News from the Collective

355 pages

Design de la couverture : Kate McDonnell

Date de publication : septembre 2023

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This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and  “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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In the past year, we, Esther, a first-generation profesora in Latinx culture and feminist studies in Chicago and Kristian, an L.A-raised Xicano de letras pursuing a doctoral degree in Santa Barbara, engaged in a multi-synchronous dialogue on the life-giving sonics of our critical consciousness. This Xicanacimiento, as theorized in Kristian’s current writing and in conversation with Irene Vasquez and an emerging generation of Chicana/o scholar-educators, refers to the incomplete process and life-giving knowledge forged in the socio-political and pedagogical activities of Chicanx worldmaking. 

SO! writers note music listening as a powerful site for critical thinking. Erika Giselda Abad, for instance, teaches the Hamilton Mixtape so her Latinx students may “hear [their stories] from people who look and sound like them.” We reflected on the pedagogical implications of our music listening that informed our coming-into-critical consciousness. In this diálogo, we developed a playlist through experimenting with our sonic memories through the poetics of our rasquache sensibilities. Gloria Anzaldúa suggests something similar with notes from Los Tigres, Silvio Rodriguez, and others in La Frontera. Our auditory imaginary echoes our evolving conocimiento toward spiritual activism.

Here, we offer our musical resonances as shaped by our gendered, place-based, and generational Xicanx experiences as a pathway to hear the auditory dimensions of Xicanacimiento. Our listening is thus counter-hegemonic or a “brown form of listening” as suggested by D. Inés Casillas, “a form of radical self-love, a sonic eff-you, and a means of taking up uninvited (white) space,” when this listening evolves critical anti-imperialist and feminist consciousness that hears 500 years of opresión y resistencia.

Diverging from the mixtape genre, our Xicanacimiento playlist seeks to convey something beyond connection and emotion towards a sustained affective state. Instead of a sonic moment, we hear a sonic stream; a subaltern auditory repertoire that is multi-directional and open to expansion by any and all interpellated Xicanx ears.  

Kristian: Tuning-in to Xicanacimiento is a symbiosis of feeling and listening to La Chicanada from Califas to all corners of Aztlán unearthed. I was raised to the sounds of my father’s rancheras played in his truck and the hip-thumping rhythms of bachata and reggaetón played in my mother’s kitchen after a workday.

Yet, my love for UK anarcho-punk and US hardcore punk developed in defiance of public schooling and of a disaffected civil society. As a youth during the Great Recession, a future without higher education meant prison, the military, death by overdose, or the eternal damnation of working the Los Angeles service industry. I thrashed in sound; numbing my ears with noise, bruising in the mosh pit; bearing witness to minors as mota and alcohol addicts; pierced by the cries of police sirens breaking up our communion. 

I found refuge in Xicanacimiento as a community college student and as a transfer at UC Los Angeles. I came into Xicanx consciousness by studying Mexican anarchists and Chicanx organizing. As a MEChistA, I came to listen to the ways local elders, youth, organizers, and agents of social transformation in Los Angeles identified their struggle with land, life, and spirit. My primer to social movements gave me language, and it was MEChistAs who offered me a new soundtrack against the escapism of the Los Angeles punk scene. The resonances of marchas, fiestas, and the songs of danza azteca oriented me into a new modality of listening. Xicanacimiento was the sonic web of these social and cultural practices, rooted in my auditory encounters with the verses of Quetzal, the biting guitars of Subsistencia, the rhythms of Quinto Sol, and the lyrical narratives of Aztlán Underground. The life-giving sonics of Xicanacimiento grazed against my wounded sonics of broken glass, nos tanks, drunk noise, and the cacophonous affair of a raided gig as intoxicated Latinx youth disperse into the discordant symphonies of the urban soundscape.

Esther: I listen as a campesina migrante translocada from Jalisco to California, Texas, and Illinois. Some twenty years ago, while attending Cal State en el Valle Central, I heard Xicanacimiento as concientización; an evolving awareness about la lucha obrera, the open veins of Latinoamerica and my place within the interlocked hierarchies of race, class, and gender in US society. With Chicanx and brigadista musics I felt connected to la lucha and acquired the language to name capitalist imperialism rooted in white supremacy as the enemy of humanity and Pachamama. 

My early sonic memories include the sequence of my Alien number, the urging tones of radio hablada discussing Prop 187 (insisting we were aliens), Prop 227 (banning our language), and reports of Minuteman harassing la raza. I was immersed in listening; my mother’s sobremesa, my sister’s Temerarios at 5 am, Selena on the school bus, and 90s hits-from Chalino to Morrissey-on Columbia House CDs I traded with my older brother. Among other norteñas, La Jaula de Oro, the theme song of the diaspora of papás mexicanos, played at random-at the marketa, en los files, in passing cars, and so on…- to remind us of my father’s sacrificio en el norte caring for 500 dairy cows, six days a week, in two 5-hour shifts, to provide us el sueño americano.

I studied music in college, playing jazz and orchestral bass until the racist and sexual harassment targeting my young Latina body turned me away. I left the scene but continued my communion with music through library loans, traveling vendors, and trips to Amoeba. In reggae and canción nueva I found otros mundos posibles in the upbeat, cariño in 2 over 3, and the poetics of black and brown history; manos abiertas, muchas manos.

In 2002, “El Rasquache Rudo” a poet from the Rudo Revolutionary Front brought me sounds from Azltán; the UFW unity clap rallying in Modesto, a recitation by José Montoya in Sacramento, and brigadista music synergizing the 1492 quincentennial resistance with the uprising of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN). As Omar Marquez argues, the Zapatista uprising shifted Chicano ideology to speak from the position of a living indigenous present; still loud in the work of Xicanx activists like Flor Martinez. Into the 21st century, Aztlán Underground, Manu Chao, and Todos Tus Muertos, among others, soundtracked our protests against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Julieta Venegas’s distinctly vulnerable voice over the controlled chaos of ska and Martha Gonzalez’s tension over the wall of sound that is Quetzal, was transformative as I heard In Lak’ech; hearing in their voices possibilities for my Chicana existence. 

Some of these selections anchor my first-year lectures at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where most of my students are working-class Latinx and Black. I do this with the intention of “opening affective pathways toward Xicanacimiento” as Kristian offered, and to insist on the point that Latina/o/x Studies is to be a critical, anti-hegemonic, subaltern field of study that hears a history from el mundo zurdo.

Outro:

In a gesture to deconstruct the term Xicanacimiento, one might think of the words “renacimiento”and “conocimiento.” What might emerge is a “regenerative force” and “collective knowledges” in consideration to how we listen, what resonances are made, and what sounds we inhabit when Xicanacimiento is invoked or felt as sound. Tuning into this auditory imagination guides the listener to a myriad and select decisions of what constitutes the Xicanx resonance for the local sonic geographies and the soundscapes which emerge from music. This curated sonic experience is one where voice, instrument, memory, and affect intersect.

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Featured Image by Jennifer Lynn Stoever

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Esther Díaz Martín is a researcher and educator in the Latin American and Latino Studies and the Gender and Women’s Studies program at the University of Illinois in Chicago. At present, she is working towards finishing her manuscript Latina Radiophonic Feminism(s) which seeks to amplify the acoustic work of popular feminism in contemporary Spanish-language radio and Latina podcasting. 

