revolution. 414 00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:16,530 Yes. One seeing that and working and experiencing death with people around you. 415 00:52:16,530 --> 00:52:17,640 You have friends who died. 416 00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:29,030 You had friends who kidnapped your friends, like in this environment and used in a daily you start to to to to feel the absence of. 417 00:52:29,030 --> 00:52:41,660 Of not only people. Yeah, it could be also being you as locked, and this is like a very similar situation of the of the pandemic, 418 00:52:41,660 --> 00:52:51,080 you start to contemplate a lot about being upset and and you contemplate a lot about the state of death. 419 00:52:51,080 --> 00:53:01,980 And when at a certain point, I realise that it is a state of transitioning, it's not a state of absence, a transition from one state to another. 420 00:53:01,980 --> 00:53:11,420 And this is what I liked in the profession, that it takes you from one state to another and sort of having a spiritual transcendence. 421 00:53:11,420 --> 00:53:21,290 And here I would see absence and notions of absence totally different than at the time of the revolution that it is. 422 00:53:21,290 --> 00:53:27,800 It's been authoritarian and that imposed on you and take you to be absent here. 423 00:53:27,800 --> 00:53:35,300 And now I see it in a very, totally different way. That was the inspiration at that time. 424 00:53:35,300 --> 00:53:39,500 And the translation from one state to another. 425 00:53:39,500 --> 00:53:47,270 I would go into Christopher in terms of the cybernetics and and, uh, 426 00:53:47,270 --> 00:53:54,020 and I really love like how you answer that to to to to or to talk more about the serpent, 427 00:53:54,020 --> 00:54:02,180 because I think the serpent is the main thing that made me interested in in in framing the work in terms of, 428 00:54:02,180 --> 00:54:09,350 yes, I want to understand response from a perception of cybernetics. 429 00:54:09,350 --> 00:54:14,850 And I tell you why, because, um. Hmm. 430 00:54:14,850 --> 00:54:18,830 Yes, sure. Uh. 431 00:54:18,830 --> 00:54:36,670 If yeah, it's a linguistic and communication, this is what really interested me, um, because we can find like on general like mean mean uh. 432 00:54:36,670 --> 00:54:48,380 Language, culture and communication culture from the Victorian times, and that totally transformed into the alphabetic era. 433 00:54:48,380 --> 00:54:56,040 And. Now or if you don't like kids, 434 00:54:56,040 --> 00:55:08,520 it's transferring to the competition and and the coding and programming and the computational language and the machinery language, and I like how. 435 00:55:08,520 --> 00:55:12,960 How seeing the languages are being translated or the languages, 436 00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:18,870 the communication is being translated in terms of system and authority and sovereignty, 437 00:55:18,870 --> 00:55:31,530 and in that point transforming the mythical or the myth and the concepts and principles from ancient Egypt that talks about the 438 00:55:31,530 --> 00:55:43,080 Poles and the dimensions of being translated into programming and and to try to cool it and to try even in the mythical sense, 439 00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:48,240 not in the functional at all, not in the functional application of cybernetics, 440 00:55:48,240 --> 00:55:58,710 but more on the contemplating on on on how getting the hieroglyphics that it is pictorial, that it is translated by. 441 00:55:58,710 --> 00:56:08,760 Archaeologist into linguistic alphabetic, I'm learning about it and I'm translating it into a composing this character again, 442 00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:22,140 which is a sort of authority and a sort of sovereignty, that it is a God that that's teaching a listener. 443 00:56:22,140 --> 00:56:27,900 And this comes from a mythical drama that it got from ancient Egypt. 444 00:56:27,900 --> 00:56:38,190 And I like to to to work with this in terms of translating them the same mythical but not to the audience. 445 00:56:38,190 --> 00:56:49,150 I'm not storytellers to the audience, but more into me, myself and working with the with the phones, like coding the fight. 446 00:56:49,150 --> 00:56:56,250 So how the eyes would be, how the tongue would be, how the intelligence would be, and how to decompose the serpent, 447 00:56:56,250 --> 00:57:07,350 that it is an authority and sovereignty in a sense of teaching in the story and how to take this into forming a character through coding fights. 448 00:57:07,350 --> 00:57:13,950 And here I got interested in sons of cybernetics more than the applications and the functionality of it. 449 00:57:13,950 --> 00:57:24,720 But my relationship with the medium, so I want like to do and linking everything together, I hope I responded. 450 00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,970 But there are. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, they're. So we have to have one question. 