Materials: Objects: Environments Liveblog 4 (Fran Dyson)

anechoica: a state of being without sound, widespread today, and reproduces what Serres calls the racket, that mutes and destroys the world
approaching OOO from a different angle.
John Cage in the anechoic chamber: he heard a high pitched and a low pitch sound. Nervous system and circulation of blood. He thought he heard the inside of his body working.
“no one means to circulate their blood”
Serres would have difficulty with this: it implies the silencing of the world
pass through the body and are filtered by the skin; world becomes bearable because of these filters
from world to language’s first cycle
the second cycle: hard sounds to soft sounds, muted, deadened; racket of the collective
dinner table, phone goes off, disruption, sound changes, one sense of collectivity is complicated to another
social contact unifies but also dissassembles
a movement between boxes: racket and boxes important here (Serres)
beneath the process of meaning is music, meaning presupposes it; a kind of rhythm or resonance that’s part of sensation
the noise of movement, not of things

Cage wanted to hear the inner vibrations of objects, wanted to put little anechoic chambers over ashtrays
but what he really wanted to hear was this life affirming sound
his wish has been granted by modern houses
wireless and media swamp anechoic sound

if the space of no sound led cage to think he was hearing himself
what kind of sensation does the space of no sensation produce?
vicarious experience of google, mass surveillance
an entanglement that forms a racket, a snare; all thought blends into noise
no resonance possible and therefore no meaning

without this eloquence collapses into gibberish and boredom (Serres)
plea for relative quiet of natural world? no the only escape is death; there will always be filters (and then after you die...if you’re a Tibetan Buddhist...)

Fran then plays two versions of The Listening Post (Mark Hansen, Ben Rubin)
computer voice that synthesizes the world’s thoughts? great example of hard to soft sound?
chatter (DHS term for terrorism)
pleasant and dark version