Music is Surveillance (en)

re:publica 17 - All Sessions vor 9 Jahren

Surveillance typically echoes visions of the Pan-opticon and Big Brother’s omnipresent gaze, as if it was all (and just) about being watched, especially by those we cannot see. But what if we tried to think of surveillance through sound and music? This ta

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Gloria González Fuster, Rosamunde van Brakel Common understandings
of surveillance are marked by the notions of visibility and
invisibility, epitomised in popular culture by images such as a
secret watchful eye, or Big Borther’s ubiquitous gaze, and often
defined by theoretical concepts like the Pan(syn)opticon. All this
emphasis on the interplay between the visible and invisible,
however, may leave in the dark important insights on contemporary
surveillance’s functioning, power and impact. This talk is an
invitation to move beyond such conceptions by exploring
surveillance via the ‘paranoid ear’, to quote Seth Cluett,
discussing the ways in which surveillance might be sonically
approached and unpacked. It will take as a starting point that
music appears to want to tell us about surveillance, as document by
numerous examples of (un)popular music tackling the subject
(including works by Kraftwerk, AGF, Holly Herndon, or Anohni), but
also sound art projects, such as Christina Kubisch’s electrical
city walks and their tracking of invisible data flows. It will then
highlight the common technological roots of contemporary
surveillance and modern music, acknowledging their intertwined
rhizomatic histories – as embodied, for instance, by Lev
Sergueïevitch Termen’s biography and influence. FInally, it will
question the validity of thinking (modern) music as surveillance
and vice versa, as supported by Theodor W. Adorno’s sociological
critique, Jacques Attali’s 1970s portrayal of the evolution of the
contemporary music industry, and the use of music as a method of
acoustic control and for social sorting in the public space. In
this context, we will consider how current practices of (digital)
musical consumption relate to, or even constitute surveillance, and
the spaces this leaves for any sound contestation.