and its movements. First, connect a sound source to a simple speaker element. Now play any sound and listen to the sound from the speaker. If a cone is constructed of paper and encloses the element, the sound will change. Even a cone made of light cheap copy paper will change the sound quality. The electrical sound signals are amplified via the components of the elements and are converted into vibrations and air pressure. When the sound that is converted to mechanical vibrations leaves the speaker element, the cone, acting as a membrane, transforms the sound, the form, and the material of the cone. When the cone is held, and moved around, the sound can be felt in your hands; a body sound relation. The more you refine the cone and engage with the sound, the more you notice about material relations with sound. There are many sound qualities as there are people. Everyone will create an individual relationship with the cone’s material and form, as well as the way the cone moves towards the element.
The form of the cone, the diameter of both the bottom and top will affect both volume and sound quality. The sound will change when the cone is moved away from the speaker element or closer to it as in Figure 2.1. This vague and relational quality of sound causes listening to be an intense sensation that uses impulses to change the sound quality. Small changes in the quality of sound begin to be heard. Once these spontaneously changed sounds are heard, you begin to listen to both the sound playing and the sound from the nearest environment with a higher intensity and engagement.
Here listening cannot be divided from making of sounds. The listening and sounding cannot be held apart, they are vague and connected. I listen and I move my body and the cones because I listen. These movements create other qualities of sound and these sounds makes me want to listen more. In turn, I want to make more sounds. The agency of listening and making sounds are not pre-decided, but mutually transformational (Lykke, 2009). Here, intra-action allows for an active part in traditionally passive listening. Again, the phenomena of being part of the environment as opposed to being situated in the environment surfaces in the experiment (Barad, 2007).
Figure 2.1: Enchanted Listening with paper cone. Source: Vague Research Studios, www.vrstudios.se
Haunting Sound and Impossible Speakers
In this last example of vague events, the simple speaker element is deconstructed into even smaller units. Strong magnets, an electrical coil, and a paper cone are also used. Here, the performance of sound could be described as having a lower quality, in terms of volume and other technical aspects. However, as in the previous events, the material relation with sound is more than a defined technical performance, but ←42 | 43→in this event the simple act of listening become challenging. You will need a strong magnet or multiple magnets, an amplifier, a paper cone, and an electric cord shaped into a coil by using the middle part of the cord. The coil should be made to fit the smaller end of the cone. Use paper tape to hold the cone together and to fasten the coil to the inside of the paper cone. Connect the cords to the amplifier and connect the amplifier to your mobile phone and go outdoors. Place the magnet where you want your sound to come from. Magnets can be attached to anything made out of metal. Paperclips or metal string can be used if you wish to attach the magnets to other materials. In our event, the magnets have been connected to a stone by wiring metallic string around it. This means that one aspect of this experiment is the stone and magnet, and the other aspect is you holding a cone that is connected to a cord which relays electric signals from your phone.
Select a sound in your phone and play it. When you move the coil/cone near the magnet you will start to hear the sound at a low volume. In order to hear better, hold your ear near the large opening of the cone. This weak, but quite distinguishable, sound adds a haunting quality to the aural experience. The first time we listened to one of our favorite songs, we were drawn in to listen to it in a different way. We had to make an effort to listen. Our ability to listen became heightened. It was as if our memories in relation to the music grew stronger by the lowering of the ←43 | 44→volume and the eeriness of the sound appearing by just moving a paper cone over a stone in the woods. It reminded us of the strength and quality of being haunted. This reminded us of that which haunts you also stimulates your imagination. The fascination that a paper cone, electric cord, and magnet can serve as a speaker made our engagement with the sound stronger. Hearing a much-loved sound in an outdoor environment also adds to the enchantment. In a conventional set up, sound can easily become competitive. Listened to in a controlled way, diminishes mutual relationality and shuts off the environment. This example intentionally causes the whole listening to be vague and embeds you as part of the technology. You become an important component of the speaker. You are the speaker; the speaker is you. It could be said that the desire to control and master sound is not met with this set-up—but something else is gained. Listening in this way awakens enjoyment; the value is not to hear music/sound in a correct represented way but to find pleasure and curiosity in listening.
Here another version of the phenomena of meaningfulness appears in that the phenomena described as haunting appears. Being haunted, as part of listening to music from a digital source, appears as specific matter and as something that matters (Barad, 2007). The body and self serves an important role in making the speaker work. To be part of the speaker is an example of other and different apparatuses and intra-actions that matter; a place where other phenomena appear, like curiosity. In this process, the event of material-digital sound requires more care and activity from the person listening/sounding; the phenomena of both responsibility and respond-ability appear (Barad, 2014; Trinh, 2011). Differences appear as diffraction and allow for listening to come alive in another way.
The phenomena that appear can also be described as vulnerability and engagement in the event of material-digital sound. This vulnerability/engagement is part of the intra-action as “cutting together-apart (one move)” (Barad, 2014, p. 168) since the phenomena of listening arises through the specific apparatus and material-discursive event consisting of human and technology, simultaneously defining each other as different and at the same time being part of and relying on each other (Barad, 2014). This unique relationship to technology is different from when technology is presented to you as a tool or as a design object.
OTHER ROUTINES AND OTHER RUTS
The sound system in all these experiments is not one system. The relations we describe are not human-machine relations. In these experiments, there are at least as many human-machine relations as there are humans and machines. And the relations are not just between the human and the machine. The nature, the weather, the sun and the wind for example, all engage in the experiments, contributing to ←44 | 45→the overall experience of sound and electricity. Interaction between the human and the machine force us to design or package phenomena into a pre-defined technology. Intra-action on the other hand opens up for technology to be part of a sensory experience, including human-machine-nature.
By placing focus on intra-action as material-discursive apparatuses, and experimenting with material-digital sound and representation outdoors, new ruts of experimental engagement appear. In these examples, the vague event questions closed and delimited assumptions of the performed relation of passivity and activity, curiosity and control, individualism and the environment. The vague event questions the routines of art education, including material set-ups and borders of digital technology. To not fall into pre-decided use of digital
