Future-making through eventing human-machine listening

Abstract

Reverb-Resonate: Sounding the Affective Frequencies of Migration operates at the intersection of art, science, and technology to articulate an emotional landscape of migration and exile. Rooted in the methodology of research-creation (RC) and grounded in the interdisciplinary field of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (ASTS), the project transcends conventional disciplinary boundaries to offer speculative possibilities through human-machine listening. Drawing on the body is an already augmented site, the project makes audible physiological sensors that capture micro-level intricacies responsible for stress regulation. Listening, is, thus, foregrounded as the core public engagement strategy, creating a layered sound collage that interweaves somatic registers of recorded breathing samples and physiological sensor values with machine listening to recreate new forms of sound. Engagement with ASTS is, hence, in the form of a method that traverses transforming sensor application, generating technicized sound and composing an acoustic experience capable of affective engagement. Through machine learning—a subfield of artificial intelligence—the notion of ‘machine listening’ extends beyond human hearing limitations, introducing non-normative structures to challenge and expand habitual forms of human listening. Reverb-Resonate, hence, leverages artistic strategies and techno-augmentations to address the crisis of imagination that hinders opening up to realities far from the familiar and the personal to imagine ‘what could be’ as a way of future-making. It underscores the critical edge of RC and ASTS in addressing complex critical issues, proposing a speculative space where the human-machine hybrid puts forth a socio-technical assemblage of listening to understand 'otherly' experiences. The project, thus, advances a critical inquiry into the mediation and augmentation of listening to imagine new possibilities for embodied engagement with unfamiliar emotional spaces and experiences.