Malevolent Audio Systems

Malevolent Audio Systems emerged as a result of reflecting upon tangible transformations in the social field of contemporary sonic praxis. A growing sense developed that the world at large is undeniably, in part at least, populated by the effects of harmful actants – cosmological, geological, biological, cultural, personal. The extent to which this is the case, and to what degree systemic audio is related is the central question of this ongoing work.

The research moves between three main areas:

1. A skeptical critical tonality shaped by considerations of malevolence and the problem of evil.

2. Investigation of audition in general (via histories, historiographies and ethnographies)and the ongoing formation of the technologised listening subject more specifically – the latter of which framed by the figure of audio. Taken, in short, to not only mean engineered sound in its various guises, but also instrumentalised, more crucially for our purposes, to articulate and investigate the kinds of listeners and listening that are possible within this historic moment; called variously the “third modernity“, “supermodernity“, the “era of surveillance capitalism“, “the neganthropocene” and so on.

3. The problematisation and implementation of systems theory. If so many aspects of reality can be considered systems (e.g. organisms, technologies, languages, cities, ecologies, geologies, cosmological entities etc.), what are the strengths and weaknesses of such a necessarily reductive paradigm? How might contemporary systems theory articulate the many dynamic relations between malevolence and audio? How do these relations in themselves perform as systemic? What are the critiques of systems theory that emerge as a consequence?

As the work developed (and it continues to evolve), historical precedences emerged for historical work that questioned, like us, whether our shared reality is indeed “the best of all possible worlds” – e.g. Voltaire’s Candide, Descartes’ “evil demon”, the paranoiac-critical method of surrealism, and others.

Documentation of this journey is what is to be shared on this platform. Any support you can offer is much appreciated. Paypal Donate. Patreon