Kristian E. Vasquez is a Xicano writer, poet, and zinester born and raised in Los Angeles, California currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara. His research on the affects, sounds, and semiotics of La Xicanada expands the concept of Xicanacimiento, centering the affective force of expressive culture.

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SO! Podcast #74: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum—Lucreccia Quintanilla

“Heavy Airplay, All Day with No Chorus”: Classroom Sonic Consciousness in the Playlist Project—Todd Craig

Deep Listening as Philogynoir: Playlists, Black Girl Idiom, and Love–Shakira Holt

Mixtapes v. Playlists: Medium, Message, Materiality–Mike Glennon

SO! Amplifies: Memoir Mixtapes

Could I Be Chicana Without Carlos Santana?–Wanda Alarcón

Tape Hiss, Compression, and the Stubborn Materiality of Sonic Diaspora–Christopher Chien

Sounding Out! Podcast #28: Off the 60: A Mix-Tape Dedication to Los Angeles–J.L. Stoever

“Oh how so East L.A.”: The Sound of 80s Flashbacks in Chicana Literature–Wanda Alarcón

In Expanded Cinema, written in 1970, Gene Youngblood outlines what he deems as his contemporary scientific transition as an era of Cosmic Consciousness. Youngblood explains: “At their present limits astrophysics, biochemistry, and conceptual mathematics move into metaphysical territory. Mysticism is upon us: it arrives simultaneously from science and psilocybin.” (p. 136) Within cosmic consciousness, a place consisting of a metaphysical mysticism that derives from science and psychoactive substances, thresholds of “normal” consciousness expand allowing individuals to “become aware of the transcendent dimension of humanity beyond space and time” (LSD Experience). Youngblood explains that the early experimental and abstract filmmaker Jordan Belson is exemplary of ‘Cosmic Cinema’. Belson made films “representing a state of total integration with the universe, of blinding super-consciousness” (p. 169), which reside “equally in the physical and the metaphysical” (p. 157). With concerns to the physical, Youngblood stresses that the works by Belson, along with other audiovisual movement-image makers (like Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger, James Whitney, etc.), are not “abstractions” but are concrete. He writes, “Although a wide variety of meaning inevitably is abstracted from them, and although they do hold quite specific implications for Belson personally, the films remain concrete, objective experiences of kinaesthetic and optical dynamism.” (p. 157) In these materials as well as aesthetic forms, Belson’s films “are literally superempirical —that is, actual experiences of a transcendental nature. They create for the viewer a state of nonordinary reality similar, in concept at least, to the experiences described by the anthropologist Carlos Castaneda in his experiments with organic hallucinogens.” (p. 158)

Belson’s films sought to capture something more transcendental, with several of his works being referential to Eastern mysticism (e.g. the mandala was a recurring theme in his work). He was committed to a practice of Yoga and a serious student of Buddhism. The film work that came directly after a two-year rigorous commitment to Yoga practice was Samadhi (1967). Belson’s attempt to convey psychedelic transcendentalism through optical stimulus in abstract moving imagery eventually merged with that of video pioneer Stephen Beck. Beck explains that in 1968, at The University of Illinois, there was a burgeoning collective interest and community committed to electrical engineering, electronics, synthesisers, and the merging of the audiovisual. During this time, there was also “a lot of experimentation with consciousness-altering substances such as cannabis, LSD-25, mescaline and shamanic rituals” (p. 123). These experimentations were predominantly employed in collective mediation that aimed to induce visions, hallucinations, and non-common heightened sensorial awareness. Consequently, this mystic and cosmic tendency of experimental movie makers extended beyond the material parameters of analog film and to the art of video and subsequently the digital.

In my attempt to further research this techno-psychedelic trajectory, I stumbled on a recorded lecture titled ‘Cybernetic Psychedelia’ given by the author Erik Davis, known from his books High Weirdness, The Visionary State and Techgnosis (see his own website). In this talk, Davis offers a modern interpretation of psychedelic transcendentalism, aesthetics, circuitry, and second-order cybernetics. In outlining the aesthetics of a ‘New Psychedelia,’ Davis emphasises the contract between the traditional shamanistic view of psychedelics and a more rational, technological perspective. He does so by way of textual analysis of various aesthetic works including ancient iconography and psychedelic imagery from the 1960s and 70s. One example is an illustration of the woven patterns present in the cloths by the Shipibo, a group of people in Peru who consume ayahuasca. He explains how the cloth features traditional geometric patterns commonly found in their designs. Patterns that not only relate to certain aspects of Ayahuasca visuals but also exhibits a connection with the visuals that feels resonant and familiar with the grids and circuit designs found in technology.

During his presentation, Davis references James L. Kent’s work entitled Psychedelic Information Theory (2010), which derives insights from information theory and the functions of synthesizers to offer a comprehensive phenomenological exploration of psychedelic experiences. This encompasses trance states, profound encounters, immersive journeys into extraordinary visual realms, and the endeavours to articular and understand them. Fundamentally, Davis contends that Kent perceives the human sensorium as a technical apparatus or system for information processing, one that can be influenced or manipulated by these substances. This viewpoint essentially involves establishing an “information theory” within the context of psychedelics, characterised by its reversible, referential, destabilised and non-linear framework.

In the interview published here, recorded on April 5th, 2022, I delve further into these overarching themes in conversation with author Erik Davis. Our dialogue navigates through topics that resonate with the research I’ve outlined and simultaneously delves into Davis’ concept of New Psychedelia. Throughout our exchange, I seek to understand his dismantling of a constructivist approach and its interplay with the various and diverse modes of existence, along with the philosophical foundations of real abstractions within the framework of Cybernetic Psychedelics.

If you’d like to watch the 2011 Eindhoven lecture (before or after) reading the interview, please find the talk here.

Megan Rebecca Phipps: I would like to talk about the intricate connections between the field of cybernetics and psychedelics, especially in the context of moving images, early video artists, and Gene Youngblood’s ideas on expanded cinema. I came across your talk ‘Cybernetic Psychedelic’ delivered in Eindhoven back in 2011, and I found your perspective on psychedelics, through a structural or formalist approach, very interesting. Can you explain some of the key ideas in this talk and why this psychedelic history and theory of cybernetics remain unexplored, and scarcely used, particularly in contemporary academic new media theory?

Erik Davis: I consider cybernetics as one of the single most important paradigms or frameworks to think about the second half of the 20th century up to our contemporary moment. What happened in World War Two is a situated event and bifurcation point in the history of humanity that included the deployment of electromagnetism for information. This event is not just another technological development that affects human societies. It’s that there is this stuff — electricity and electrons paired with electromagnetism — that has entered into or crossed with information systems and the telegraph that changed the natural history of the planet. Cybernetics has a similar intervention on a very deep level: while happening with machines, it also happens with societies, conceptual metaphors, subjectivity, and media and that’s partly why we look at the post-war order.

It’s not just that there was a kind of neoliberal agreement to create global markets as a way to avoid totalitarianism and war, as well as to enrich the United States and various other parties. While that’s all true, it’s the writing of a cybernetic shift that is both revealed and concealed within a historical memory in interesting ways — which has to do with this question you have. Part of it I’m not really sure, part of it is definitely linguistic. But I think linguistics is a symptom of something actually, which is that cybernetics becomes dated. Once you start talking about “cybernetics,” it kind of splits into ‘ecology’ on the one side and ‘systems science’ on the other. And, while they’re related, they’re kind of different. All of that changing nomenclature disguises the continuity and emphasises the sort of divisions. Even within systems science itself, there’s a kind of New Age system science, which gets into Esalen and the role of Gregory Bateson.

