20 May 2021

you listen to sounds inside – s playing piano – [..] sasha booking [..] at okan to celebrate the end of exams – then you switch to outside – the stream glitches [..] then steadies, [..] drops – packet losses – a rasping sound, [maybe] a squirrel [..]. at this time, all these starlings are making grating and rattling sounds – maybe it is them. a plane goes over. this old computer could be the source of the drops. the server page at LS [1] had a strange format – maybe work is going on. discontinuities of the network mirror discontinuities in physical space: transpositions across materials: air, tissue, metal – the system pops and hesitates – sounds arise in clumps in the foliage, in the air – dispersing – clustering – harder or softer edged – wind in the trees stirs and transports those sounds – Gilles Clément showed plastic shreds caught in spiny bushes, fluttering plastic bird scares, stall selling bright plastic tubs in different colors, squashed cans – involuntary arts, he called them [2]. earth is the work. at 12 you have a call with udo. the whole network feels less stable since the tech issues around the reveil 8 broadcast – it feels full of breaks. the breakdowns show the composition of the commons, Antonio Negri was saying [3], it seems – they show the presence of dissonance, dis-sensus – listen on another machine – restart [..]

[..] new machine [4].. small skirls and twists of song – goldfinches arrive in the yard, traffic, starlings continue – becoming common of multitudes [5] – [..] sounds more stable for now. it could be it is this old machine which is the source of the breaks. save. restart. [close] applications. [..] [..] wind in the lime trees: vibrant soft new foliage [..] woodpigeons clattering around the microphones – children came out in the school yard – their voices burst out and rise bouncing – the whole spring unfurls even in subdued light under half covered skies in muted fashion – listening via the stream the engine of the spring – the spring's spring in fact runs its way – not as a loop – as a constant extension with recollections – loopbacks – its energies continue – cellular processes – who was saying? that [neuro]biologist on Signe's Tidal Sense piece [6] – for them – that biologist – the cell is life – life is the transposition across a semi permeable membrane – that pressure of life – was how he [defined] it – what it was for him – at that level, replicated infinitessimally – multitudinously – lukuki – life is what you're hearing – wave patterns bouncing – bowing, bending, breaking on a curved shoreline –
nothing prepares you [..] for that density of life – those voices breaking on the hard walls of the yard, the trains traversing – the starling [..] transforming – this whole area, you think, was never intended for this: thick habitation – this junction, resulting from a coincidence of transport infrastructures – was a plain oversight – sounds up and down – gain up and down – the wind picks the clumps of sound and throws them, like throwing clumps of material – without aim – they arrive later or never – or early – arriving at the ears –
each sound, which usually is portrayed as a trace, an afterthought or a memory of an event, *is* the event
more than that, you think: each sound, as it arrives, *pre figures* the event – it announces, in its rapid whisked flight on the wind to the ears – [equally] the/its arrival in other patterns of delay to other hearing sensing systems – other organisms in the thick fabric in the trees and houses – in the networks
like when you listen to the cyberforest stream on the remote audio census: the ornithologist[s] have already heard and named and counted the bird[s] by ear – from the forest in Hokkaido or the forest at the foot of Mount Fuji – in Tokyo, as you are [still] waiting for the sound to reach you in London – the identification precedes the sound – it precedes the vocalisation – for you
oh all the/ose patterns of lag can [not in practice / principle] be disentangled and [re]stored [back] in/to their proper order – [ie the order in which those sounds were propagated is strictly inaccessible to any community of listeners]
well –
very many hearing[s] abound
very many filtered variously coloured sounds – filtered and modulated by foliage and equipment – all kinds of apparatus from biomass to electron chains – loosely expressed as waves of air and energy –
the results
in a way
are not ordered
the response times of systems vary
the processing – the decoding of a sign, once it has crossed the threshold of the organism – the person – its interpretation – all these processes take time – sounds continue to be emitted – perception moves forward and loops back – a direct line of change is impossible to perceive, you sometimes think – at the same time as it seems 'the easiest thing in the world' – to do
the easiest thing in the world is also the hardest
giving birth is like shelling peas, ___ ___ ' s mother told her

something knocked the slate almost off the streambox the microphones were ok though – you listened what was that? a cat? a fox?

Gilles Clément said in his own garden, he tried to make it as biodiverse as possible – not only in terms of plants but also of animals; not only in terms of species, but in terms of intraspecific variations – species expressing themselves differently from place to place [2]
form [from] moment to moment
species as event
species as performance

