Dark Siren is a sound installation, that draws from Friedrich Kittler’s notion of recursion and builds upon the preceding inquiry of Collapsing Sirens—where the multiplicity of siren sounds produces what a geological deep siren might sound like.
The installation functions as a generative sound machine using computational power to allow for an even finer speculation of what a siren could be in relation to time.
Breaking the conventional understanding of sirens as state-controlled devices, it returns the auditory experience to the collective, striving to distribute the ability of every thing to shape and be shaped by a shared auditory environment.
The generative sound is based on a psychoacoustic effect which creates an auditory illusion of endless ascend/decend. For this, Dark Siren uses a manipulated sequence of the sound of Collapsing Sirens—compressed, looped, and pitched—it is recorded and merged to further expand the previous. This feedback is altered by human proximity, raising the question of who triggers the siren and for what purpose.
Technological influences permeate and shape the installation's form and conceptual underpinnings. The design is inspired by recording technologies, such as wax cylinders used by early phonographs and the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which measures gravitational waves from cosmic events, using so-called Standard Sirens to calculate the expansion of the universe.
...more information following soon.
Sirens Sonic Spheres - Playlist
https://on.soundcloud.com/isW4ABx1RBNdCzCw7
Tracks used in Spheres, listed in order in which they appear…
...No Nature No Human
– personal field recording - recorded with a Zoom H1n
– Bettina Joy de Guzman - Sirens Call, Odyssey, 12.185-192, Homer
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiFzgk1daMw
– 1st Delphic Hymn to Apollo - Joulia Strauss, TK3 - Joulia Strauss & Moritz Mattern, 2007
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Watch Videos Online | TK3 - Joulia Strauss & Moritz Mattern, 2007 | Veoh.com
...Monstrous Femininity
– personal field recordings - recorded with a waterproof mono-contact hydrophone WISLA
...Shapeshifters
– Drexciya - Beyond the Abyss, The Quest, 1997
– Drexciya - Intro, The Quest, 1997
– Drexciya - Neon Falls, The Quest, 1997
– Drexciya - Red Hills Of Lardosse, The Quest, 1997
– Sound of a Helmholtz Double Siren
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Improvisation with Helmholtz' double siren
– Sound of a Cagniard de la Tour Siren
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Cagniard de la Tour Siren
– Arseny Avraamov - "The Symphony of Sirens" 1922
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Arseny Avraamov - Symphony Of Factory Sirens (Public Event, Baku 1922)
...War & Catastrophe
– WWII Siren
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: WWII Air Raid Siren
– Emergency Alert System of the USA
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: National Emergency Alert System Test (November 9, 2011)
– Air Raid Sirens in Ukraine - recordings from Ren Sheikh
– Monthly tested Dutch Air Raid Siren
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Dutch Air Raid / Nederlands luchtalarm
– Mexico Earthquake Alarm
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: Mexico EAS Alarm Siren
– Storm Warning Siren, Germany 2022
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: SIRENENALARM Seehausen am Staffelsee
...Illusionary
– Shepard Tone
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: The Endless Ocean - Shepard Tone
– Shepard Tone
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: https://youtu.be/j3ekuVb8GsU?si=FgLrjWDjr-jJCxZo
– The Prestige score composed by David Julyan - Colorado Springs
– Shepard Tone
Accessed 17 Feb. 2024: https://youtu.be/fzvp0gLeUg0?si=VF11yJVn3dxl83ii
Burrows, David; O'Sullivan, Simon (2019) Fictioning. The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press
Butler, Octavia E. (1993) Parable of the Sower. Headline Publishing Group 2019
Braidotti, Rosi (2020) ‘We’ May Be in This Together, but We Are Not All Human and We Are Not One and the Same. Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities 1, no. 1 (June): 2631. https://doi.org/10.46863/ecocene.2020.3.
Bratton, Benjamin H., et al. (2022) Vertical Atlas. The Stack at the Edge of Planetarity: Convergence, Divergence and War. digital publication. ArtEZ Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. The University of Chicago Press. P. 22-48
Chion, Michel (1993) Audio-Vision Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press
Cox, Christoph (2018) Sonic Flux Sound, Art and Metaphysics. The University of Chicago Press
Deutsch, Diana (2019) Musical Illusions and Phantom Words. How Music and Speech Unlock Mysteries of the Brain. Oxford University Press
Drewal, Henry John (1988). Performing the Other: Mami Wata Worship in Africa. TDR (1988-), 32(2), 160–185. https://doi.org/10.2307/1145857
Drewal, Henry John (2008). Sacred Waters: arts for Mami Wata and other divinities in Africa and the diaspora. Indiana University Press EBooks
Ernst, Wolfgang (2014) Towards a Media-Archaeology of Sirenic Articulations.Listening with Media-Archaeological Ears. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics No. 48, pp. 7–17
Eshun, Kodwo (2015) The Geologic Imagination. 4. Geologic Time, the Anthropocene and Earthquake Sensitives – Interview with Kodwo Eshun by Julian Ross. Sonic Acts Press & the authors. Epub Version. P.58-59
Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant Than the Sun Adventures in Sonic Fiction. Quartet Books
Eshun, Kodwo (2003) Further Considerations on Afrofuturism. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(2), 287–302. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41949397
Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2016) On Difference Without Separability. A Question of Power: We Don’t Need Another Hero! P.57-65
Gaskins, Nettrice (2016) DEEP SEA DWELLERS: Drexciya and the Sonic Third Space. https://doi.org/10.21463/shima.10.2.08
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (2010) Unsere Breite Gegenwart. Suhrkamp Verlag
Goodman, Steve (2010) Sonic Warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Glissant, Édouard (1990) Poetics of Relation. The University of Michigan Press. Translated by Betsy Wing 2010
Glissant, Édouard (2002) The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World. Translation of Édouard Glissant, “Le Divers imprévisible du monde.” P. 287-295 in Elizabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, ed. (2002)
Gaard, Greta (1997) Toward a Queer Ecofeminism. New Perspectives on Environmental Justice: Gender, Sexuality, and Activism, edited by Rachel Stein, Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2004, P. 21-44. https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813542539-004
Homer (2009) The Odyssey translated by E.V.Rieu, copyright 1946, 2009 edition, 026, Penguin Classics, Penguin Group. P. 345
Ingold, Tim (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge
Ingold, Tim (2013) Thinking through Making. Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygne72-4zyo
Investigating the Sounds of Ancient Greek Music (2022) Classics for All at Royal College of Music in London on Thursday 6th October. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II65leyN2-c
Jasanoff, Sheila (2016) A New Climate for Society - Sheila Jasanoff, 2010. Theory, Culture & Society. Published 2016. Accessed January 17, 2024. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0263276409361497
Kafka, Franz (1995) The Complete Stories, Schocken Books Inc.
Kosmin, Paul J. (2019) When time became regular and universal, it changed history | Aeon Essays. Aeon. Accessed January 17, 2024. https://aeon.co/essays/when-time-became-regular-and-universal-it-changed-history
Kittler, Friedrich (1986) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Standford University Press 1999 Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz
Kittler, Friedrich (2005) Audiobook: Musen, Nymphen und Sirenen. Konzeption und Regie: Klaus Sander. supposé
Kittler, Friedrich (2021) Operation Valhalla. Writings on War, Weapons, and Media. Duke University Press
Leach, Elizabeth Eva (2006) The Little Pipe Sings Sweetly While the Flower Deceives the Bird: Sirens in the Later Middle Ages. Music & Letters, Vol. 87 No. 2. Published by Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ml/gci250. Accessed January 24, 2024. www.ml.oxfordjournals.org
Mbembe, Achille. (2022). How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness. Noema Magazine. Accessed January 24, 2024. https://www.noemamag.com/how-to-develop-a-planetary-consciousness/
McLuhan, Marshall; Carpenter, Edmund; et al. (1960) Acoustic Space. Explorations in Communication. The Beacon Press
Morton, Timothy. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press.
Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological. MIT Press. Epub Version
Morton, Timothy (2016) Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence. United Kingdom: Columbia University Press.
Moten, Fred; Harney, Stefano (2013) The Undercommon. Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Minor Compositions
Mirzoeff, Nicholas (2017) Below the Water: Black Lives Matter and Revolutionary Time - Journal #79. E-flux.com. Accessed January 24, 2024. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/79/94164/below-the-water-black-lives-matter-and-revolutionary-time/
Pensis, Eva (2017) Dissonance: A Suite on Trans Femme Noise - Journal #132. E-flux.com. Accessed January 17, 2024. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/132/508412/dissonance-a-suite-on-trans-femme-noise/
Pinch, Trevor; Bijsterveld, Karin (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Oxford University Press
Raichel, Daniel R. (2006)The Science and Applications of Acoustics. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.
Reich, Megan A. (2016) Soundscape Composition as Environmental Activism and Awareness: An Ecomusicological Approach. Summer Research. Paper 282. http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/282
Remember Nature. 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth (2021) edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Kostas Stasinopoulos. Penguin Books
Sakalis, Alex (2022) Arseny Avraamov: The forgotten Soviet genius of modern music. BBC Accessed March 3, 2024: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20221103-arseny-avraamov-the-man-who-conducted-a-city
Summers, Lachlan (2023) The earthquakes that shook Mexico City’s sense of time | Aeon Essays. Accessed February 8, 2024: https://aeon.co/essays/the-earthquakes-that-shook-mexico-citys-sense-of-time
Truax, Barry (1984) Acoustic Communication (Communication, Culture, and Information Studies). Ablex Publishing Corporation Norwood, New Jersey 07648
Wallace, David S. (2018) Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Present. The New Yorker. Accessed January 17, 2024: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/fred-motens-radical-critique-of-the-present
Wong, Mandy-Suzanne (2018) The Thingness of Sound | Essay by Mandy-Suzanne Wong – Sonic Field. Sonicfield.org. Accessed January 17, 2024: https://sonicfield.org/the-thingness-of-sound-essay-by-mandy-suzanne-wong/
Wiedorn, Michael (2021) On the Unfolding of Édouard Glissant's Archipelagic Thought." Karib: Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies, vol. 6, no. 1, 26 Feb. 2021, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, 3. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024: https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=googlescholar&id=GALE|A653736897&v=2.1&it=r&sid=googleScholar&asid=d5d995f
Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey (2013) Kittler's Siren Recursions. University of British Columbia
Zhang, Gary Zhexi, et al. (2023) Catastrophe Time!. Strange Attractor Press
Observing the allure of their seduction, passing by monstrous beings, along a path of imposition and freedom, to its synonymous worshiped mermaid, its semiotic adaptation of a mechanical siren, through danger and fear, technological progress, and the destruction of linear time—the sirens serve as a sonic medium to decipher the constructs they inhabit and bring forth.