But then, people who want to be more rigorous in their approach argue to push those topics aside. And then, you’ve also got complexity and chaos theory and emergence entering in. All of these things are kind of mutating historically and different enough to justify a linguistic shift. But then, it means you have to start being a meta-systems thinker in order to even be able to recognise the historical layers of this current. And, to my mind, the more you see it as being (at least) as much about continuity then it becomes more clear that this really is the story of the second half of the 20th century up to today. That’s the core in a lot of ways, and on a lot of different levels, when leaves you with this problem of ‘well, where do I locate it then?’

Megan Phipps: Can you discuss how the juxtaposing frameworks of ‘the Realm of Abstraction versus the Real of Imagery’ in your talk provide a fresh perspective or method on locating meta-systems thinking? Particularly, you mentioned recurring structures or form constants within the Real of Abstraction, resembling R. Buckminster Fuller’s concept of pattern integrity.’ Could you elaborate on whether it’s possible to find an alternative meta-systems language by examining the history of analog-to-digital abstract, structuralist video images through this Realm of Abstraction? Or, do you believe that this history is doomed or confined linguistically to the ‘Realm of Imagery’ framework, with all its subjective, subcultural, pop-cultural, geographic, patriarchal, commercial, political, etc. constraints?

Erik Davis: Beyond the core video and film artists you talk about, one thing you said that I’d love to pull out is the quality of abstraction because to really wrestle with systems thinking (let’s call it that instead of “cybernetics” for now) there’s a particular role that abstraction plays. This role is different than the kind of abstraction you find in logical systems: [e.g.,] where you’re going to create a logical set of figures that you can then perform mathematical type operations on, or at the abstraction, in order to be able to generate certain statements. But, within system sciences, abstraction plays a different role: you need to create a high enough meta-language able to make rigorous analogies between different fields of thought, different languages, and different materials. By doing so, you have an abstract system of feedback loops associated with learning and you can use that same abstraction to draw connections between human learning and simple machine circuitry.

How do you make that analogy? How to make that analogy where and when you need to a kind of level of abstraction that is not just logical abstraction? Exactly. It’s something more like formal systems-thinking. But, it’s a tricky one because it simultaneously reveals and conceals: it conceals difference, it reveals analogues. And so, it might be very interesting to think about the conceptual role of abstraction in cybernetics and in systems-thinking. Maybe there’s a connection with that abstraction you are seeing in video effects that isn’t just non-representational but is actually demonstrating that feedback processes are processes of the circuitry, as a kind of representation or an analog or an expression of precisely the role of abstraction in systems-thinking. That being, you have to look at the circuit level or the formal level, not at the content level. So, I do feel like there’s something there. And, the role of grounding the circuitry in audio and visuals is in some ways what synthesis is about, the classic era of synthesis: Where’s the aesthetic? Where’s the circuit? I’m not so sure anymore.

Megan Phipps: Let’s dig a bit deeper and discuss the concept ‘Cybernetic Psychedelics,’ your interpretation and reading of it from your lecture. It appears this fusion-oriented framework, combining both ‘cybernetics’ and ‘psychedelia’, is currently under-utilised, under-recognized and lacks significant recognition in theoretical explorations within research fields like cybernetics, machine learning, new media, and psychedelic research. Why do you think this approach, including your own thoughts and reflections on this fusion-esque framework, has not gained more reputable and academic recognition as a viable and fruitful philosophical and theoretical path?

Erik Davis: There’s a certain history upon how science has changed because there’s a tension on who gets to hold the high ground on meta-abstraction language. Is it a form of formulas, like in Laws of Form by G. Spencer Brown? Is it cybernetics as technical cybernetics? Is it ecology? And then, once you get into ecology and cybernetics, what’s the difference between the two? What’s the similarity? There’s obviously intensely polarized cultural expressions of ‘what is it’? What does it mean to live-in and think-in-light of these systems? Systems that actually take almost diametrically opposed forms? Part of the secret history of West Coast ideology, or the California ideology, is that fusion or confusion on the sort of technical, control-oriented, cybernetic approaches versus the fuzzy, ecological, immersive, holistic approaches is that same equation. All of these differences and histories that get acknowledged, but also those hidden within the historical narrative, helps to explain why the California ideology takes the form that it does. A revolving around concrete historical explanations rather than the superficial explanations we often get, those explanations where it’s just about libertarianism or social ecology, the hippies meeting, the raw avarice of technological capitalism. No, there’s something actually deeper and more systemic and equally fucked up. Something much more historically grounded in the evolution of actual systems, and in the process of thinking about these actual systems.

Looking at the Whole Earth Catalog as a kind of utopian space offering a possible integration of these modes yet also with reflection on some of the things that are not seen; this is a way of creating a larger context to understand that particular history. A history that these artists you’re talking about play a big role and, within which, you’re able to draw more grounded links between trans-personal consciousness exploration over here, circuitry over there, and the development of kind of meta institutional languages. Even towards a human resources business systems kind of approach, it’s not just about a new face of the ideology of capitalism but it’s about how systems work. We’re in this moment that it is a fact, it’s an event in natural history, that we are now condemned to figure out how to navigate. It’s not simply an ideology that’s projected onto some other kind of surface. And that’s where, while I’m not necessarily a technological determinist, I do believe that technologies of communication and information fundamentally rewrite the operating system within which we have to navigate. This is why I’m attracted to [Marshall] McLuhan’s approach as I feel like that’s what we’re really operating in. Yet, people don’t want to acknowledge that, intellectuals don’t want to acknowledge it, and individuals don’t want to acknowledge the degree to which they are themselves feedback effects.

In addition to the history, we’ve now laid out, there’s a psychological blind spot (almost like a programmed blind spot) about acknowledging the depth. In a way, this lack of movement sits in a “you can’t get out of the loop” kind of problem, which can seem sort of debilitating or ideologically simple, or that it’s simply capitulating to a certain kind of technical logic: [i.e.,] we must resist that in the name of solidarity. I don’t think this fact is easy [to acknowledge], but it’s [also] sort of a depressing thing to acknowledge. Now, I’m really thinking of one of my biggest discoveries in graduate school: Niklas Luhmann. While Luhmann may not necessarily help this problem because he’s so abstract and so hyper-theoretical that there’s not always a place to grab, his way of presenting the subject in psychology and subjectivity (though it’s not very much of the work) is actually really interesting. It has to do with this resistance when thinking sociologically and in terms of systems and how it has to do with an almost “the grim science.” As though, once you get ‘it’ there’s both a psychological toll and an intellectual resistance to the capitulation to which cybernetic logic and ecological logic (if we want to see them as different) condition, guide, and constrain our choice and behaviour.

