Читать книгу Critical Digital Making in Art Education - Группа авторов - Страница 36

In this last example of vague events, the simple speaker element is deconstructed into even smaller units. Strong magnets, an electrical coil, and a paper cone are also used. Here, the performance of sound could be described as having a lower quality, in terms of volume and other technical aspects. However, as in the previous events, the material relation with sound is more than a defined technical performance, but ←42 | 43→in this event the simple act of listening become challenging. You will need a strong magnet or multiple magnets, an amplifier, a paper cone, and an electric cord shaped into a coil by using the middle part of the cord. The coil should be made to fit the smaller end of the cone. Use paper tape to hold the cone together and to fasten the coil to the inside of the paper cone. Connect the cords to the amplifier and connect the amplifier to your mobile phone and go outdoors. Place the magnet where you want your sound to come from. Magnets can be attached to anything made out of metal. Paperclips or metal string can be used if you wish to attach the magnets to other materials. In our event, the magnets have been connected to a stone by wiring metallic string around it. This means that one aspect of this experiment is the stone and magnet, and the other aspect is you holding a cone that is connected to a cord which relays electric signals from your phone.

Select a sound in your phone and play it. When you move the coil/cone near the magnet you will start to hear the sound at a low volume. In order to hear better, hold your ear near the large opening of the cone. This weak, but quite distinguishable, sound adds a haunting quality to the aural experience. The first time we listened to one of our favorite songs, we were drawn in to listen to it in a different way. We had to make an effort to listen. Our ability to listen became heightened. It was as if our memories in relation to the music grew stronger by the lowering of the ←43 | 44→volume and the eeriness of the sound appearing by just moving a paper cone over a stone in the woods. It reminded us of the strength and quality of being haunted. This reminded us of that which haunts you also stimulates your imagination. The fascination that a paper cone, electric cord, and magnet can serve as a speaker made our engagement with the sound stronger. Hearing a much-loved sound in an outdoor environment also adds to the enchantment. In a conventional set up, sound can easily become competitive. Listened to in a controlled way, diminishes mutual relationality and shuts off the environment. This example intentionally causes the whole listening to be vague and embeds you as part of the technology. You become an important component of the speaker. You are the speaker; the speaker is you. It could be said that the desire to control and master sound is not met with this set-up—but something else is gained. Listening in this way awakens enjoyment; the value is not to hear music/sound in a correct represented way but to find pleasure and curiosity in listening.

Here another version of the phenomena of meaningfulness appears in that the phenomena described as haunting appears. Being haunted, as part of listening to music from a digital source, appears as specific matter and as something that matters (Barad, 2007). The body and self serves an important role in making the speaker work. To be part of the speaker is an example of other and different apparatuses and intra-actions that matter; a place where other phenomena appear, like curiosity. In this process, the event of material-digital sound requires more care and activity from the person listening/sounding; the phenomena of both responsibility and respond-ability appear (Barad, 2014; Trinh, 2011). Differences appear as diffraction and allow for listening to come alive in another way.

The phenomena that appear can also be described as vulnerability and engagement in the event of material-digital sound. This vulnerability/engagement is part of the intra-action as “cutting together-apart (one move)” (Barad, 2014, p. 168) since the phenomena of listening arises through the specific apparatus and material-discursive event consisting of human and technology, simultaneously defining each other as different and at the same time being part of and relying on each other (Barad, 2014). This unique relationship to technology is different from when technology is presented to you as a tool or as a design object.