What does the sound of a relatively isolated1 version of a siren think, or rather, make?
How does the sound relate to human perception of time? How does it allow humans to sense the collapsing of sirens—the simultaneity of temporalities?
1 This does not renounce their inherent interrelations and simply is an artificial division for the sake of comprehension.
These are some of the questions that guided the exploration of sonic relationality. By thinking through the sirens' sound, their inherent interlinkages to socio-political, cultural, and technological systems became evident—ultimately illuminating how these systems underwrite the ecological collapse. With the various manifestations, I access the temporal constructs that make up the perception of the broad present. Almost like a sonic Odyssey through a rhizomatic archipelago2 of samples, they possess no centralized root or structure.
2 “Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari criticized notions of the root and, even perhaps, notions of being rooted. The root is unique, a stock taking aIl upon itself and killing aIl around it. In opposition to this they propose the rhizome, an enmeshed root system, a network spreading either in the ground or in the air, with no predatory rootstock taking over permanently. The notion of the rhizome maintains, therefore, the idea of rootedness but challenges that of a totalitarian root. Rhizomatic thought is the principle behind what I calI the Poetics of Relation, in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other.” Glissant, Édouard (1990) Poetics of Relation. The University of Michigan Press. Translated by Betsy Wing 2010. P.11
The soundscape consists of sounds from the several siren manifestations. The patterns occur through technological manipulation of their frequencies—looping, stretching, compressing, and adding effects. The samples fold into each other, collapse, and layer to hopefully allow the listener to sense a broad temporality.
The sound of the siren, whether emanating from a mythical origin or a mechanical source, is an expression of call and response in a perpetual loop of song and feedback, crisis and action. With every technology, the perception of time is captured, becoming increasingly linear and static yet simultaneously opening new passages to reconsider these artificial confines. As Kittler’s concept of recursion, with every technological innovation, the sound of the siren shapes and reshapes existing and emerging ones. The siren's recursive loop becomes a tool of significance, assisting humans to listen beyond—allowing to aspire to reshape the continual process of the sirens' transformation through new ontological perspectives. By utilizing this Odyssey of inquiry as a conceptual tool, the interplay of technology, sensing, and time is affirmed—and humans place within Ecology explored.
A refusal to respond to a single-defined siren in time and an acknowledgment of multiple sonic interlinkages let their simultaneous existence in the broad present become a mode of navigation on a large enough scale. This arguably prompts an ontological step toward solidarity-making that recognizes differences without separability.3
Collapsing Sirens—the encouragement of paradoxical perspectives that blend the connection to a particular thing (frequency) while sensing the relation to an entire (sonic) planet.4 The emphasis on multiplicity over unicity and the unpredictable relations characterize the vision of solidarity-making—no monolithic siren exists, and none resonates from a singular temporal source, but rather through the collective sonic sensing of time.
3 Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2016) On Difference Without Separability. A Question of Power: We Don’t Need Another Hero! P.57-65
4 “My proposition is that today the whole world is becoming an archipelago and becoming creolized.” Glissant, Édouard (2002) The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World. Translation of Édouard Glissant, “Le Divers imprévisible du monde.” P. 287-295 in Elizabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, ed. (2002) Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2019. P.290
Observing the allure of their seduction, passing by monstrous beings, along a path of imposition and freedom, to its synonymous worshiped mermaid, its semiotic adaptation of a mechanical siren, through danger and fear, technological progress, and the destruction of linear time—the sirens serve as a sonic medium to decipher the constructs they inhabit and bring forth.
What does the sound of a relatively isolated1 version of a siren think, or rather, make?
How does the sound relate to human perception of time? How does it allow humans to sense the collapsing of sirens—the simultaneity of temporalities?
These are some of the questions that guided the exploration of sonic relationality. By thinking through the sirens' sound, their inherent interlinkages to socio-political, cultural, and technological systems became evident—ultimately illuminating how these systems underwrite the ecological collapse. With the various manifestations, I access the temporal constructs that make up the perception of the broad present. Almost like a sonic Odyssey through a rhizomatic archipelago2 of samples, they possess no centralized root or structure.
1 This does not renounce their inherent interrelations and simply is an artificial division for the sake of comprehension.
2 “Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari criticized notions of the root and, even perhaps, notions of being rooted. The root is unique, a stock taking aIl upon itself and killing aIl around it. In opposition to this they propose the rhizome, an enmeshed root system, a network spreading either in the ground or in the air, with no predatory rootstock taking over permanently. The notion of the rhizome maintains, therefore, the idea of rootedness but challenges that of a totalitarian root. Rhizomatic thought is the principle behind what I calI the Poetics of Relation, in which each and every identity is extended through a relationship with the Other.” Glissant, Édouard (1990) Poetics of Relation. The University of Michigan Press. Translated by Betsy Wing 2010. P.11
The soundscape consists of sounds from the several siren manifestations. The patterns occur through technological manipulation of their frequencies—looping, stretching, compressing, and adding effects. The samples fold into each other, collapse, and layer to hopefully allow the listener to sense a broad temporality.
The sound of the siren, whether emanating from a mythical origin or a mechanical source, is an expression of call and response in a perpetual loop of song and feedback, crisis and action. With every technology, the perception of time is captured, becoming increasingly linear and static yet simultaneously opening new passages to reconsider these artificial confines. As Kittler’s concept of recursion, with every technological innovation, the sound of the siren shapes and reshapes existing and emerging ones. The siren's recursive loop becomes a tool of significance, assisting humans to listen beyond—allowing to aspire to reshape the continual process of the sirens' transformation through new ontological perspectives. By utilizing this Odyssey of inquiry as a conceptual tool, the interplay of technology, sensing, and time is affirmed—and humans place within Ecology explored.
A refusal to respond to a single-defined siren in time and an acknowledgment of multiple sonic interlinkages let their simultaneous existence in the broad present become a mode of navigation on a large enough scale. This arguably prompts an ontological step toward solidarity-making that recognizes differences without separability.3
Collapsing Sirens—the encouragement of paradoxical perspectives that blend the connection to a particular thing (frequency) while sensing the relation to an entire (sonic) planet.4 The emphasis on multiplicity over unicity and the unpredictable relations characterize the vision of solidarity-making—no monolithic siren exists, and none resonates from a singular temporal source, but rather through the collective sonic sensing of time.
3 Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2016) On Difference Without Separability. A Question of Power: We Don’t Need Another Hero! P.57-65
4 “My proposition is that today the whole world is becoming an archipelago and becoming creolized.” Glissant, Édouard (2002) The Unforeseeable Diversity of the World. Translation of Édouard Glissant, “Le Divers imprévisible du monde.” P. 287-295 in Elizabeth Mudimbe-Boyi, ed. (2002) Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2019. P.290
Collapsing Sirens is a critical sonic exploration of humans' sense of time and the interrelation of things in the state of perpetual crisis.
→ about
"I always thought that 'the voice' was meant to indicate a kind of genuine, authentic, absolute individuation, which struck me as (a) undesirable and (b) impossible. Whereas a 'sound' was really within the midst of this intense engagement with everything: with all the noise that you've ever heard, you struggle somehow to make a difference, so to speak, within that noise. And that difference isn't necessarily about you as an individual, it's much more simply about trying to augment and to differentiate what's around you. And that's what a sound is for me!"1
Fred Moten
1 Wallace, David S. (2018) Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Present. The New Yorker
Before speaking on sound, I want to address the collapsing of temporalities and the great responsibility to attempt sensing, not talking, not intellectualizing, but truly sensing this collapsing and, thus, the inherent connection to ecology. The collapsing of temporalities—how time is felt—refers to the simultaneity of different temporal scales with varying velocities.2 It is a folding-in or layering of felt temporalities—in this case, specifically, geological, technological, and human time. I would also like to address that I will use the terms folding in, collapsing, and layering to describe the interaction and intersection of timescales. I am aware of subtle differences, and though the terms will seemingly be used interchangeably, this is to be based on the understanding that the differences all apply to this intangible phenomenon of simultaneity.
While folding in implies the bending or curving (a kind of intertwining) of timescales, in which distinct elements become closer and even enclosed by one another without losing their distinctiveness, collapsing is a convergence where the distinctions become less clear or even disappear, creating a more unified temporal experience, and with this, layering conveys time scales sitting on top of each other, that are superimposed or coexist, each distinct, yet part of a cohesive whole. The three descriptions carry the complexity of discussing the simultaneity of different temporal scales. Sensing time is too subjective, not to say relative. How various aspects of time interact, overlap, dissolve, or integrate becomes extremely contextual. The scales fold in, while partly collapsing and partly layering, always relative to the context of sensing.
Why is the sensing of simultaneity relevant? Ecology forces a multiplicity of temporalities to be thought of together—geological time, the deep time that encapsulates the extensive processes that crafted our terrestrial abode; technological time, relating to the evolution of technologies and their effects on the socio-political; and human-experiential time, the timeframe at a speed of the human from seconds, years, to lifespans.3 Historically, temporal scales were treated as separate, with humanity seen as insignificant in the vastness of geological time and humans as separate from nature. However, the interconnectedness of temporal scales challenges this perspective, recognizing humanity as a significant geological force.4 This notion emphasizes an ontological interrelation of temporalities and necessitates decentering the human-scaled temporal perspective.