Thinking about feedback, early video feedback art, and the cybernetic explorations of it, and staying with Luhmann, there is definitely something underdeveloped that is very interesting. Mainly how Luhmann talks about subjects, how we are communicating systems, and that what is actually communicating in us is ‘communication’ itself, languages and external set of signs that are tied to networks of communication and sustaining society. But, unlike so much of the linguistic turn and deconstruction and Lacan, Luhmann recognizes that there are aspects of subjectivity that are also non-linguistic. We are hosted by communication systems, but there is also a gap, there’s an “extra”, there’s a space. Once you go in the direction of psychedelics and transpersonal consciousness alongside [sic the idea that there’s some sort of way of being a system, or grokking the Big Mind of the system, that becomes a very interesting thought. At that point, it’s not just about reproducing another linguistic mode or another communicational network. This under-recognized gap points towards certain possibilities – or at least certain weirdnesses – within an otherwise very intense communicational, more or less cybernetic, view of subjectivity and its relationship to all other kinds of meta-systems.

This always struck me as interesting because that is also part of the psychedelic problem: why has psychedelics, particularly Western psychedelia, been so attracted to feedback? Why has it been so attracted to cybernetics? It is because it was born in a cybernetic context, such as Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture and The Democratic Surround. [The latter text], is perhaps a more innovative topic in a way. It’s about the pre-history of this and how early ideas of multimedia were used or rolled out partly to support the post-war order, but also to set up a certain kind of subjectivity that gets intensified in the 1960s – particularly in the Happenings (and similar kinds of art) but also the Acid Tests – that [leads to the] sort of embrace of multiple technical circuits as a kind of ecstatic space of collective transmutation. You can see that more clearly early on – in the simplified guises – within the early turn towards multimedia as a model of globalism and as a model of a kind of neoliberal subjectivity. So, part of the reasons overall are very technical. And, if you look at Stuart Brand’s personal life, his relationship to the military, his relationship to labor, and his relationship to business, then you can sketch out this kind of circuit. Which, if you only look at it in terms of the political economy then I think you’re actually missing something, which makes it an interesting vein to go through.

What attracts or was driving Gene Youngblood and some artists at that time, as well as some artists today, is that while maybe it’s a romance or a kind of Romanticism, there’s also something about this gesture towards Bateson’s kind of Mind at Large. What is the circuit of circuits? What is the total grok of the circuit at one moment? Is that possible? If it’s not possible, how close can we get to it? That’s always an interesting thought, which I think is important to consider when you’re looking at media artefacts attempting to mobilise, incarnate, orient, and transform into a sort of transpersonal ideals. Namely, even though as critics we can see the way they fail, the way there’s noise, the way that they don’t manifest the full vision, they get close. That getting close, that asymptote, really makes a difference.

There tends to be this idea when you can see the crack in the system and the ways it’s not able to achieve Mind at Large, it gets asymptotic. Even the visual feedback loop of early video art is kind of asymptotic. [Meaning], if I manifest the loop fast or intensely enough, the way in which the loop gestures beyond its own circuit, its own self-reference, is introduced into the field. How you can’t see when you’re standing between two mirrors since your head is obstructing the view, but you almost see it. And, that ‘almost’ that ‘little abyss’ is like the portal to the Mind at Large, which may never become realized. The abyss of self-reference is really important in that kind of gesture. I do think you can partly look at it in terms of Romanticism, but the connections between ecology and system sciences become important here again because that kind of work can be seen as part of an ecological posthumanism. A properly re-embedded posthumanism, rather than just “Let’s blow our minds” or “Let’s leave the planet” or “Let’s just plunge into the machine.” A proper environmentally reinvented posthumanism also has within it this kind of abyss of self-reference in light of a system that is larger than itself.

Cary Wolfe would say that once you acknowledge first-order cybernetics in the way Bateson sets it up, you can fantasize a totality – or a unity – that can be gestured towards in a quasi-idealistic way or even in a spiritual way. But, once you move into second-order cybernetics, where the observer is always located in a particular place and has a corresponding blind spot (which is the Luhmann approach), you acknowledge that from the outset there is no simple unity possible, there’s no totalizing possible. There’s always a gap, there’s always a crack, it has that kind of deconstruction quality. But, that also doesn’t mean we force another idea of what the transpersonal might be. When I go back and look at the video artists you’re talking about or if I read Youngblood, partly I do see a kind of Romanticism of the Whole. But, partly I see also a technical operation of approaching that “limit point” and refusing to relent, which I think is something it’s a very important part of psychedelic art. You see it even in more recent psychedelic art, there are gestures towards that kind of self-reference, iteration, or asymptotic means-of-beams but without any romance. No longer is there a hope of utopia of transcendence. Instead, we’re kind of in this skittering, sketchy, stuttering, quasi-ontology and that’s what the subject is. I think both of those sides are really powerful, both the holistic romance and the stuttering-repetition machine can be seen as poles of subjectivity today.

Megan Rebecca Phipps: This perspective makes me consider the constant tension between formal abstraction and socio-cultural public discourse. It seems something important is happening within this tension that is also prominent in ‘cybernetic psychedelia,’ e.g., the stuttering machine versus this holistic approach. I wonder if you have any concerns with this juxtaposition or find any areas within this perceptual framework problematic as well? Do you think the ‘both poles,’ stuttering-romantic approach could perhaps hinder the growth or sprouting of alternative possibilities, points of reference, and/or socio-cultural approaches? Can this lead to stunted topics, research areas, disciplines and subcultures? Can the ethics be examined more critically – or experimentally – in order to try to move past the stuttering, of violence (symbolic and literal) for example? Could the repetition of certain “points,” “claims,” “truths,” “arguments,” etc. contribute towards making the same social, ecological, political and revolutionary mistakes over and over again? Could the realm of abstraction (as opposed to the realm of imagery) be used as an objective neutraliser to redirect the conversation, or view the persisting socio-cultural ‘form constants’ in their state of stuttering? I wonder if abstraction could be a more fruitful approach because it’s not so antagonistic, more of a “let’s take a step back and refresh ourselves with what could be seen as romantic and reassess” or ‘let’s examine the meta-language of form constants, those that stutter in abstract formalism but then maybe we should also do this within social and cultural contexts as well?” 

Returning to the concept of the Mind at Large and Youngblood’s insights on moving-image artists, he articulates their attempt at exploring the ‘other side,’ delving into the abyss and breaking through cracks in pursuit of new perspectives or that gap. However, Youngblood also expresses anti-Mind at Large sentiments in the context new media and technology: i.e., “Let’s go against this Mind at Large, let’s go against the Broadcast, Secession From The Broadcast (2012)”. Essentially, technology has the potential to induce a psychedelic Mind at Large yet through psychedelic-inspired works, like those discussed in Expanded Cinema, one can explore the cracks and dimensions that go through to this other side. Such exploration and experimentation, like those involving the breaking up of audio synthesizers and creating alternative technologies like video synthesizers, can be compared to standing between the two mirrors, where unseen flows of energy and circuits exist. Architectures are highly abstract, invisible lines going throughout our spatial reality, outside of our visual perception and/or awareness. Reflecting on contemporary California, such as Silicon Valley and holistic wellness culture, do you believe re-visiting the history of the West-Coast video arts community in the 60s can offer valuable insights to digital culture today? Valuable insights into topics such as digital utopianism, psychedelics-as-media, big-tech ideology, and moments when this philosophy may have faltered or deviated from its original path?