451 00:57:29,970 --> 00:57:36,720 I think you began already to answer it. So it's about the serpent that maybe this will just invite you to expand on that more. 452 00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:41,970 So the question is, thank you so much for your piece. How did the character of The Serpent Guide the work? 453 00:57:41,970 --> 00:57:48,300 I'm interested in the role of the text slash symbolism in such a visually modern word. 454 00:57:48,300 --> 00:58:02,570 Yes. Um. I try to look, I try as much as I can to prevent the ancient Egyptian aesthetic, I always try to prevent the ancient Egyptian aesthetic. 455 00:58:02,570 --> 00:58:10,370 I try to go beyond the visual aspect of it because it has very strong visual. 456 00:58:10,370 --> 00:58:22,070 And if there are audiences or into the the ancient Egyptian mythologies and history, it's, uh, it's very, uh, 457 00:58:22,070 --> 00:58:29,400 the visual of it and the culture and the pictorial representation is very, very dominant and and beautiful. 458 00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:39,020 Like, I'm not diminishing at all. But sometimes I feel it's it it's shadow, it's shadow, the principles or its shadow, the concepts and the meanings. 459 00:58:39,020 --> 00:58:44,750 Uh, because easily we can gaze on the static itself. 460 00:58:44,750 --> 00:58:54,920 So in that sense, I started to make a collage between the format of giving artists like a collection 461 00:58:54,920 --> 00:59:01,710 of scripts that it it's we're used to in the process of mummification. 462 00:59:01,710 --> 00:59:09,290 Yeah. So it is a tracing of the heart to to trace the heart before it goes to the underworld to be judged. 463 00:59:09,290 --> 00:59:11,810 Because in ancient Egypt you have the heart. 464 00:59:11,810 --> 00:59:20,390 And when it reached to the judge they it used to get balanced by a father and father is married, which is the goddess of harmony. 465 00:59:20,390 --> 00:59:32,280 Yeah. So it's a principle of the harmony being balanced with the heart and heart is the very core of of of existence at that time. 466 00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:43,910 So the heart is the intelligence is the heart that comes from the heart of the brain in in Kemet or the ancient Egyptian. 467 00:59:43,910 --> 00:59:50,600 So even these are like the heart is the seat or the throne of intelligence, emotions and moral judgement. 468 00:59:50,600 --> 01:00:03,110 And this is a it has two dimensions. One dimension is the physical, the the the organic and the physical aspect of heart, and one is the motor. 469 01:00:03,110 --> 01:00:15,410 And and these two dimensions may need to be in spite of the duality of what does it mean to have a pulse? 470 01:00:15,410 --> 01:00:25,430 Because, for example, like musically, you can have there is there is a pulse in silence in music. 471 01:00:25,430 --> 01:00:35,360 You can have the rhythm and one rhythm, one beat, and the pulse could be hidden and you can have upbeat and you still have it. 472 01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:46,550 And kind of this duality, it was interesting to contemplate on it, especially when the pulse of every day got totally locked down suddenly. 473 01:00:46,550 --> 01:00:56,720 So we totally change our policies and it confuse definitely it's a big part of confusion is the rhythm of every day it got shifted. 474 01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:05,530 And so this duality is kind of attracted me to to work on this material and to try to. 475 01:01:05,530 --> 01:01:18,580 Select and the three months to help me in translating into I don't want to say futuristic sounds, 476 01:01:18,580 --> 01:01:26,680 but like we changed the names of gods into principles or that the gods would represent. 477 01:01:26,680 --> 01:01:34,780 So we reworked it. We did edit it to to to to get into the contemporary sense. 478 01:01:34,780 --> 01:01:37,720 But definitely it is an amazing inspiration. 479 01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:56,210 And so I try to prevent the the literal script itself and the pictorial aesthetic of ancient Egypt and try to to get the inspiration from its. 480 01:01:56,210 --> 01:02:05,090 A philosophy because it is a philosophy at the end, it's not. 481 01:02:05,090 --> 01:02:15,140 Yeah, it is. Yeah, you got, so to speak, the meaning of the philosophies and try to work it in peace and personal. 482 01:02:15,140 --> 01:02:26,130 Uh. Sketches. 483 01:02:26,130 --> 01:02:28,870 Yeah, thanks. So that's really interesting. 484 01:02:28,870 --> 01:02:35,200 We have a couple more questions, and I might just say them all at once because I think we're over time now. 485 01:02:35,200 --> 01:02:40,800 So if we could just maybe conclude briefly and then we'll take these questions and then we'll be out. 486 01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:47,730 So the next question is, there is an Orwellian quality of the work in the surveillance. 487 01:02:47,730 --> 01:02:52,480 Was that purposeful or just as a result of creating the work in the time of covid? 488 01:02:52,480 --> 01:02:58,470 We have another question that asks. Can you please elaborate on the idea of the mask? 489 01:02:58,470 --> 01:03:06,720 Is it somehow fictionalised in your character or do you use it in most of your performances? 490 01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:09,750 How does it connect to the revolution? 