From sensing the simultaneity of temporalities, the necessity for humans to navigate spatio-temporal scales arises. It prompts a reevaluation of how time is conceptualized and understood.5 Recognizing that the ecological crisis is not just a theoretical concern of the future but a lived reality that demands a conscious organization of time and space facilitates a non-anthropocentric perspective.6 A perspective that subsequently requires the coordination of ecological challenges and an ontological negotiation of power dynamics.7
The issue that arises is that humans, as individuals or communities, have close to no ability to truly fathom the magnitude of humanity's geological agency on a larger temporal scale. This makes any necessary fundamental change in humans' perception difficult—making any desired alteration in evolution difficult and keeping any previous mistake prone to be repeated. The ungraspable large-scale phenomenon of geological deep time, a hyperobject,8 as defined by philosopher Timothy Morton, is an entity stretched over space and time beyond human perception. Hyperobjects are said to be never fully perceived and include ecology, the climate collapse, complex political systems such as neoliberal capitalism, or even the geopolitics of computation.9 Within these hyperobjects, emerging paradoxes become evident. In the geopolitics of computation advanced technologies, such as satellites, sensors, and supercomputers, collect vast amounts of data to run complex simulations. They brought forth the understanding of the enormity of the climate change and its connection to human activity, while the processes facilitating the emergence of these innovations simultaneously influence the effect humanity has on Earth, marking the era of the Anthropocene.10
2 Temporality of temporal scales can be defined in multiple ways—e.g., biological time, depending on species; economic time, through different economic activities; cultural time, in varying perceptions of time in cultures; or cosmological time, considering the universe as a whole. For the aim of this study, I will work with geological time, in which Earth's processes occur; technological time, which I consider to be socio-political too, relating to the evolution of technologies; and human time, the experiential timeframe, ranging from seconds to years and lifespans.
3 Mbembe, Achille (2022) How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness. Noema Magazine
4 “Now that humans—thanks to our numbers, technology, the burning of fossil fuel, and other related activities—have become a geological agent on the planet, some scientists have proposed that we recognize the beginning of a new geological era, one in which humans act as a main determinant of the environment of the planet. The name they have coined for this new geological age is Anthropocene.” Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. The University of Chicago Press. P. 32
5 Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023) Catastrophe Time!. Strange Attractor Press. P.39
6 Ibid. Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023)
7 Ibid.
8 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press.
9 “Without the cumulative discontiguous megastructure of satellites, sensors, data centers, supercomputer simulations, and the rest, the scientific reality of the situation would be impossible to intuit. […][After] the discovery of climate change comes the revelation of the “Anthropocene,” as well as the realization of the geochemical realities of the planet that both precede human history and from which that history emerges, even and especially as that history possesses the agency to artificialize that geochemistry (and thus its own futures).” Bratton, Benjamin H., et al. (2022) Vertical Atlas. The Stack at the Edge of Planetarity: Convergence, Divergence and War. digital publication. ArtEZ Press. P. 275
10 Ibid. Bratton, Benjamin H., et al. (2022) P. 275
The Anthropocene is the geological era where the human species has significantly impacted Earth. It prompts a reevaluation of human's role as geological agents. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, who speaks of this fundamental tension in 'The Climate of History: Four Theses,' states that “[…] climate scientists' claims about human agency introduce a question of scale. Humans can become a planetary geological agent only historically and collectively, that is when we have reached numbers and invented technologies that are on a scale large enough to have an impact on the planet itself. To call ourselves a geophysical force is to attribute to us a force on the same scale as that released at other times when there has been a mass extinction of species.”11 A single human action is statistically insignificant, yet humanity has had an assessable lasting impact on Earth. With the Technological Revolution, starting in the mid-20th Century, and the beginnings of mechanical mass production, humans’ planetary geological agency accelerated. If we simply think about the detonations of atomic bombs and their lasting nuclear radiation, the interrelation and the collapsing of temporalities become clear. Acknowledging the responsibility of the human in their collective sum is the single most important change in this era.12
The geology of the Anthropocene compels a connection between political systems (patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism) and the history of the human species.13 Nature should no longer be understood as a backdrop to humans and as something humans dominate, but rather as something humans are embedded in and as a surrounding being that sustains their being. The concept of Nature, therefore, is superfluous in the context of ecology.14 I will refer to Nature as a historical concept in the course of this work.
A concern with the perspective to think through the collapsing of temporalities might be a potential disregard for experiential time in which neoliberal capitalist countries cause many of the problems the rest of the world has to suffer. Chakrabarty's response to this critique is precisely that of the interrelation of temporal scales—humanity as a geological force. It was not simply humans involved in the acceleration of innovations,15 the innovations themselves demanded more and biological compositions facilitated these in terms of climate history. Chakrabarty gives the example of the agricultural revolution of 10.000 BCE, perceived as human-made, yet conceivable through the gas composition of Earth's atmosphere, allowing land to be cultivated.16 His example emphasizes the interlinkage of things on a fundamental level that must be understood first. Ecology forces humans to think of chronologies of species history and chronologies of socio-political systems—forcing different temporal speeds to fold into each other. Temporality, in the context of collapsing, becomes not just about humans' everyday experiences but more like a technology that shapes the conditions of our existence.17
11 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. The University of Chicago Press. P. 22-48
12 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
13 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. P. 22-48
14 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
15 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. P. 22-48
16 Ibid.
17 Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023) Catastrophe Time!. P.39
Perhaps the feeling of injustice has been a recurring moment with ecological concerns that makes one hesitate, questioning the urgency of the proposed perspectives of this work. However, this hesitation, this almost existential questioning, hopefully also allows one to recalibrate, sense, and not lose touch with the multiple scales. While uneven experiences of single (non) humans still make a holistic perspective of interconnectivity through temporal scales seem unfair—however factual they are—the unadorned awareness of a collapsing of temporalities carries the potential for new solidarity-making.
There lies a profound obligation to rethink how to relate within ecology knowing everything is part of intricately connected multiplicities of systems. The climate breakdown encompasses everything and everyone, including the responsibility of highlighting its disproportionate impacts and injustices perpetuated by Western hegemonic constructs such as patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, which uphold the breakdown. These dominant Western systems breed serious harm and oppose any efforts toward solidarity, paving the way for severe destruction in forms as far as ecocide and genocide—atrocities that are connected on a fundamental level.
“in a thousand, in a million, we are all Palestinian”18
In the light of day and the topic of this work, specifically this chapter, the ongoing genocide in Gaza cannot and should not go unmentioned. The quote, a chant heard all over the world in protests, emphasizes the deep urgency for a new solidarity-making and further emphasizes the invisible interlinkages beyond humans hidden in the subtext of this chant. Wars have a colossal effect beyond experiential time, and this call forces us to think through a different magnitude of scales. Ultimately, wars are wars on ecology. Both genocide and ecocide are fueled by systems of thought that operate on binaries, violence, and power, mutually reinforcing each other.
Apart from the fact of extreme environmental destruction caused by the (genocidal) wars, the targeting of humans (and more-than-humans) is the criminal denial of the right to exist and stands in direct opposition to any understanding of the interrelation of things and true solidarity.
Solidarity is commonly forged among things—humans or more-than-humans—with similar qualities, aspects, and issues. Philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva challenges this conventional understanding in her work On Difference Without Separability and suggests that true solidarity arises from recognizing and embracing the interconnectedness and nuances within the differences of things, within their entanglement.19 Rather than emphasizing shared characteristics, this form of solidarity20 goes beyond shared traits to recognize the fundamental relation between diverse humans and more-than-humans. Timothy Morten echoes this sentiment from an ecological perspective, suggesting, "Ecological awareness gives you a world in which everything is relevant to everything else, but is also really unique and vivid and distinct at the very same time.”21
Ferreira Da Silva calls for a shift in approach to challenge and dismantle systems of oppression that rely on the perpetuation of separability, urging the acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of things so that seemingly unequal groups can overcome artificial divisions and hierarchies—also intergenerationally. This involves understanding how systems of power affect each thing differently based on various intersecting factors, granting an inclusive and more effective form of solidarity. Her framework emphasizes interconnectedness while acknowledging differences, just as Morton emphasizes the ecological imperative that such solidarity entails: "Being ecological isn't about an obligation to be in a certain way; it's about discovering that you are connected with other beings at a fundamental level."22
Both their concepts shape the foundation of the solidarity-making Collapsing Sirens entails. Using sound as a relational thing to highlight the interconnectedness of various manifestations of sirens, the diverse sonic expressions of the manifestations in human experiential time carry and expand their differences and relations within the technological timescale and beyond.
18 A chant likely popularised after a protest in Derry, Ireland, on the 30th of October, 2023, and since chanted at multiple protests worldwide. Heard in London at the National March for Palestine on November 11th, 2023. It is the demand for solidarity that re-emerges in the current genocidal war on Gaza and the Palestinian people.
19 Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2016) On Difference Without Separability. A Question of Power: We Don’t Need Another Hero! P.57-65
20 Ibid.
21 Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological. MIT Press.
22 Ibid.
In an interview with theorist and poet Fred Moten in The New Yorker,23 Moten provides a thought-provoking perspective on sound. He differentiates between the voice as an inessential attempt at individuation and sound as something that permeates and relates through intensifying everything surrounding it, as opposed to noise, which interferes with everything it encloses and is surrounded by.
The voice seems to function not just as a literal vocal sound but as the broader idea of human expression, challenging the dominance of the human voice as a sonic medium. Noise, primarily due to techno-political spheres and the environment, emerges in its inherent entanglement; thus, sound is the distinct harmonious or dissonant relation within this ecology24—consisting of voice, sound, and noise. While the voice predominantly functions in human time, noise, influenced by artifactual and environmental factors, extends into technological and geological time. Sound could harbor access to larger temporalities if it results from the relation between voice and noise—human expression and environmental sound nuisance.25 This conceptualization lays the groundwork for exploring how sound augments human experiences with temporality—vital for the insight into the ecological forces shaping human perception.
Sound becomes a thing26 through which to relate humanity and the environment, entities, and forces. The philosopher Christoph Cox writes in his book Sonic Flux that the premise of understanding sound as an ontological thing is embedded within a flux of becoming27—a thing that exists in its own right perpetually in the process of emerging, existing, and dissipating. It is never static; it is an active participant in shaping the world of things.28 Leaning on the philosophical perspectives of Nietzsche and Deleuze, Cox suggests that “If we proceed from sound, we will be less inclined to think in terms of representation and signification and to draw distinctions between culture and nature, human and nonhuman, mind and matter, the symbolic and the real, the textual and the physical, the meaningful and the meaningless.”29 This position challenges the anthropocentric view that privileges the human voice over other sounds, emphasizing a reconsideration of binary distinctions.30
While noise has often been defined as a by-product, exemplifying the undesired, it has increasingly been utilized as deliberate dissonance.31 Considering these premises, Fred Moten does not directly exclude noise as sound. Instead, he invites an exploration of the threshold between noise and sound, where noise becomes sound as it transforms in relation to its environment, intentionally or unintentionally.