Erik Davis: With concerns to the Mind at Large and the questions of ‘how do you foreground the circuit?’ this foregrounding is part of the content and the expression of the work that Bateson elucidates. He illustrates the Mind at Large with a person cutting a tree with an axe. In one view, you have the person and their skull. Inside the person’s skull, there’s a mind that’s modelling the process of cutting the tree, changing the aim of that cut [or incision], as well as all that’s happening inside the subject. But, it actually seems to make more sense to view it as if there is this circuit between the eyeball, the hand, and the cut. There is this loop going through and off the feedback, feeding back information [thus] it is not just inside the skull. That’s a kind of gesture towards the Mind at Large. A gesture where there is a submission to the circuit of the body and/or the subject, a kind of synecdoche or representation of a larger sort of submission to a greater idea of how ‘circulation’ itself operates.

There might be some interesting research there when you come back to differences and difference in subjects today, particularly in terms of indigenous and/or indigeneity. To my mind, if you start talking about indigeneity then you have think about cosmo-vision. A cosmo-vision that’s, on the one hand, very materially sensitive and Intelligent (with a capital ‘I’). And yet, one that is also animated by a kind of otherness (and I don’t mean ‘otherness’ like exoticism, but as in there is a sense of the ‘other’ as being an agent) so that you get this kind of inter-agent relationships of animism. In a way, that’s the furthest out for some of these ‘non-white male’ folks that you’re seeing inside of the psychedelic community right now. What do we do with cosmo-vision where the plant is an agent, an agent that is speaking to you? And then, over here you have the therapy lab and they are trying to make a medicine and then you think to yourself “This is very interesting..” That quality of enchantment inside of psychedelic cybernetic art is not simply a residue of a certain kind of hippie romanticism, (which you can see also in Youngblood), it’s also a gesture towards a possible way of thinking about systems or relating to systems that requires a transcendence (or, a transcendence-with-integration) on the logical mind-frame that produces technical systems in the first place. That gesture is part of what you’re seeing in aspects of psychedelic culture. Naively, sort of taking up an exoticised indigeneity or magical thinking that can lead to all sorts of dumb ideas. There’s a lot of problematic sides to it, but I don’t think it’s completely spiralling off in the wrong direction. I think it’s actually clustering around something much more profound and difficult to pull off. Something that is gestured towards the ways indigeneity is now engaging and speaking with science, or with more technical approaches to the environment – once everyone can calm down enough for the dialogue to happen. There’s something really significant there, but it’s hard to get to because of all of the romance, the hippy-chi, the easy myth, the iconography and the appropriation.

But it’s there, and that’s part of what we’re still wrestling with is: How do we relate to the larger system? Not just the system of media that’s clearly shaping subjectivity more and more aggressively, in a feedback loop kind of way. But, what do we do with our embeddedness in this planetary set of open-ended circuits, let alone the cosmic one? We still don’t know how to think about that and sometimes it feels like intellectuals and culture-workers (highly Westernized culture-workers alike) think that it is no longer there, that those realms have collapsed and all we’re really now within and taking about is media or all we’re really doing is talking about the politics of signs and the circulation of human-signs about identity. I think is just wrong and that one of the reasons that psychedelics (or the subtler reasons that psychedelics) are now part of the equation is that they break down those “merely human” circuits. They force a confrontation with some kind of “outside” that, however much it too becomes another story or another myth or another Terrance McKenna take, that gesture towards the outside is still incredibly required. That, in a way, is what Systems Science or systems-thinking is like: there’s always an outside, there’s always a blind spot, and there’s always a gap, so go towards the gap. That’s an aesthetic gesture, a psycho-spiritual gesture, and an intellectual gesture and yeah, you don’t see that much of it.

Megan Rebecca Phipps: In my own research on trance subcultures, specifically in relation to the histories of house and techno-culture, I find it useful to draw comparisons to the ‘analog-video of new media’ or ‘pre-Internet’ culture. I’m curious to know how you perceive the relationship between trance or techno-culture and this concept of Cybernetic Psychedelia. For instance, these techno/rave events often occur in isolated locations, such as warehouses and forests. A techno-rave scene is often then characterized by spatiality and mass spectacle, an analog space of where a technological influenced mass spectacle emerges. Could we see a connection between this spatial aspect and the psychedelic-oriented concept of set-and-setting? Furthermore, does the notion of set-and-setting encompass any tensions between the ecological and the cybernetic, similar to what we discussed earlier? Are there questions about whether the concept of ‘set and setting’—linked to cybernetic-intellectualism and psychedelic experiences—could be perceived as too anthropocentric and possible restrictive when applied in contemporary psychedelic research, including academic and scientific discussions?

 Alternative phrasing: Considering the emphasis on spatiality in the techno/rave scene, often taking place in isolated locations like warehouses, sports halls, or forests, could this be related to the psychedelic-oriented concept of set-and-setting? Furthermore, does the notion of set-and-setting encompass tensions between the ecological and the cybernetic, as we discussed earlier? Do you think the concept of ‘set and setting,’ which has associations with cybernetic intellectualism, psychedelic trip experiences and contemporary psychedelic research, might be too anthropocentric and possibly restrictive in its application?”

Erik Davis: The set and setting topic is definitely interesting. There’s a paper by Betty Eisner, in which she argues for set, setting, and what she calls matrix. The “matrix” is that larger context within which the set and setting are operative. So, I think that this is a really good example of the kind of intervention you can do because, on the one hand, I still think [the topic of set-and-setting] is under-recognized (at least in the worlds that I move in). Mainly in the ways set-and-setting is seen as a fundamentally cybernetic idea, that it involves media, Timothy Leary used media to think through the concept when he talks about ‘programming’ psychedelic sessions using audio and visuals – the whole idea of bringing books, having certain things around you, the music playlist, [etc.]. All of that stuff is actually acknowledging you’re entering into an amplified situation of cultural and/or psycho-cultural feedback. I do think even that idea is still undervalued and lets you put set-and-setting into a larger framework, which is point towards the real conundrum of the condition that we’re in. That’s why, to my mind, it’s not an accident that LSD is part of that post-war matrix of technologies. It’s like: well, that’s kind of weird… another cybernetic technology, but it’s happening within a media space or a subjectivity space. But, there’s still something in the way the concept is mostly used, as you point out: is too limited, too anthropocentric, it’s too much about the human in their particular environment. [Subsequently], you’re missing this large framework of genetics, epigenetics, cultural institutions, etc. So, working with Eisner’s text and ideas is a way you can then kind do yes/and and/or yes/but to then be able to acknowledge and expand the concept because set-and-setting is a useful idea. It’s a way to connect with a lot of other psychedelic thinkers and sort of have an agreed-upon floor plan, and then take that plan in another direction.

In terms of trance culture, I do think that trance culture is about that gesture of and aversion to an intense kind of mode of iteration – repetition with a difference – which is part of what I meant when I talked about stuttering before. How there’s an aspect of psychedelic phenomenology that can be heightened by media and pointed out by media: where there is a time glitch, a stutter, or a repetition that sort of runs into abyss that isn’t transcendent particularly. It is more like a fragmentation in mirroring and happens visually, it also happens with time, and it happens with the subject (e.g. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?). These kind of iterative loops are ones that you can diagram, that occur technically, that have a psycho-spiritual dimension and a phenomenological dimension. It seems to me that aspects of psychedelic trance are intensifying that kind of iterative submission. Particularly, in the way the invariant beat works and how syncopation works. Or, another way of saying it is: here we have a media archive of a culture that is attempting to use technological tricks to amplify that phenomenology as much as possible and there is sort of nothing else that is like that. There are aspects of this in these films from the 1960’s, and there are aspects of feedback in earlier analog technology, but there’s nothing that’s tried that as much. You can really learn a lot from the kind of technical features of psychedelic phenomenology by looking at how people have amplified it or mutated it with psychedelic trance. There, you have a culture of ecstasy that is immediately plugged into that sort of zone.