491 01:03:09,750 --> 01:03:20,640 And then another question, asking to bring it to connect it more to you, because I have to assume that the first question I got, 492 01:03:20,640 --> 01:03:27,360 the second the first question was there is an Orwellian quality of the work in the surveillance and so on. 493 01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:35,070 Was that purposeful or just as a result of creating the work in the world like George Orwell? 494 01:03:35,070 --> 01:03:41,120 Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. 495 01:03:41,120 --> 01:03:46,780 Uh. I don't know. 496 01:03:46,780 --> 01:03:57,060 I don't know. George Orwell is definitely there is that there is a political response and that could be also like a response to just one. 497 01:03:57,060 --> 01:04:04,950 You said like a bit of static and the political crying because definitely there is a political. 498 01:04:04,950 --> 01:04:11,430 Surely that is a very strong political influence with all of this crazy here. 499 01:04:11,430 --> 01:04:18,960 I don't have a direct response to the political movements or demonstrations that were happening. 500 01:04:18,960 --> 01:04:25,650 I don't have any political positioning, let's say, in that sense. 501 01:04:25,650 --> 01:04:38,520 But that is a politically static, surely, and that is a political field as as as as the noise or as the distorted rhythmic. 502 01:04:38,520 --> 01:04:49,180 That for me is a political response. But but but I don't have a political positioning to a movement and maybe. 503 01:04:49,180 --> 01:04:56,670 The notions of surveillance, yes, and this is a substitute of of. 504 01:04:56,670 --> 01:05:03,480 And negative, substitutive audience, because the notion of collective listening is not there and and without an audience, 505 01:05:03,480 --> 01:05:09,060 there is no art, which I don't understand what we are doing, to be honest, these days. 506 01:05:09,060 --> 01:05:14,370 But like, if there is no audience, there is no artists. It is the art itself. 507 01:05:14,370 --> 01:05:19,080 So I don't understand. Uh, yeah. 508 01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:30,030 So in part of the experimentation, because of these circumstances, I try to substitute with a being surveyed by the character of Serpent. 509 01:05:30,030 --> 01:05:41,700 So it's kind of conversation between me and, and, and the serpent, uh, in production and in the work is not in the work only. 510 01:05:41,700 --> 01:05:49,110 It's also in the production because the serpent is the one that is filming because they are like five cameras in one server. 511 01:05:49,110 --> 01:05:52,920 So the cameraman is the serpent in that sense. 512 01:05:52,920 --> 01:05:59,300 So it's uh uh uh yeah. 513 01:05:59,300 --> 01:06:11,120 Uh, it's not it's not only fictional in that in that sense, um, the cosmos, uh. 514 01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:18,950 The gas mask, I have several people, I use the gas mask and it kind of. 515 01:06:18,950 --> 01:06:30,600 Not all of them, so it's not like I create a fictional autistic character, so there are pieces that I use the gasmask. 516 01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:41,900 I don't know why it puts me into a certain nostalgic state, surely that I that is the breathing sound. 517 01:06:41,900 --> 01:06:45,830 And so when I breathe and it's in the mask, there is the sound of it. 518 01:06:45,830 --> 01:06:49,620 And most of the pieces I use the sound in the performance, but not this piece. 519 01:06:49,620 --> 01:06:58,070 I don't use the sound of breathing because I didn't want to overlay it with the heart and the concept of heart. 520 01:06:58,070 --> 01:07:09,980 But the state of listening to my own breath, it puts me into a certain state where I can be a. 521 01:07:09,980 --> 01:07:17,330 More free, and we are confident in a way, and it comes from the revolution. 522 01:07:17,330 --> 01:07:20,840 I think so. So it's not it's not a created character. 523 01:07:20,840 --> 01:07:29,240 It's it's it's a variation of me, of my memory. And in that sense. 524 01:07:29,240 --> 01:07:37,340 We think sperm's responding to those questions and thank you to the audience for your questions, since we're we're over time now. 525 01:07:37,340 --> 01:07:39,020 I think we will stop there. 526 01:07:39,020 --> 01:07:47,960 And I just first want to thank Challenge for producing this work under extremely difficult and uncertain conditions and for sharing it with us. 527 01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:54,380 I want to thank my four panellists for Sterling and Christopher Howard for their fantastic insights. 528 01:07:54,380 --> 01:07:59,090 So I want to thank those Green and Christina McGauchie a torch for their tremendous help throughout this 529 01:07:59,090 --> 01:08:04,910 entire process and to the torch humanities football programme for funding and supporting this work. 530 01:08:04,910 --> 01:08:10,010 You can catch Kelly's next online event on June 9th at two 30 p.m. 531 01:08:10,010 --> 01:08:16,010 So this event is going to be a workshop in which families will explore the development of the formula for of giving heart, 532 01:08:16,010 --> 01:08:25,610 as well as the transformations of the artistic process due to the pandemic and its implications on the future of performance and installation art. 533 01:08:25,610 --> 01:08:32,180 So we hope to see many of you there and hope that you take care and stay healthy in the meantime. 534 01:08:32,180 --> 01:09:05,110 So thank you. Goodbye.