the birds in the aviary at George Rahi's site in Montreal [..]stopped singing when the audience stopped coming to hear them [7]. birds sing on the boundary where things happen, Vinçiane Despret says, they live as closely together as they can, to maximise the frictive effects of life together – far from resource scarce, they have plenty of habitat to choose from – in many cases – they choose to associate in lively dissonant bands – all species and groups together
the flamingoes at that flamingo sanctuary in the S of France, Vinçiane Despret was saying, only started to reproduce when large mirrors were installed by their pond [8] – giving the sense of a greater number or throng
a partly illusory sense of sociability gives [..] a sense of taking part in some [thing]
i want to be in the world because i believe in another world in this one and i want to be in that – Fred Moten said, or wrote, or said or wrote again, or it ended up in 'who touched me?' or in undercommons.. [9]
what if you are also in an interspecific space with the idea of species dissolving – you begin to experience not so much connections with other beings, mediated by companion species with whom you speak and carry on – but a [continuum] [..] with elements [..] of equal weight / value
evaluation, thinking of Ella Finer, as a task of commoning [10]
reevaluation of customs – thinking of Rousseau (the painter) doing his customs work
thinking of Franz Kafka doing his insurance work
how those lines of work intersect with the work of fantasy
the labo of insurrectionary imagination, JJ and Isa were saying, asks: how to live together here [11]
at the same time as it supports cultures of resistance
the collapse of segregated landscapes, you think, opens on [common] areas which are only beginning to be available to be perceived directly or intuited at a distance
the way some coral beds are only accessible during exceptional tidal conditions [12]
[but also including parts of buildings, outbuildings, corners of a yard]
the moon grows quickly – at Eid [once] it is first glimpsed – or the first night it wasn't seen at all – then once if was seen and everybody put on their celebration outfits, it grew so quickly out of mind, it s almost half full already [..]
how to proceed when it is after time, when time moves so swiftly not in smooth passages, but in bounds and swallows like pierre the cat – for long periods asleep [..], then suddenly – twisting in mid [air]
when you turn off the stream you will be gone, you think – but the performance of life forms among themselves will only intensify.
[..] structures of authority have no weight in the face of those kinds of systems – think of Milford Graves – studying martial arts moves directly from the praying mantis – *from the source* – he said – in his back yard.. [13]
'underneath' ie lower down among [..] vegetation – in the understorey – or equally out of sight in the canopy – accustomed laws have no jurisdiction – the denizens of those places are not troubled by the postures and costumes of figures who elsewhere exercise authority – they are irrelevant
they don t trouble the life of the inhabitants of these places – to start with they ignore them – to make time for other things – after a while, it becomes a habit – to pay them on [no] mind – they pass into history like the shit of a parrot behind it – new formations of persons and things do not recollect anything [to speak of] from those rigid observances – those futile forms of obeisance – they laugh lightly actually – memories which at another moment will exhaust and trouble them and keep them from sleeping – for now are not in their minds – they are busy doing daily things – they are among interlocutors whose activities are more intriguing and ambiguous – and promising than all that [..] – you learned that the verb 'to hamper' comes from a historical way of transporting pigeons in baskets [14]

[2 long recordings – the first on old MBP possibly with drops; the second, without drops, on the new one] [4]

Credits / References

[1] Live streams hosted by locusonus.org are shown as a list at locus.creacast.com:9001.
[2] Laboratory for sensitive observers. AA School of Architecture. AA Diploma Unit 16: Homo Urbanus taught by Ila Beka, Louise Lemoine & Gili Merin. 30/04/2021. https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogramme/whatson/involuntary-art. Direct video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVSgqxL5UM8.
[3] [T]here have always been breaking points in art that become evident in the artistic production.. Because of these breaking points one can regard art as a way of unearthing the truth. They qualify as a mode of truth. Pascal Gielen, Sonja Lavaert: 'The Salt of the Earth. On Commonism. An Interview with Antonio Negri' in Nico Dockx and others: Commonism A New Aesthetics of the Real (Valiz, 2018 p107).
[4] The first recording from old MBP: vlc-record-2021-05-20-09h54m57s-london_camberwell.ogg. Converted to mp3, otherwise unaltered, dropouts not obvious. The second recording from the newer machine: vlc-record-2021-05-20-10h07m04s-london_camberwell.ogg recorded a little later in the morning. Converted to mp3, no other alterations.
[5] Antonio Negri: Art and Multitude. Polity 2011 p98. [6] Signe Lidén The Tidal Sense. With neurobiologist Michael Hastings. BBC Radio 3. 08/08/2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sycw.
[7] George Rahi: An intemperate rainforest. Live stream for Reveil 01/05/2021 from Bloedel Conservatory, Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories. http://streams.soundtent.org/2021/projects/an-intemperate-rainforest.
[8] Vinçiane Despret: 'Phonocene’: Bird-singing in a multispecies world'. Talk for the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA) 17/09/2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U90M8rhQI6c.
[9] 'My favorite movie is The Shoes of the Fisherman and I want to be like this character in it named Father Telemond. He believed in the world. Like Deleuze. I believe in the world and want to be in it. I want to be in it all the way to the end of it because I believe in another world in the world and I want to be in that.' Fred Moten in Fred Moten and Stefano Harney: The undercommons – Fugitive planning and black study. Minor Compositions 2013 p118.
[10] Ella Finer: 'Soundcamp 2020 / The Reveil Platform / Acoustic Commons 02.05.2020 / 22.10.2020' http://acousticommons.net/files/reveil_7_evaluation.pdf.
[11] Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan speaking on Campus for Climate Action. Organised by Ben Parry 04/06/2021. See also: We Are 'Nature' Defending Itself – Entangling art, activism and autonomous zones. Pluto Press 2021.
[12] under water – msimbati 28–29 JUL 2007 http://self-noise.net/under water/under_water_msimbati_JUL_2007.html.
[13] Milford Graves Full Mantis. Film by Jake Meginsky 2018.
[14] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hamper.