To summarize, voice and noise—human time and technological with geological time—can be sensed in their relation through sound—a thing—suggesting that in their sonic interference, a larger entity, such as geological time, could be perceived. Further, and as previously established, the potential to sense this relation, the collapsing of temporalities, carries the valuable understanding necessary for new solidarity-making.
23 Wallace, David S. (2018) Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Present. The New Yorker.
24 “Does this imply that ecology is fundamentally noisy?” In the context of Moten’s quote, this seems unclear, noise metaphorically seems to stand in for the entirety of the surrounding, however, I would argue, ecology is indeed ontologically noisy. I adopt John Cage's notion of silence being a sound, and further— considering audible and inaudible waves—not everything emits vibrations that are perceptible, yet at a microscopic level, matter is said to be in constant motion, leading to the emission of vibrations. This question emerged during consultations with Patricia Reed on February 03, 2024.
25 Cox quotes both Edgare Varesé, stating, “[…] noise is any sound one doesn’t like”, and further, Abraham Moles, noting that “[t]he only difference which can be logically established between [noise and signal] is based exclusively on the concept of intent on the part of the transmitter. A noise is a signal that the sender does not want to transmit.”
26 Cox, Christoph (2018) Sonic Flux. Sound, Art, and Metaphysics. The University of Chicago Press. P.37
27 Ibid. P.37
28 Ibid. P.114
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Pensis, Eva (2017) “Dissonance: A Suite on Trans Femme Noise” E-flux Journal #132
The climate catastrophe, temporal in nature, is not about an imaginary future full of possibilities but about limits and the likelihood of different outcomes.32 The struggle is to think of how to comprehend—sense—this hyperobject of multiple temporalities. “We are not used to thinking of time as simultaneous. We think of time as linear: past, present, future. So how do we begin to think about time in a way that takes these concatenations seriously?”33
The collapsing of temporalities leads to an increasingly expansive perception of the present, a concept referred to as our broad present (unsere breite Gegenwart) by German theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.34 He primarily refers to temporal simultaneities arising from technological phenomena. The notion of a broader present might offer a better contemporary understanding of the collapsing. Gumbrecht speaks of the ever-available pasts that challenge our experiential time. This access to pasts through technological innovation (considering technological history back to the ancient Greeks) extends into the human—meaning these innovations mediate and shape the human experience.35 The future is embedded in our past. The central concern Gumbrecht identifies with this is the potential harm caused by such phenomena leading to the perception of closed futures—an accumulation of pasts (and data) in the present, creating the illusion of an inescapable future—the end of the world.
As a matter of interest, an ancient example that broadened the present with a new technological system also brought forth the notion of the world coming to an end—a determined future—and prompted the disruptive thought of apocalypses. The Seleucid empire in the Hellenistic world, formed after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, fundamentally altered perceptions of the durational present, the past, and the anticipated or predicted future. A revolutionary chronological system was introduced in which time was continuously numerically counted, opposing the former chronographic systems, which were “measured only in three ways: by unique events, by annual offices, or by royal lifecycles.”36 “Each of these systems was geographically localized. There was no transcendent or translocal system for locating oneself in the flow of history.“37
The Hellenistic society revolted against this system with textual compositions of historical apocalypses, drawing from this new perceptible past and possible outlook on the future. They “presented an image of time in which everything, including the future, was already determined. Where all that happened to you, happened for you. History was shaped, directed and reaching toward a conclusion. All events, however dislocated, were part of a single story, a total history. Above all, these historical apocalypses called forth the end of days […]. Not only did this fantasise the destruction of the Seleucid empire; it also brought the new experience of time to a close.”38
The media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously rendered media technology an extension of man, positing that humans sense their environment through technology.39 Meanwhile, the broad present puts this anthropocentric perception into question. Technology overrides our senses by tricking them. This premise is substantiated by the media theorist Friedrich Kittler, who conversely thinks of men as an extension of technology. Kittler proclaims humans knew nothing about their senses until media technologies provided metaphors and models.40 For instance, the visual medium of film tricks the eye with twenty-four frames a second, creating the illusion of movement. At present, technology has long superseded the capacity of human conceivability. To stay with the example in film, the frequency of forty-eight frames per second, as used in Cinema, oversamples the ability of human perception, adding a smooth artificial aesthetic.41 And, as referenced in the chapter Temporality & Ecology, technological advancement in computational power enabled the realization of humanity as a geological force.
Thus, while acknowledging the factual threat of mass extinction, surrendering to the illusion of no alternate futures brought forth by current technology risks overlooking the essential notion of simultaneity—where past, present, and future converge, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all entities. This understanding further underscores the responsibility to exist in solidarity—which extends to the importance of understanding the ontological relations between all humans and mora-than-humans while acknowledging their differences.42
Perhaps thinking of humanity as we know it as already dead could facilitate the end of a contemporary creeping doomism.43 Considering the human as an individual static person deceased to become what is now often referred to as the posthuman or human(s)44—something ever-evolving, where all things matter and past dichotomies are abolished, an evolution with everything there is. An Earth post humanity, where localized yet inherently relational, cyclical, linear, and expanding temporal concepts exist.45 Potentially assisting humans in stopping to think of the human as central and getting rid of eco-anxiety—changing the perspective of the individual as being special to the perspective that every thing is special—as well as inherently interrelated to all surrounding things.46
Morton encourages humans to sense time not as a linear or human-centric progression but as a complex, layered, and deeply ecological phenomenon.47 The perspective of an interconnectedness of all things challenges humans to perceive time as a vast, entangled web where causes and effects are not easily distinguishable. This perspective shifts the temporal focus from anticipating future catastrophes to recognizing and living within ongoing apocalyptic conditions. Sound can dislocate us from our immediate sense of time, creating a space where temporal flows transform. Most prominently, this happens when listening to music that evokes memories or even a sense of timelessness, whereas other sounds, such as screams or alarms, can create a hyper-alertness, possibly transferring the listener into an immediate present. Experimental sounds can immerse, alter temporal perceptions, and thereby foster a sensory understanding of an interconnectedness of timescales and non-linearity. Sensing through sound could make abstract and often overwhelming concepts, such as the collapsing of temporalities, more immediate and visceral. By feeling a direct emotional impact, humans might comprehend the enormity of a hyperobject more profoundly, bridging the gap between intellectual understanding and sensory experience.48
32 Zhang, Gary Zhexi, et al. (2023) Catastrophe Time!. P.39
33 Mbembe, Achille (2022) How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness. Noema Magazine.
34 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (2010) Unsere Breite Gegenwart. Suhrkamp Verlag
35 A primary example is the innovation of recording technologies. Kittler, Friedrich (1986) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Standford University Press 1999 Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz
36 Kosmin, Paul J. (2019) When time became regular and universal, it changed history. Aeon Essays
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. I find this to be an exciting reference, as I would want to push back against the simple apocalyptic thought. In the Seleucid empire, this thought ignited and facilitated the destruction of the system in power. Yet, how did this happen? Through the help of artistic means. With an orientation towards the embedded future, literary apocalyptic works utilized fantasy, which in turn altered lived perceptions, inspiring humans to act.
39 McLuhan, Marshall; Carpenter, Edmund; et al. (1960) Acoustic Space. Explorations in Communication. The Beacon Press P.36
40 Kittler, Friedrich (1986) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
41 Often used in the movies to technologically tweak the film (e.g. slow motion).
42 Author Octavia Butler's sci-fi novels show how an imagined destruction of the Earth could facilitate changing one's own way of relating. In her Earthseed series, readers find themselves in a dystopian future where they learn through the protagonists how true solidarity and the awareness of constant transformation are the only principles worth holding on to.
43 Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological. P.65
44 Braidotti, Rosi (2020) ‘We’ May Be in This Together, but We Are Not All Human and We Are Not One and the Same. Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities 1, no. 1 (June): 2631
45 Similar to Kittler's concept of recursion. Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey (2013) Kittler's Siren Recursions. University of British Columbia
46 This requires repeatedly dismantling the concept of the human. Otherwise, there would be nothing to act upon.
Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological
47 Ibid.
“the ear's temporal resolving power
is incomparably finer than that of the eye”49
Michel Chion
As Kittler noted, media technologies override our senses and thus create illusions in perception. The moving image, in particular, shows us this, standing as an obstacle to the eye's sensory power to perceive temporality. Film theorist and composer Michel Chion refers to this in his work "Audio-Vision" by accentuating the temporal resolution power of the ear and its ability to perceive nuances that the eye cannot. The ear's ability to recognize and capture complex auditory sequences surpasses the eye's, especially in fast-moving film scenes.50 A comparison that underlines sound's unique temporal qualities and challenges conventional notions of continuity in visual media. While we can shut out the visual field, we are invariably compelled to respond to sound.51
Sound challenges traditional notions and passes the temporal limitations of the visual field. Adopting simultaneous perspectives through sound in its physicality could allow us to observe Earth from a unique vantage point. Tim Ingold's assertion that making is a form of thinking52 encourages thinking from the standpoint of sound. He implies that engaging with sound—whether through creating music, designing soundscapes, or simply listening attentively—is not merely a sensory experience but a deeply intellectual one. It becomes a form of inquiry and expression that parallels traditional forms of thought—encouraging a view of cognition that includes the sensory and the material.53 Prompting the question: What does sound think, or more precisely, what does sound make?
Engaging with sound—through making, manipulating, or listening—embodies a form of interaction with the material world. Sound is not just a backdrop to human activity but an active thing in the cognitive processes that shape humans' understanding of the world.54 Timothy Morton and Kodwo Eshun expand this notion of sound as a sensorial thing—flexible and dynamic—able to evoke emotions.55 Sounds become agents influencing human experiences.56 In this context, thinking from the standpoint of sound involves considering how soundscapes are constructed, how sounds interact with each other and the environment, and how listeners affect and perceive them. It requires an understanding of the physical properties of mediums and how sound waves can be shaped by and shape those mediums in return.