Megan Rebecca Phipps: In Graham St. John’s book Technomads, there’s a striking depiction of a massive sound-system  interwoven with multiple video cameras and screens, situated above a large gathering of dancing and raving individuals (attendees). The image evokes and conveys the idea of a ‘giant machine system’ hovering over the masses, seemingly entrancing the attendees collectively through a blend of technology and active participation or a participatory force. It’s as if distinct ‘sets’ of people are influenced by this technological force, moving and dancing together like an amoeba, guided by or under audiovisual technologies. I’m interested in exploring how this more analog and tangible phenomenon might relate to contemporary intangible occurrences, such as algorithms. Algorithms that guide various segments of the population or different ‘sets’ of people today, steering them toward political filter bubbles or presenting preferences aligned with what’s ‘liked’ on platforms like Spotify or YouTube. These populations and sets under this algorithmic influence become enveloped in a technologically induced effect on a collective level. Given this context, how can we gain insights by exploring the early trance culture’s political ideology (like digital utopianism) and contrasting it with the current state of technological society? In what ways, if any, has the role of the ‘collective’ shifted?

Erik Davis: There’s some interesting stuff that aligns or pulls from an earlier or more social “utopian” direction. There’s a great book on Jamaican sound systems by Julian Henriques called Sonic Bodies, which is about reggae sound systems and ways of knowing. It is a kind of analog version of what you’re talking about and takes on a more dystopian caste than those celebrated in cultures today. Perhaps one of the ways to talk about the interesting problems to explore is within that model where there is both the dystopian and the more productive, ecstatic situation. And, how it is in that model that the taking place and becoming of a collective is: e.g., “I’m dancing in the crowd. I no longer identify as a solo member. I am one with the crowd. I am one with the music. We are creating an organism.”

Okay, right away, that is simultaneously utopian and dystopian. One is simultaneously having an ecstatic experience of oneness with all of my fellow dancers and also, I’m being manipulated and controlled by a technical system. So, you have that problem — which is in a way what we were talking about before: — how do you articulate the unity factor that is mobilised in these different technical systems and within psychedelics? What it comes down to is, we still don’t know how to talk about that. We then maybe gesture with that ecstasy because we also have all these indices of fear, control, mind control, hypnotism and seduction. But, I think it’s partly because we just don’t know how to talk about experiences like that or social assemblages. Just take the history of the word ‘assemblage’ and how that gets used by Gilles Deleuze: Is it a collective body? Is it a multiple collective body? Is manifold a good word for it? Is it a crowd? It is like, we don’t know what to do with that. And yet, if we can’t figure out how to do that and/or be that, at least some of the time, we’re not going to make it.

Megan Rebecca Phipps: If we accept the apology made between current online social behaviors and the representation of psychedelic experience, in psy-trance culture for example, as a precursor to the new media landscape, could we conclude that the new media environment is inherently and perhaps inevitably psychedelic.

 Erik Davis: Well yeah, earlier I was saying that this is an interesting time to make bold statements about psychedelics and culture, and one of them (to put it bolder than I would ever say in public, but I think is kind of true) is that: all of the postmodern turn, it’s all just psychedelic. That’s more than anything else, even the intellectual stuff: that looseness, that self-referentiality, that openness to multiplicities that then hollows out. All of that stuff you can find in “the zone”. And, I think it’s just like the way we can think about post-war media effects in a Kittlerian way, we can do the same thing with psychedelics. And so, I think as we go forward more and more post-war cultural histories will be seen as essentially psychedelic histories. It’s the elephant in the room.

This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@.  Xi-can-x. Funded by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative, the Latinx Sound Cultures Studies Working Group critically considers the role of sound and listening in our formation as political subjects. Through both a comparative and cross-regional lens, we invite Latinx Sound Scholars to join us as we dialogue about our place within the larger fields of Chicanx/Latinx Studies and Sound Studies. We are delighted to publish our initial musings with Sounding Out!, a forum that has long prioritized sound from a queered, racial, working-class and  “always-from-below” epistemological standpoint. —Ed. Dolores Inés Casillas

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My Puerto Rican grandmother used to sing Pedro Infante’s “Las mañanitas” to all the women in the family on their birthdays, so naturally I grew up thinking this was a Puerto Rican song. Not quite – it’s Mexican. When my family came to New York City from Puerto Rico in the 1950s, they were starved of warm waters, mountains, and family members, but they were not starved of Spanish-language music and media thanks in large part to Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinema. In the Bronx, Puerto Ricans would go the theaters to watch movies like Nosotros los Pobres (1948),which popularized boleros like “Las Mañanitas.” This movie-going ritual in the wake of relocation and diaspora has provided the birthday soundtrack to my life. 

My mother grew up listening to her father sing boleros, and she would later sing with the Florida Grand Opera Chorus when I was a child. My early knowledge of opera came from her. Growing up in Miami Beach, I would also listen to reggaetón and hip-hop in afterschool programs. The Parks & Recreation department would host dances for us, and that was where I first learned to dance perreo. My early musical surroundings represent what it means to be a colonial subject, to hear the Italianate vocal legacies of opera mixed with the Afro-Diasporic and Indigenous rhythms of reggaetón. This post contextualizes my experience within bolero’s colonial history and legacy particularly its operatic disciplining of brown and Black bodies and voices. Reggaetóneras provide models for sonic subversion by being ronca, raspy, or breathy, and thus overriding internalized Eurocentric dichotomies of feminine and masculine vocal timbres.

When I began my own operatic training in college, I was constantly told to “purify” my voice, to resist vocal “fry,” and to handle my acid reflux by avoiding spicy foods. I was steered away from singing the pop songs I had grown up with, and kept many musical activities secret, like when I soloed for the tango ensemble and my a cappella group. In graduate school, thanks to my Latina roommates, I began listening to reggaetón again. I reunited with the voices that raised me and was reassured that their teachings of resistance would always present themselves when I needed them.

After 20 years of listening to Ivy, I have located the descriptor that most closely encapsulates the way her voice sounds to me: ronca. This is Spanish for hoarse, and in my experience, it’s been used colloquially, mostly by women, to describe moments when their throats might feel sore, and their voices sound raspy, or masculine, even. Ronca has been articulated as an epistemology of vocal sounding in the artistry of lower-class Black reggaetón creators like Don Omar and more recently, Ozuna. Sounding ronca is a signifier of realness, of truly knowing the struggle of race and class oppression. It is a vocalization of full-body rage fueled by poverty and colonization.

Ivy’s voice is so special to me because she sounds like my aunt when she’s had a long day, my mom when she’s yelling, and my grandma after years of having long days and yelling at people. She sounds like the raw, unfiltered power that comes from exhaustion. She sounds like inner will and justified fury. She sounds like yelling at landlords and ex-husbands for hot water and child support. She sounds like age. And she always has, even when she was “young.” And this sound is even more beautiful and life-giving to me after 4+ years in a classical voice program that told me it was bad to sound hoarse or raspy, surveilled my eating, and perpetuated the colonization of Native and Black peoples through musical subjugation.

Operatic training utilizes mechanisms that are opposite of what is “natural” for me as a poor Latina from the barrio. It asks me to lift my voice, clarify it, and feminize it. This, to me, is antithetical to the girl who laughs really loudly, gets raspy often from yelling and eating too many Takis, and loves to sing from her chest. Ivy’s voice empowers my place as the antithesis. Even as I sang classically in college, my voice was still often described as “soulful,” “hoarse,” “raspy,” “throaty.” My voice, although in a moment of attempted cleanup in college, was read as having previously engaged in genres that disrupt colonial dichotomies of “art” and “noise.” The sonic Blackness– in particular the exoticized and tropicalized Blackness of Latinidad in the U.S.- of my timbre was legible, and perhaps even hyper-audible, in moments when I was trying to adapt to European art forms. Raquel Z. Rivera asserts in New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (2003) that Latinidad doesn’t take away from Blackness but adds an element of exoticism to the Blackness. Thus, I have come to understand ronca voices as representative of a Latina/e liberatory sonic and embodied praxis that resists the derogatory discourse around racialized voices predicated on European ideals of cleanliness.

The ronca voice is negotiating suciedad, Deborah Vargas’ analytic for how queers of color may reclaim their abject bodies and social spaces. Readings of my voice in predominantly white spaces were contextualized by my queer ambiguously-brown body, which in direct opposition to whitening regimes, was sounding suciedad. This is what ronca voices do, and what I conceptualize as “ronca realness”: the tendency of Latinas/es to not hide behind the voice but rather keep it real with the audience via their vocal timbre. Ronca voices sound another option to Barthes’ hegemonic article “The Grain of the Voice,” which has been applied to Ivy Queen and Don Omar in Jennifer Domino Rudolph’s “‘Roncamos Porque Podemos,’” and Dara Goldman’s “Walk like a Woman, Talk like a Man: Ivy Queen’s Troubling of Gender.” I intend ronca realness to be understood as a queer of color vocal analytic born from community and lived experience.

Ronca voices reflect emotional states, flip colonial gendered vocal scripts, reveal if the singer had coffee that morning and Hot Cheetos the night before, and navigate tough musical contours with strain and stress; most importantly, they refuse to be white(ned). In college, my ronca realness was not always a choice. Keeping it real, in general, is sometimes undecided upon prior to the act of realness; it is an additional and deeply engrained responsibility that queer people of color have in white spaces to sound their dissent, or else face the continued exploitation of their communities. Further, these acts of realness may not even be legible as such but are often coded as bad behavior or an attitude problem.

Within communities of color and (im)migrant communities, it’s important to recognize that Ivy Queen’s ronca timbre was permissible because she was light-skinned, thin, and usually took on the masculine role of the rapper, rather than the feminine role of the dancer, in several of her videos. These privileges have left Afro-Latina ronca reggaetóneras like La Sista in the shadows.

La Sista has veered away from sounding ronca in recent years, but in her debut album, Majestad Negroide (2006), she praised Yoruba goddess Yemaya and Taino cacique Anacaona with a hoarse, raspy, bold sound. She is the Afro-Indigenous Latina many of us needed growing up, and her absence speaks to the ways in which Black ronca voices are policed and erased within Latinx culture and elsewhere. Let us praise her now.

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Featured Image: Still image by SO! from RaiNao’s “Tentretiene”

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Cloe Gentile Reyes (she/her) is a queer Boricua scholar, poet, and performer from Miami Beach. She is a soon-to-be Faculty Fellow in NYU’s Department of Music and earned her PhD in Musicology from UC Santa Barbara. Her writing explores how Caribbean femmes navigate intergenerational trauma and healing through decolonial sound, fashion, and dance. Cloe’s poems have been featured in the womanist magazine, Brown Sugar Lit, and she has presented and performed at PopCon, Society for American Music, International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US Branch, among several others. 

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REWIND!…If you liked this post, you may also dig: 

Contra La Pared: Reggaetón and Dissonance in Naarm, Melbourne—Lucreccia Quintanilla

“How Many Latinos are in this Motherfucking House?”: DJ Irene, Sonic Interpellations of Dissent and Queer Latinidad in ’90s Los Angeles—Eddy Francisco Alvarez Jr.

Unapologetic Paisa Chingona-ness: Listening to Fans’ Sonic Identities–Yessica Garcia Hernandez

SO! Podcast #74: Bonus Track for Spanish Rap & Sound Studies Forum

Cardi B: Bringing the Cold and Sexy to Hip Hop—Ashley Luthers

This book, edited by Valeria Ferrari, Florian Idelberger, Andrea Leiter, Morshed Mannan, María-Cruz Valiente, Balázs Bodó, brings together voices from various fields of intellectual inquiry, based on the idea that technological, legal and societal aspects of the information sphere are interlinked and co-dependent from each other. In order to tackle the existing gap in shared semantics, this glossary converges the efforts of experts from various disciplines to build a shared vocabulary on the social, technical, economic, political aspects of decentralised, distributed or sovereign technologies: artefacts which seek to challenge the techno-social status quo by, for example, circumventing law enforcement, resisting surveillance, or being participative.

The idea ofthis glossary arose from the need for a workable, flexible and multidisciplinary resource for terminological clarity, which reflects instead of denying complexity. Situating the terms emerging through technology development in the wider context of multidisciplinary scientific, policy and political discourses, this glossary provides a conceptual toolkit for the study of the various political, economic, legal and technical struggles that decentralised, encryption-based, peer-to-peer technologies bring about and go through.

Choosing relevant technology-related terms and understanding them is to investigate their affordances within a given ecosystem of actors, discourses and systems of incentives. This requires an interdisciplinary, multi-layered approach that is attentive to the interlinkages between technological design nuances and socio-political, economic implications.

The glossary was envisioned as a long-term collaborative project, and as a work-in-progress, as new entries are periodically added over time. The present book collects the entries published on the Internet Policy Review between 2021 and 2023. Therefore, it represents the first volume of what hopefully will be a long-term, ever-evolving editorial collaboration, whose sources of inspiration and goals evolve with the evolving of the broader discussions on decentralized technologies.

Read more about the book, order a free copy, or download the .pdf here

In summer 2021, sound artist, engineer, musician, and educator Johann Diedrick convened a panel at the intersection of racial bias, listening, and AI technology at Pioneerworks in Brooklyn, NY. Diedrick, 2021 Mozilla Creative Media award recipient and creator of such works as Dark Matters, is currently working on identifying the origins of racial bias in voice interface systems. Dark Matters, according to Squeaky Wheel, “exposes the absence of Black speech in the datasets used to train voice interface systems in consumer artificial intelligence products such as Alexa and Siri. Utilizing 3D modeling, sound, and storytelling, the project challenges our communities to grapple with racism and inequity through speech and the spoken word, and how AI systems underserve Black communities.” And now, he’s working with SO! as guest editor for this series (along with ed-in-chief JS!). It kicked off with Amina Abbas-Nazari’s post, helping us to understand how Speech AI systems operate from a very limiting set of assumptions about the human voice. Then, Golden Owens took a deep historical dive into the racialized sound of servitude in America and how this impacts Intelligent Virtual Assistants. Last week, Michelle Pfeifer explored how some nations are attempting to draw sonic borders, despite the fact that voices are not passports. Today, Dorothy R. Santos wraps up the series with a meditation on what we lose due to the intensified surveilling, tracking, and modulation of our voices. [To read the full series, click here] –JS

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In 2010, science fiction writer Charles Yu wrote a story titled “Standard Loneliness Package,” where emotions are outsourced to another human being. While Yu’s story is a literal depiction, albeit fictitious, of what might be entailed and the considerations that need to be made of emotional labor, it was published a year prior to Apple introducing Siri as its official voice assistant for the iPhone. Humans are not meant to be viewed as a type of technology, yet capitalist and neoliberal logics continue to turn to technology as a solution to erase or filter what is least desirable even if that means the literal modification of voice, accent, and language. What do these actions do to the body at risk of severe fragmentation and compartmentalization?