“Sound is a mechanical disturbance that travels through an elastic medium at a speed characteristic of that medium. […] Acoustic signals require a mechanically elastic medium for propagation and therefore cannot travel through a vacuum.”57 Sound's propagation as a mechanical wave phenomenon emphasizes its dependence on physical media, contrasting it with the way light and other electromagnetic phenomena can surpass such limitations. Their dynamic and ever-changing nature accentuates the ear's ability to shape the perception of time and influence the temporal location one inhabits.58 While electromagnetic waves enable us to perceive temporalities on a cosmic scale, mechanical waves—sound waves—ground us in the immediacy of our planet's geological experiences. Sound offers an example of how our engagement with the world is both shaped by and shapes the material and ecological contexts in which we exist, challenging us to consider the broader implications of our sensory experiences. This ontological perspective of sound entails a fundamental sensorial role in ecology.59
The necessity of a medium for sound propagation speaks to the ecological and material embeddedness of auditory experiences. As Ingold suggests, making involves a form of thinking embedded in material and sensory engagement; sound propagation requires a similar engagement.
49 Chion, Michel (1993) Audio-Vision Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press P.134-135
50 Ibid.
51 McLuhan, Marshall; Carpenter, Edmund; et al. (1960) Acoustic Space. Explorations in Communication. P.67
52 Ingold, Tim (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge. P.6
53 Ingold, Tim (2013) Thinking through Making. Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024.
54 Kittler introduces the agency of things recognizing sounds as entities capable of impacting the physical world, calling forth a mathematical approach through numbers.
55 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
56 Wong, Mandy-Suzanne (2018) The Thingness of Sound. Sonic Field. Sonicfield.org. Accessed January 17, 2024.
57 Raichel, Daniel R. (2006) The Science and Applications of Acoustics. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc P.16
58 Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant Than the Sun Adventures in Sonic Fiction. Quartet Books.
59 Wong, Mandy-Suzanne (2018) The Thingness of Sound
"sound as hyperobject, a sound from which I can't escape,
a viscous sonic latex."60
Timothy Morton
Let us recall the question: What does sound think, what does sound make?
Sound is measured through the frequency and amplitude of vibrations. Different frequencies of vibrations create different pitches, and variations in amplitude determine the volume.61 Sound waves propagate in all directions, like expanding spheres62 exceeding established temporal layers. Earth is perpetually inhabited by inaudible waves (to humans) that eternally ripple through the atmosphere. Sound waves are, in their relation, a hyperobject in themselves.63 Sound waves traverse time and space in complex patterns, interlinking everything they pass through. When sound waves meet, they create interferences and patterns that alter humans' perception of their environment. When in phase, sound waves can create constructive interferences, which increase their amplitude; out of phase, they create a destructive interference that neutralizes or decreases the pressure in amplitude. They can create beating, pulsing interference when slightly different, or when encountering changes in medium get reflected, creating echoes, reverberations, and scattering. Environmental and technological interferences also distort waves through factors such as wind, humidity, or electronic devices. These phenomena manifest in unexpected ways, defying conventional understanding and perception—characteristics of a hyperobject.
Sound interference patterns, occurring at various times, speeds, and spaces, are characterized by abrupt transitions, ruptures, or events that, when viewed on a larger scale, connect to phenomena like natural disasters, acts of terror, wars, or uprisings. Consider how ocean waves, influenced by interconnected events and external forces (other waves and winds), can combine and amplify, potentially escalating into a tsunami. Sound interferences and diffractions similarly create experiences that are unsettling, eerie, yet strangely captivating—instances where humans might momentarily grasp fragments of hyperobjects, those vast, elusive entities that transcend our usual perception of time and space.64
Technically, every thing emits vibrations that can be measured. Earth's natural frequency is said to be 7.83Hz.65 Geologists and scientists, for instance, seek to understand the hyperobject of the Anthropocene by trying to localize and measure it through seismic frequencies.66 Yet—coming back to the beginning—Eshun asks, and I, too, wonder how non-experts could feel the collapsing of temporalities.
“Sonically speaking, the posthuman era is not one of disembodiment
but the exact reverse: it's a hyper embodiment”67
Kodwo Eshun
This finally brings me to the Collapsing Sirens. The sirens serve as the red thread through the making of this work and the broad present. The challenge is to think, or rather listen and feel, through their sonic agency in relation to ecology. As written in the chapter on Solidarity, sound as a thing will highlight the interconnectedness of various manifestations of sirens in the main body of this inquiry. The different sonic expressions of the manifestations show their different yet inseparable technological and socio-political relations.
“Kittler mentions the Sirens as […][an] example of recursive history ‘where the same issue is taken up again and again at regular intervals but with different connotations and results’ […]: from seductive Greek sea nymphs to monsters of early Christianity, from mermaids of the Middle Ages to the nineteenth-century technical use of the term in the form we understand it, i. e. as a signaling [thing] with a sound, subsequently playing a key part in the mapping of the thresholds of hearing as well as the development of radio […].”68 The Sirens’ medium, sound-making, and inherent relation to ecology will assemble the sensorial Collapsing Sirens—an entry to sensing multiple temporalities.
The choice of the siren lies in their embodiment of a variety of realms—warning, urgency, danger, collective action, opposition, seduction, sensuality, and sound—pivotal factors to address in the climate breakdown. Their sound symbolizes interference, ruption, and transition that evoke manifold emotions. Sirens enable us to tap into more-than-human realities. Their sound speaks directly to the sensory level of experience and exceeds human constructs. By decoding their sonic impact throughout human history (temporalities I have direct access to), I hope to find ways of relating their multiple manifestations, potentially revealing interferences in their relations that open gateways for sensing the collapsing of temporalities. Inaudible and audible to humans, their calls resonate eternally and should be listened to.
60 Morton, Timothy. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. P.30
61 Goodman, Steve (2010) Sonic warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. P.120
62 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. P.2
63 Ibid. P.30
64 Ibid. P.163
65 Natural frequencies are the characteristic vibrational frequencies at which an object or system tends to oscillate in the event of interference.
66 Eshun, Kodwo (2015) The Geologic Imagination. 4. Geologic Time, the Anthropocene and Earthquake Sensitives – Interview with Kodwo Eshun by Julian Ross. Sonic Acts Press & the authors. Epub Version. P.58-59
67 Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant Than the Sun Adventures in Sonic Fiction. P.1-2
68 An excerpt of an interview between Jussi Parrika and Friedrich Kittler, quoted from Ernst, Wolfgang (2014) Towards a Media-Archaeology of Sirenic Articulations. Listening with Media-Archaeological Ears. P. 7–17
Collapsing Sirens is a critical sonic exploration of humans' sense of time and the interrelation of things in the state of perpetual crisis.
→ about
"I always thought that 'the voice' was meant to indicate a kind of genuine, authentic, absolute individuation, which struck me as (a) undesirable and (b) impossible. Whereas a 'sound' was really within the midst of this intense engagement with everything: with all the noise that you've ever heard, you struggle somehow to make a difference, so to speak, within that noise. And that difference isn't necessarily about you as an individual, it's much more simply about trying to augment and to differentiate what's around you. And that's what a sound is for me!"1
Fred Moten
1 Wallace, David S. (2018) Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Present. The New Yorker
Before speaking on sound, I want to address the collapsing of temporalities and the great responsibility to attempt sensing, not talking, not intellectualizing, but truly sensing this collapsing and, thus, the inherent connection to ecology. The collapsing of temporalities—how time is felt—refers to the simultaneity of different temporal scales with varying velocities.2 It is a folding-in or layering of felt temporalities—in this case, specifically, geological, technological, and human time. I would also like to address that I will use the terms folding in, collapsing, and layering to describe the interaction and intersection of timescales. I am aware of subtle differences, and though the terms will seemingly be used interchangeably, this is to be based on the understanding that the differences all apply to this intangible phenomenon of simultaneity.
While folding in implies the bending or curving (a kind of intertwining) of timescales, in which distinct elements become closer and even enclosed by one another without losing their distinctiveness, collapsing is a convergence where the distinctions become less clear or even disappear, creating a more unified temporal experience, and with this, layering conveys time scales sitting on top of each other, that are superimposed or coexist, each distinct, yet part of a cohesive whole. The three descriptions carry the complexity of discussing the simultaneity of different temporal scales. Sensing time is too subjective, not to say relative. How various aspects of time interact, overlap, dissolve, or integrate becomes extremely contextual. The scales fold in, while partly collapsing and partly layering, always relative to the context of sensing.
Why is the sensing of simultaneity relevant? Ecology forces a multiplicity of temporalities to be thought of together—geological time, the deep time that encapsulates the extensive processes that crafted our terrestrial abode; technological time, relating to the evolution of technologies and their effects on the socio-political; and human-experiential time, the timeframe at a speed of the human from seconds, years, to lifespans.3 Historically, temporal scales were treated as separate, with humanity seen as insignificant in the vastness of geological time and humans as separate from nature. However, the interconnectedness of temporal scales challenges this perspective, recognizing humanity as a significant geological force.4 This notion emphasizes an ontological interrelation of temporalities and necessitates decentering the human-scaled temporal perspective.
From sensing the simultaneity of temporalities, the necessity for humans to navigate spatio-temporal scales arises. It prompts a reevaluation of how time is conceptualized and understood.5 Recognizing that the ecological crisis is not just a theoretical concern of the future but a lived reality that demands a conscious organization of time and space facilitates a non-anthropocentric perspective.6 A perspective that subsequently requires the coordination of ecological challenges and an ontological negotiation of power dynamics.7
The issue that arises is that humans, as individuals or communities, have close to no ability to truly fathom the magnitude of humanity's geological agency on a larger temporal scale. This makes any necessary fundamental change in humans' perception difficult—making any desired alteration in evolution difficult and keeping any previous mistake prone to be repeated. The ungraspable large-scale phenomenon of geological deep time, a hyperobject,8 as defined by philosopher Timothy Morton, is an entity stretched over space and time beyond human perception. Hyperobjects are said to be never fully perceived and include ecology, the climate collapse, complex political systems such as neoliberal capitalism, or even the geopolitics of computation.9 Within these hyperobjects, emerging paradoxes become evident. In the geopolitics of computation advanced technologies, such as satellites, sensors, and supercomputers, collect vast amounts of data to run complex simulations. They brought forth the understanding of the enormity of the climate change and its connection to human activity, while the processes facilitating the emergence of these innovations simultaneously influence the effect humanity has on Earth, marking the era of the Anthropocene.10
2 Temporality of temporal scales can be defined in multiple ways—e.g., biological time, depending on species; economic time, through different economic activities; cultural time, in varying perceptions of time in cultures; or cosmological time, considering the universe as a whole. For the aim of this study, I will work with geological time, in which Earth's processes occur; technological time, which I consider to be socio-political too, relating to the evolution of technologies; and human time, the experiential timeframe, ranging from seconds to years and lifespans.
3 Mbembe, Achille (2022) How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness. Noema Magazine
4 “Now that humans—thanks to our numbers, technology, the burning of fossil fuel, and other related activities—have become a geological agent on the planet, some scientists have proposed that we recognize the beginning of a new geological era, one in which humans act as a main determinant of the environment of the planet. The name they have coined for this new geological age is Anthropocene.” Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. The University of Chicago Press. P. 32
5 Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023) Catastrophe Time!. Strange Attractor Press. P.39
6 Ibid. Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023)
7 Ibid.
8 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press.
9 “Without the cumulative discontiguous megastructure of satellites, sensors, data centers, supercomputer simulations, and the rest, the scientific reality of the situation would be impossible to intuit. […][After] the discovery of climate change comes the revelation of the “Anthropocene,” as well as the realization of the geochemical realities of the planet that both precede human history and from which that history emerges, even and especially as that history possesses the agency to artificialize that geochemistry (and thus its own futures).” Bratton, Benjamin H., et al. (2022) Vertical Atlas. The Stack at the Edge of Planetarity: Convergence, Divergence and War. digital publication. ArtEZ Press. P. 275
10 Ibid. Bratton, Benjamin H., et al. (2022) P. 275
The Anthropocene is the geological era where the human species has significantly impacted Earth. It prompts a reevaluation of human's role as geological agents. The historian Dipesh Chakrabarty, who speaks of this fundamental tension in 'The Climate of History: Four Theses,' states that “[…] climate scientists' claims about human agency introduce a question of scale. Humans can become a planetary geological agent only historically and collectively, that is when we have reached numbers and invented technologies that are on a scale large enough to have an impact on the planet itself. To call ourselves a geophysical force is to attribute to us a force on the same scale as that released at other times when there has been a mass extinction of species.”11 A single human action is statistically insignificant, yet humanity has had an assessable lasting impact on Earth. With the Technological Revolution, starting in the mid-20th Century, and the beginnings of mechanical mass production, humans’ planetary geological agency accelerated. If we simply think about the detonations of atomic bombs and their lasting nuclear radiation, the interrelation and the collapsing of temporalities become clear. Acknowledging the responsibility of the human in their collective sum is the single most important change in this era.12
The geology of the Anthropocene compels a connection between political systems (patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism) and the history of the human species.13 Nature should no longer be understood as a backdrop to humans and as something humans dominate, but rather as something humans are embedded in and as a surrounding being that sustains their being. The concept of Nature, therefore, is superfluous in the context of ecology.14 I will refer to Nature as a historical concept in the course of this work.
A concern with the perspective to think through the collapsing of temporalities might be a potential disregard for experiential time in which neoliberal capitalist countries cause many of the problems the rest of the world has to suffer. Chakrabarty's response to this critique is precisely that of the interrelation of temporal scales—humanity as a geological force. It was not simply humans involved in the acceleration of innovations,15 the innovations themselves demanded more and biological compositions facilitated these in terms of climate history. Chakrabarty gives the example of the agricultural revolution of 10.000 BCE, perceived as human-made, yet conceivable through the gas composition of Earth's atmosphere, allowing land to be cultivated.16 His example emphasizes the interlinkage of things on a fundamental level that must be understood first. Ecology forces humans to think of chronologies of species history and chronologies of socio-political systems—forcing different temporal speeds to fold into each other. Temporality, in the context of collapsing, becomes not just about humans' everyday experiences but more like a technology that shapes the conditions of our existence.17
11 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. The University of Chicago Press. P. 22-48
12 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
13 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. P. 22-48
14 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
15 Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2021) The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. P. 22-48
16 Ibid.
17 Zhang, Gary Zhexi (2023) Catastrophe Time!. P.39
Perhaps the feeling of injustice has been a recurring moment with ecological concerns that makes one hesitate, questioning the urgency of the proposed perspectives of this work. However, this hesitation, this almost existential questioning, hopefully also allows one to recalibrate, sense, and not lose touch with the multiple scales. While uneven experiences of single (non) humans still make a holistic perspective of interconnectivity through temporal scales seem unfair—however factual they are—the unadorned awareness of a collapsing of temporalities carries the potential for new solidarity-making.
There lies a profound obligation to rethink how to relate within ecology knowing everything is part of intricately connected multiplicities of systems. The climate breakdown encompasses everything and everyone, including the responsibility of highlighting its disproportionate impacts and injustices perpetuated by Western hegemonic constructs such as patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism, which uphold the breakdown. These dominant Western systems breed serious harm and oppose any efforts toward solidarity, paving the way for severe destruction in forms as far as ecocide and genocide—atrocities that are connected on a fundamental level.
“in a thousand, in a million, we are all Palestinian”18
In the light of day and the topic of this work, specifically this chapter, the ongoing genocide in Gaza cannot and should not go unmentioned. The quote, a chant heard all over the world in protests, emphasizes the deep urgency for a new solidarity-making and further emphasizes the invisible interlinkages beyond humans hidden in the subtext of this chant. Wars have a colossal effect beyond experiential time, and this call forces us to think through a different magnitude of scales. Ultimately, wars are wars on ecology. Both genocide and ecocide are fueled by systems of thought that operate on binaries, violence, and power, mutually reinforcing each other.
Apart from the fact of extreme environmental destruction caused by the (genocidal) wars, the targeting of humans (and more-than-humans) is the criminal denial of the right to exist and stands in direct opposition to any understanding of the interrelation of things and true solidarity.
Solidarity is commonly forged among things—humans or more-than-humans—with similar qualities, aspects, and issues. Philosopher Denise Ferreira da Silva challenges this conventional understanding in her work On Difference Without Separability and suggests that true solidarity arises from recognizing and embracing the interconnectedness and nuances within the differences of things, within their entanglement.19 Rather than emphasizing shared characteristics, this form of solidarity20 goes beyond shared traits to recognize the fundamental relation between diverse humans and more-than-humans. Timothy Morten echoes this sentiment from an ecological perspective, suggesting, "Ecological awareness gives you a world in which everything is relevant to everything else, but is also really unique and vivid and distinct at the very same time.”21
Ferreira Da Silva calls for a shift in approach to challenge and dismantle systems of oppression that rely on the perpetuation of separability, urging the acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of things so that seemingly unequal groups can overcome artificial divisions and hierarchies—also intergenerationally. This involves understanding how systems of power affect each thing differently based on various intersecting factors, granting an inclusive and more effective form of solidarity. Her framework emphasizes interconnectedness while acknowledging differences, just as Morton emphasizes the ecological imperative that such solidarity entails: "Being ecological isn't about an obligation to be in a certain way; it's about discovering that you are connected with other beings at a fundamental level."22
Both their concepts shape the foundation of the solidarity-making Collapsing Sirens entails. Using sound as a relational thing to highlight the interconnectedness of various manifestations of sirens, the diverse sonic expressions of the manifestations in human experiential time carry and expand their differences and relations within the technological timescale and beyond.
18 A chant likely popularised after a protest in Derry, Ireland, on the 30th of October, 2023, and since chanted at multiple protests worldwide. Heard in London at the National March for Palestine on November 11th, 2023. It is the demand for solidarity that re-emerges in the current genocidal war on Gaza and the Palestinian people.
19 Ferreira da Silva, Denise (2016) On Difference Without Separability. A Question of Power: We Don’t Need Another Hero! P.57-65
20 Ibid.
21 Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological. MIT Press.
22 Ibid.
In an interview with theorist and poet Fred Moten in The New Yorker,23 Moten provides a thought-provoking perspective on sound. He differentiates between the voice as an inessential attempt at individuation and sound as something that permeates and relates through intensifying everything surrounding it, as opposed to noise, which interferes with everything it encloses and is surrounded by.
The voice seems to function not just as a literal vocal sound but as the broader idea of human expression, challenging the dominance of the human voice as a sonic medium. Noise, primarily due to techno-political spheres and the environment, emerges in its inherent entanglement; thus, sound is the distinct harmonious or dissonant relation within this ecology24—consisting of voice, sound, and noise. While the voice predominantly functions in human time, noise, influenced by artifactual and environmental factors, extends into technological and geological time. Sound could harbor access to larger temporalities if it results from the relation between voice and noise—human expression and environmental sound nuisance.25 This conceptualization lays the groundwork for exploring how sound augments human experiences with temporality—vital for the insight into the ecological forces shaping human perception.
Sound becomes a thing26 through which to relate humanity and the environment, entities, and forces. The philosopher Christoph Cox writes in his book Sonic Flux that the premise of understanding sound as an ontological thing is embedded within a flux of becoming27—a thing that exists in its own right perpetually in the process of emerging, existing, and dissipating. It is never static; it is an active participant in shaping the world of things.28 Leaning on the philosophical perspectives of Nietzsche and Deleuze, Cox suggests that “If we proceed from sound, we will be less inclined to think in terms of representation and signification and to draw distinctions between culture and nature, human and nonhuman, mind and matter, the symbolic and the real, the textual and the physical, the meaningful and the meaningless.”29 This position challenges the anthropocentric view that privileges the human voice over other sounds, emphasizing a reconsideration of binary distinctions.30
While noise has often been defined as a by-product, exemplifying the undesired, it has increasingly been utilized as deliberate dissonance.31 Considering these premises, Fred Moten does not directly exclude noise as sound. Instead, he invites an exploration of the threshold between noise and sound, where noise becomes sound as it transforms in relation to its environment, intentionally or unintentionally.