I weep.

I wail.

I gnash my teeth.

Underneath it all, I am smiling. I am giggling.

I am at a funeral. My client’s heart aches, and inside of it is my heart, not aching, the opposite of aching—doing that, whatever it is.

 Charles Yu, “Standard Loneliness Package,” Lightspeed: Science Fiction & Fantasy, November 2010

Yu sets the scene by providing specific examples of feelings of pain and loss that might be handed off to an agent who absorbs the feelings. He shows us, in one way, what a world might look and feel like if we were to go to the extreme of eradicating and off loading our most vulnerable moments to an agent or technician meant to take on this labor. Although written well over a decade ago, its prescient take on the future of feelings wasn’t too far off from where we find ourselves in 2023. How does the voice play into these connections between Yu’s story and what we’re facing in the technological age of voice recognition, speech synthesis, and assistive technologies? How might we re-imagine having the choice to displace our burdens onto another being or entity? Taking a cue from Yu’s story, technologies are being created that pull at the heartstrings of our memories and nostalgia. Yet what happens when we are thrust into a perpetual state of grieving and loss?

Humans are made to forget. Unlike a computer, we are fed information required for our survival. When it comes to language and expression, it is often a stochastic process of figuring out for whom we speak and who is on the receiving end of our communication and speech.  Artist and scholar Fabiola Hanna believes polyvocality necessitates an active and engaged listener, which then produces our memories. Machines have become the listeners to our sonic landscapes as well as capturers, surveyors, and documents of our utterances.

The past few years may have been a remarkable advancement in voice tech with companies such as Amazon and Sanas AI, a voice recognition platform that allows a user to apply a vocal filter onto any human voice, with a discernible accent, that transforms the speech into Standard American English. Yet their hopes for accent elimination and voice mimicry foreshadow a future of design without justice and software development sans cultural and societal considerations, something I work through in my artwork in progress, The Cyborg’s Prosody (2022-present).

The Cyborg’s Prosody is an interactive web-based artwork (optimized for mobile) that requires participants to read five vignettes that increasingly incorporate Tagalog words and phrases that must be repeated by the player. The work serves as a type of parody, as an “accent induction school” — providing a decolonial method of exploring how language and accents are learned and preserved. The work is a response to the creation of accent reduction schools and coaches in the Philippines. Originally, the work was meant to be a satire and parody of these types of services, but shifted into a docu-poetic work of my mother’s immigration story and learning and becoming fluent in American English.

Even though English is a compulsory language in the Philippines, it is a language learned within the parameters of an educational institution and not common speech outside of schools and businesses. From the call center agents hired at Vox Elite, a BPO company based in the Philippines, to a Filipino immigrant navigating her way through a new environment, the embodiment of language became apparent throughout the stages of research and the creative interventions of the past few years.

In Fall 2022, I gave an artist talk about The Cyborg’s Prosody to a room of predominantly older, white, cisgender male engineers and computer scientists. Apparently, my work caused a stir in one of the conversations between a small group of attendees. A couple of the engineers chose to not address me directly, but I overheard a debate between guests with one of the engineers asking, “What is her project supposed to teach me about prosody? What does mimicking her mom teach me?” He became offended by the prospect of a work that de-centered his language, accent, and what was most familiar to him.The Cyborg’s Prosody is a reversal of what is perceived as a foreign accented voice in the United States into a performance for both the cyborg and the player. I introduce the term western vocal drag to convey the caricature of gender through drag performance, which is apropos and akin to the vocal affect many non-western speakers effectuate in their speech.

The concept of western vocal drag became a way for me to understand and contemplate the ways that language becomes performative through its embodiment. Whether it is learning American vernacular to the complex tenses that give meaning to speech acts, there is always a failure or queering of language when a particular affect and accent is emphasized in one’s speech. The delivery of speech acts is contingent upon setting, cultural context, and whether or not there is a type of transaction occurring between the speaker and listener. In terms of enhancement of speech and accent to conform to a dominant language in the workplace and in relation to global linguistic capitalism, scholar Vijay A. Ramjattan states in that there is no such thing as accent elimination or even reduction. Rather, an accent is modified. The stakes are high when taking into consideration the marketing and branding of software such as Sanas AI that proposes an erasure of non-dominant foreign accented voices.

The biggest fear related to the use of artificial intelligence within voice recognition and speech technologies is the return to a Standard American English (and accent) preferred by a general public that ceases to address, acknowledge, and care about linguistic diversity and inclusion. The technology itself has been marketed as a way for corporations and the BPO companies they hire to mind the mental health of the call center agents subjected to racism and xenophobia just by the mere sound of their voice and accent. The challenge, moving forward, is reversing the need to serve the western world.

A transorality or vocality presents itself when thinking about scholar April Baker-Bell’s work Black Linguistic Consciousness. When Black youth are taught and required to speak with what is considered Standard American English, this presents a type of disciplining that perpetuates raciolinguistic ideologies of what is acceptable speech. Baker-Bell focuses on an antiracist linguistic pedagogy where Black youth are encouraged to express themselves as a shift towards understanding linguistic bias. Deeply inspired by her scholarship, I started to wonder about the process for working on how to begin framing language learning in terms of a multi-consciousness that includes cultural context and affect as a way to bridge gaps in understanding. 

Or, let’s re-think this concept or idea that a bad version of English exists. As Cathy Park Hong brilliantly states, “Bad English is my heritage…To other English is to make audible the imperial power sewn into the language, to slit English open so its dark histories slide out.” It is necessary for us all to reconfigure our perceptions of how we listen and communicate that perpetuates seeking familiarity and agreement, but encourages respecting and honoring our differences.

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Featured Image: Still from artist’s mock-up of The Cyborg’s Prosody(2022-present), copyright Dorothy R. Santos

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Dorothy R. Santos, Ph.D. (she/they) is a Filipino American storyteller, poet, artist, and scholar whose academic and research interests include feminist media histories, critical medical anthropology, computational media, technology, race, and ethics. She has her Ph.D. in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Computational Media from the University of California, Santa Cruz and was a Eugene V. Cota-Robles fellow. She received her Master’s degree in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of San Francisco. Her work has been exhibited at Ars Electronica, Rewire Festival, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the GLBT Historical Society.

Her writing appears in art21, Art in America, Ars Technica, Hyperallergic, Rhizome, Slate, and Vice Motherboard. Her essay “Materiality to Machines: Manufacturing the Organic and Hypotheses for Future Imaginings,” was published in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture. She is a co-founder of REFRESH, a politically-engaged art and curatorial collective and serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Processing Foundation. In 2022, she received the Mozilla Creative Media Award for her interactive, docu-poetics work The Cyborg’s Prosody (2022). She serves as an advisory board member for POWRPLNT, slash arts, and House of Alegria.

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