To summarize, voice and noise—human time and technological with geological time—can be sensed in their relation through sound—a thing—suggesting that in their sonic interference, a larger entity, such as geological time, could be perceived. Further, and as previously established, the potential to sense this relation, the collapsing of temporalities, carries the valuable understanding necessary for new solidarity-making.
23 Wallace, David S. (2018) Fred Moten’s Radical Critique of the Present. The New Yorker.
24 “Does this imply that ecology is fundamentally noisy?” In the context of Moten’s quote, this seems unclear, noise metaphorically seems to stand in for the entirety of the surrounding, however, I would argue, ecology is indeed ontologically noisy. I adopt John Cage's notion of silence being a sound, and further— considering audible and inaudible waves—not everything emits vibrations that are perceptible, yet at a microscopic level, matter is said to be in constant motion, leading to the emission of vibrations. This question emerged during consultations with Patricia Reed on February 03, 2024.
25 Cox quotes both Edgare Varesé, stating, “[…] noise is any sound one doesn’t like”, and further, Abraham Moles, noting that “[t]he only difference which can be logically established between [noise and signal] is based exclusively on the concept of intent on the part of the transmitter. A noise is a signal that the sender does not want to transmit.”
26 Cox, Christoph (2018) Sonic Flux. Sound, Art, and Metaphysics. The University of Chicago Press. P.37
27 Ibid. P.37
28 Ibid. P.114
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Pensis, Eva (2017) “Dissonance: A Suite on Trans Femme Noise” E-flux Journal #132
The climate catastrophe, temporal in nature, is not about an imaginary future full of possibilities but about limits and the likelihood of different outcomes.32 The struggle is to think of how to comprehend—sense—this hyperobject of multiple temporalities. “We are not used to thinking of time as simultaneous. We think of time as linear: past, present, future. So how do we begin to think about time in a way that takes these concatenations seriously?”33
The collapsing of temporalities leads to an increasingly expansive perception of the present, a concept referred to as our broad present (unsere breite Gegenwart) by German theorist Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.34 He primarily refers to temporal simultaneities arising from technological phenomena. The notion of a broader present might offer a better contemporary understanding of the collapsing. Gumbrecht speaks of the ever-available pasts that challenge our experiential time. This access to pasts through technological innovation (considering technological history back to the ancient Greeks) extends into the human—meaning these innovations mediate and shape the human experience.35 The future is embedded in our past. The central concern Gumbrecht identifies with this is the potential harm caused by such phenomena leading to the perception of closed futures—an accumulation of pasts (and data) in the present, creating the illusion of an inescapable future—the end of the world.
As a matter of interest, an ancient example that broadened the present with a new technological system also brought forth the notion of the world coming to an end—a determined future—and prompted the disruptive thought of apocalypses. The Seleucid empire in the Hellenistic world, formed after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, fundamentally altered perceptions of the durational present, the past, and the anticipated or predicted future. A revolutionary chronological system was introduced in which time was continuously numerically counted, opposing the former chronographic systems, which were “measured only in three ways: by unique events, by annual offices, or by royal lifecycles.”36 “Each of these systems was geographically localized. There was no transcendent or translocal system for locating oneself in the flow of history.“37
The Hellenistic society revolted against this system with textual compositions of historical apocalypses, drawing from this new perceptible past and possible outlook on the future. They “presented an image of time in which everything, including the future, was already determined. Where all that happened to you, happened for you. History was shaped, directed and reaching toward a conclusion. All events, however dislocated, were part of a single story, a total history. Above all, these historical apocalypses called forth the end of days […]. Not only did this fantasise the destruction of the Seleucid empire; it also brought the new experience of time to a close.”38
The media theorist Marshall McLuhan famously rendered media technology an extension of man, positing that humans sense their environment through technology.39 Meanwhile, the broad present puts this anthropocentric perception into question. Technology overrides our senses by tricking them. This premise is substantiated by the media theorist Friedrich Kittler, who conversely thinks of men as an extension of technology. Kittler proclaims humans knew nothing about their senses until media technologies provided metaphors and models.40 For instance, the visual medium of film tricks the eye with twenty-four frames a second, creating the illusion of movement. At present, technology has long superseded the capacity of human conceivability. To stay with the example in film, the frequency of forty-eight frames per second, as used in Cinema, oversamples the ability of human perception, adding a smooth artificial aesthetic.41 And, as referenced in the chapter Temporality & Ecology, technological advancement in computational power enabled the realization of humanity as a geological force.
Thus, while acknowledging the factual threat of mass extinction, surrendering to the illusion of no alternate futures brought forth by current technology risks overlooking the essential notion of simultaneity—where past, present, and future converge, emphasizing the interconnectedness of all entities. This understanding further underscores the responsibility to exist in solidarity—which extends to the importance of understanding the ontological relations between all humans and mora-than-humans while acknowledging their differences.42
Perhaps thinking of humanity as we know it as already dead could facilitate the end of a contemporary creeping doomism.43 Considering the human as an individual static person deceased to become what is now often referred to as the posthuman or human(s)44—something ever-evolving, where all things matter and past dichotomies are abolished, an evolution with everything there is. An Earth post humanity, where localized yet inherently relational, cyclical, linear, and expanding temporal concepts exist.45 Potentially assisting humans in stopping to think of the human as central and getting rid of eco-anxiety—changing the perspective of the individual as being special to the perspective that every thing is special—as well as inherently interrelated to all surrounding things.46
Morton encourages humans to sense time not as a linear or human-centric progression but as a complex, layered, and deeply ecological phenomenon.47 The perspective of an interconnectedness of all things challenges humans to perceive time as a vast, entangled web where causes and effects are not easily distinguishable. This perspective shifts the temporal focus from anticipating future catastrophes to recognizing and living within ongoing apocalyptic conditions. Sound can dislocate us from our immediate sense of time, creating a space where temporal flows transform. Most prominently, this happens when listening to music that evokes memories or even a sense of timelessness, whereas other sounds, such as screams or alarms, can create a hyper-alertness, possibly transferring the listener into an immediate present. Experimental sounds can immerse, alter temporal perceptions, and thereby foster a sensory understanding of an interconnectedness of timescales and non-linearity. Sensing through sound could make abstract and often overwhelming concepts, such as the collapsing of temporalities, more immediate and visceral. By feeling a direct emotional impact, humans might comprehend the enormity of a hyperobject more profoundly, bridging the gap between intellectual understanding and sensory experience.48
32 Zhang, Gary Zhexi, et al. (2023) Catastrophe Time!. P.39
33 Mbembe, Achille (2022) How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness. Noema Magazine.
34 Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich (2010) Unsere Breite Gegenwart. Suhrkamp Verlag
35 A primary example is the innovation of recording technologies. Kittler, Friedrich (1986) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Standford University Press 1999 Translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz
36 Kosmin, Paul J. (2019) When time became regular and universal, it changed history. Aeon Essays
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid. I find this to be an exciting reference, as I would want to push back against the simple apocalyptic thought. In the Seleucid empire, this thought ignited and facilitated the destruction of the system in power. Yet, how did this happen? Through the help of artistic means. With an orientation towards the embedded future, literary apocalyptic works utilized fantasy, which in turn altered lived perceptions, inspiring humans to act.
39 McLuhan, Marshall; Carpenter, Edmund; et al. (1960) Acoustic Space. Explorations in Communication. The Beacon Press P.36
40 Kittler, Friedrich (1986) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter
41 Often used in the movies to technologically tweak the film (e.g. slow motion).
42 Author Octavia Butler's sci-fi novels show how an imagined destruction of the Earth could facilitate changing one's own way of relating. In her Earthseed series, readers find themselves in a dystopian future where they learn through the protagonists how true solidarity and the awareness of constant transformation are the only principles worth holding on to.
43 Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological. P.65
44 Braidotti, Rosi (2020) ‘We’ May Be in This Together, but We Are Not All Human and We Are Not One and the Same. Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities 1, no. 1 (June): 2631
45 Similar to Kittler's concept of recursion. Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey (2013) Kittler's Siren Recursions. University of British Columbia
46 This requires repeatedly dismantling the concept of the human. Otherwise, there would be nothing to act upon.
Morton, Timothy (2018) Being Ecological
47 Ibid.
“the ear's temporal resolving power
is incomparably finer than that of the eye”49
Michel Chion
As Kittler noted, media technologies override our senses and thus create illusions in perception. The moving image, in particular, shows us this, standing as an obstacle to the eye's sensory power to perceive temporality. Film theorist and composer Michel Chion refers to this in his work "Audio-Vision" by accentuating the temporal resolution power of the ear and its ability to perceive nuances that the eye cannot. The ear's ability to recognize and capture complex auditory sequences surpasses the eye's, especially in fast-moving film scenes.50 A comparison that underlines sound's unique temporal qualities and challenges conventional notions of continuity in visual media. While we can shut out the visual field, we are invariably compelled to respond to sound.51
Sound challenges traditional notions and passes the temporal limitations of the visual field. Adopting simultaneous perspectives through sound in its physicality could allow us to observe Earth from a unique vantage point. Tim Ingold's assertion that making is a form of thinking52 encourages thinking from the standpoint of sound. He implies that engaging with sound—whether through creating music, designing soundscapes, or simply listening attentively—is not merely a sensory experience but a deeply intellectual one. It becomes a form of inquiry and expression that parallels traditional forms of thought—encouraging a view of cognition that includes the sensory and the material.53 Prompting the question: What does sound think, or more precisely, what does sound make?
Engaging with sound—through making, manipulating, or listening—embodies a form of interaction with the material world. Sound is not just a backdrop to human activity but an active thing in the cognitive processes that shape humans' understanding of the world.54 Timothy Morton and Kodwo Eshun expand this notion of sound as a sensorial thing—flexible and dynamic—able to evoke emotions.55 Sounds become agents influencing human experiences.56 In this context, thinking from the standpoint of sound involves considering how soundscapes are constructed, how sounds interact with each other and the environment, and how listeners affect and perceive them. It requires an understanding of the physical properties of mediums and how sound waves can be shaped by and shape those mediums in return.
“Sound is a mechanical disturbance that travels through an elastic medium at a speed characteristic of that medium. […] Acoustic signals require a mechanically elastic medium for propagation and therefore cannot travel through a vacuum.”57 Sound's propagation as a mechanical wave phenomenon emphasizes its dependence on physical media, contrasting it with the way light and other electromagnetic phenomena can surpass such limitations. Their dynamic and ever-changing nature accentuates the ear's ability to shape the perception of time and influence the temporal location one inhabits.58 While electromagnetic waves enable us to perceive temporalities on a cosmic scale, mechanical waves—sound waves—ground us in the immediacy of our planet's geological experiences. Sound offers an example of how our engagement with the world is both shaped by and shapes the material and ecological contexts in which we exist, challenging us to consider the broader implications of our sensory experiences. This ontological perspective of sound entails a fundamental sensorial role in ecology.59
The necessity of a medium for sound propagation speaks to the ecological and material embeddedness of auditory experiences. As Ingold suggests, making involves a form of thinking embedded in material and sensory engagement; sound propagation requires a similar engagement.
49 Chion, Michel (1993) Audio-Vision Sound on Screen. Columbia University Press P.134-135
50 Ibid.
51 McLuhan, Marshall; Carpenter, Edmund; et al. (1960) Acoustic Space. Explorations in Communication. P.67
52 Ingold, Tim (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Routledge. P.6
53 Ingold, Tim (2013) Thinking through Making. Professor Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Accessed 17 Jan. 2024.
54 Kittler introduces the agency of things recognizing sounds as entities capable of impacting the physical world, calling forth a mathematical approach through numbers.
55 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World
56 Wong, Mandy-Suzanne (2018) The Thingness of Sound. Sonic Field. Sonicfield.org. Accessed January 17, 2024.
57 Raichel, Daniel R. (2006) The Science and Applications of Acoustics. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc P.16
58 Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant Than the Sun Adventures in Sonic Fiction. Quartet Books.
59 Wong, Mandy-Suzanne (2018) The Thingness of Sound
"sound as hyperobject, a sound from which I can't escape,
a viscous sonic latex."60
Timothy Morton
Let us recall the question: What does sound think, what does sound make?
Sound is measured through the frequency and amplitude of vibrations. Different frequencies of vibrations create different pitches, and variations in amplitude determine the volume.61 Sound waves propagate in all directions, like expanding spheres62 exceeding established temporal layers. Earth is perpetually inhabited by inaudible waves (to humans) that eternally ripple through the atmosphere. Sound waves are, in their relation, a hyperobject in themselves.63 Sound waves traverse time and space in complex patterns, interlinking everything they pass through. When sound waves meet, they create interferences and patterns that alter humans' perception of their environment. When in phase, sound waves can create constructive interferences, which increase their amplitude; out of phase, they create a destructive interference that neutralizes or decreases the pressure in amplitude. They can create beating, pulsing interference when slightly different, or when encountering changes in medium get reflected, creating echoes, reverberations, and scattering. Environmental and technological interferences also distort waves through factors such as wind, humidity, or electronic devices. These phenomena manifest in unexpected ways, defying conventional understanding and perception—characteristics of a hyperobject.
Sound interference patterns, occurring at various times, speeds, and spaces, are characterized by abrupt transitions, ruptures, or events that, when viewed on a larger scale, connect to phenomena like natural disasters, acts of terror, wars, or uprisings. Consider how ocean waves, influenced by interconnected events and external forces (other waves and winds), can combine and amplify, potentially escalating into a tsunami. Sound interferences and diffractions similarly create experiences that are unsettling, eerie, yet strangely captivating—instances where humans might momentarily grasp fragments of hyperobjects, those vast, elusive entities that transcend our usual perception of time and space.64
Technically, every thing emits vibrations that can be measured. Earth's natural frequency is said to be 7.83Hz.65 Geologists and scientists, for instance, seek to understand the hyperobject of the Anthropocene by trying to localize and measure it through seismic frequencies.66 Yet—coming back to the beginning—Eshun asks, and I, too, wonder how non-experts could feel the collapsing of temporalities.
“Sonically speaking, the posthuman era is not one of disembodiment
but the exact reverse: it's a hyper embodiment”67
Kodwo Eshun
This finally brings me to the Collapsing Sirens. The sirens serve as the red thread through the making of this work and the broad present. The challenge is to think, or rather listen and feel, through their sonic agency in relation to ecology. As written in the chapter on Solidarity, sound as a thing will highlight the interconnectedness of various manifestations of sirens in the main body of this inquiry. The different sonic expressions of the manifestations show their different yet inseparable technological and socio-political relations.
“Kittler mentions the Sirens as […][an] example of recursive history ‘where the same issue is taken up again and again at regular intervals but with different connotations and results’ […]: from seductive Greek sea nymphs to monsters of early Christianity, from mermaids of the Middle Ages to the nineteenth-century technical use of the term in the form we understand it, i. e. as a signaling [thing] with a sound, subsequently playing a key part in the mapping of the thresholds of hearing as well as the development of radio […].”68 The Sirens’ medium, sound-making, and inherent relation to ecology will assemble the sensorial Collapsing Sirens—an entry to sensing multiple temporalities.
The choice of the siren lies in their embodiment of a variety of realms—warning, urgency, danger, collective action, opposition, seduction, sensuality, and sound—pivotal factors to address in the climate breakdown. Their sound symbolizes interference, ruption, and transition that evoke manifold emotions. Sirens enable us to tap into more-than-human realities. Their sound speaks directly to the sensory level of experience and exceeds human constructs. By decoding their sonic impact throughout human history (temporalities I have direct access to), I hope to find ways of relating their multiple manifestations, potentially revealing interferences in their relations that open gateways for sensing the collapsing of temporalities. Inaudible and audible to humans, their calls resonate eternally and should be listened to.
60 Morton, Timothy. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. P.30
61 Goodman, Steve (2010) Sonic warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. P.120
62 Morton, Timothy (2013) Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. P.2
63 Ibid. P.30
64 Ibid. P.163
65 Natural frequencies are the characteristic vibrational frequencies at which an object or system tends to oscillate in the event of interference.
66 Eshun, Kodwo (2015) The Geologic Imagination. 4. Geologic Time, the Anthropocene and Earthquake Sensitives – Interview with Kodwo Eshun by Julian Ross. Sonic Acts Press & the authors. Epub Version. P.58-59
67 Eshun, Kodwo (1998) More Brilliant Than the Sun Adventures in Sonic Fiction. P.1-2
68 An excerpt of an interview between Jussi Parrika and Friedrich Kittler, quoted from Ernst, Wolfgang (2014) Towards a Media-Archaeology of Sirenic Articulations. Listening with Media-Archaeological Ears. P. 7–17
Collapsing Sirens was developed at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Critical Inquiry Lab, 2023-2024. It is part of the graduation project of Niki Pielsticker and materialized in collaboration with advisors Patricia Reed and Maxime Benvenuto, tutors Gijs DeBoer, Dayna Casey, Remco van Bladel, designer and artist Roman Roth, and sound artist Paolo Piaser.
Gjis Bakker Award 2024 Nominee
If sound eternally ripples through Earth's spheres—how does the geological deep siren sound?
—a siren’s call of felt temporalities—
In exploring the concept of Collapsing Sirens, it is essential to establish the approach to sources.
This inquiry integrates a multitude of perspectives, including philosophy, sound studies, and media theory, without aligning with their inherent conflicts. The objective is to crossfade takes from these disciplines to perceive the collapsing of multiple temporalities through sound, which is particularly important amidst the ecological breakdown—a collapsing of geological, human, and technological timescales embodied by manifestations of sirens.
Embracing the interconnectedness of time scales is crucial for ecology, as it holds the potential for a more inclusive and expansive solidarity-making among all things—humans and more-than-humans. The challenge for humans lies in intellectually comprehending the vastness of collapsing temporalities—especially the temporal scale of Earth's geological deep time.
Sound, through its rhythm, technological manipulation, and psychological impact, moves beyond perceptions of space and time, facilitating a visceral understanding that potentially enables a new form of solidarity-making. Various manifestations of sirens, from mythological to mechanical, act as a sonic framework to explore different temporalities. The choice of sirens is deliberate, as they embody diverse qualities—from the immediacy of alarms to seductive creatures and facilitators of resistances—offering extensive avenues to investigate their (sonic) interlinkages in ecology. → background
Collapsing Sirens was developed at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Critical Inquiry Lab, 2023-2024. It is part of the graduation project of Niki Pielsticker and materialized in collaboration with advisors Patricia Reed and Maxime Benvenuto, tutors Gijs DeBoer, Dayna Casey, Remco van Bladel, designer and artist Roman Roth, and sound artist Paolo Piaser.
Gjis Bakker Award 2024 Nominee
If sound eternally ripples through Earth's spheres—how does the geological deep siren sound?
—a siren’s call of felt temporalities—
In exploring the concept of Collapsing Sirens, it is essential to establish the approach to sources.
This inquiry integrates a multitude of perspectives, including philosophy, sound studies, and media theory, without aligning with their inherent conflicts. The objective is to crossfade takes from these disciplines to perceive the collapsing of multiple temporalities through sound, which is particularly important amidst the ecological breakdown—a collapsing of geological, human, and technological timescales embodied by manifestations of sirens.
Embracing the interconnectedness of time scales is crucial for ecology, as it holds the potential for a more inclusive and expansive solidarity-making among all things—humans and more-than-humans. The challenge for humans lies in intellectually comprehending the vastness of collapsing temporalities—especially the temporal scale of Earth's geological deep time.
Sound, through its rhythm, technological manipulation, and psychological impact, moves beyond perceptions of space and time, facilitating a visceral understanding that potentially enables a new form of solidarity-making. Various manifestations of sirens, from mythological to mechanical, act as a sonic framework to explore different temporalities. The choice of sirens is deliberate, as they embody diverse qualities—from the immediacy of alarms to seductive creatures and facilitators of resistances—offering extensive avenues to investigate their (sonic) interlinkages in ecology. → background