Graduation Proposal

What do you want to make?

I see my graduation project as an embodied sound research around animacies (Chen, 2012); the agency and the living value that bodies and inanimate objects carry with them depending on political binaries such as natural/artificial, male/female, human/animal. My research emerges from an experiential knowledge of not fitting into my assigned gender at birth. It evolves into a need to refuse the gender binary and unpack its consequences on how we perceive the world; More precisely, I feel the urgency to explore how our different embodied experiences influence the way we listen and produce sound. I realise that I cannot and I should not represent a generalised way that bodies perceive sound, so I will navigate my research through an auto-ethonagraphic approach. I believe that gender inscriptions are closely connected with what is perceived as natural, as monstrous, as artificial so these concepts will have a strong presence throughout my research.

I will embody the research through an iterative process of listening and recording sounds, jamming with friends, sound editing and DJing. I perceive these actions as fundamental phases of the sound production spectrum, that relate and influence each other. My body -with its pains and pleasures- and the bodies of others are present in each one of these phases. All of these practices can co-exist and will feed the research by informing each other. The process will be documented and sonic parts of it will be performed as a live sound mixing and editing performance (DJ set).

How do you plan to make it?

This research-project consits of parallalel practices that influence can co-exist with each other; Texts that empower my experiential knowledge, listening as an analytical tool, sound recording and sampling as choosing material for sound editing and DJing, collective jams for emboding try-outs of my ongoing research. Bellow I will define the project's fundamental strategies around sound.

Strategies

I sense listening as an act of paying attention to my environment. While listening to a sound(scape) I wonder what is being kept and what is filtered out, what is at the front, at the middle or at the back. I feel the need to touch what is experienced as pleasure and noise, depending each time on who is asking the question and for what reason. I perceive listening as a fundamental sense for feeling and signifying one's world, as well as a foundation for sound producing. Listening will be always present and determinant in my sound practice as a body-knowledge.

I approach recording as a need to preserve and highlight a sound or a soundscape, while exploring the source of this need. For this project, the recordings will (re)produce sounds of human and non-human bodies-entities in an attempt to explore, mix and scratch their animacy hierarchies, as a way to navigate through my research question. The act of recording needs to be consensual in order not to capture someone's sound or objectify someone's body.

I imagine the jam sessions as the collective space for listening and responding, the time to animate and perform elements of my ongoing research with friends. In this space, I will invite us to voice our bodies, to edit and combine recordings as samples, to play, hack or create new instruments. I have experienced jams sessions as moments of open sound exchange. In many occasions though, this exchange was shaped by granted rules, visible or invisible, on what sounds right, what suits, what is pleasant. Starting from this realisation, each jam session would have a clear set of restrictions, a pre-decided frame that will emerge from a specific question.

I understand editing as a process of decision making. A sound can be technically analysed into frequencies and through sound editing certain frequencies are kept, discarded, amplified, shrank, modulated. Through different sound editing strategies, sounds can get empowered or degraded and in this way can be connected with political gestures. For my research, I am particularly interested in navigating into different editing approaches for exploring the concept of gender binary and animacies.
Examples of Sound Editing Strategies

To loop; to iterate, equally or unequally? ---> Repetition creates structure. Infra-structure is used as a foundation for building. Although structure might be blurred, it is always present.

To cut ---> To decide what fits and what not.

To filter ---> To decide what is desired. To amplify, to pass or to weaken specific frequency ranges.

To stretch ---> To lengthen, to slow down, to radically zoom in or radically zoom out a sound, to pitch ---> The new sound can keep the connection to the original or not.

To reverse ---> To listen to a material from the opposite. There are aspects that stay the same, and others that change form; to hear the "opposite" of an existing material.

To distort ---> To lower the quality of a sound. The level of the sound change depends on the depth of the editing phases. The new sound can keep the connection to the original or not.

To detune ---> To alter a frequency from what is given as its correct position. To drift from the rule. To degrade the original.

To layer ---> To combine sounds and create a new one through them. To create a soundscape.
To reverb, to echo ---> To add physical space into a sound, to add (physical) depth.

etc ---> more to be added, reconsidered or further developed

examples of editing experiments so far;

experiments of sound editing that I produced on October.

The samples that I used are taken from the freesound library.
breathing pitching
https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/pitch%20experiments/breath_transformation.mp3
crying pitching
https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/pitch%20experiments/crying_transformation.mp3

I long for applying DJing methods for mixing samples diffractively. The process of listening to a sound through another can be a way to combine, merge or collide discrete realities. The DJ approach is an experiment on how feelings/meanings can emerge by the layering and altering of samples. My position on that process will be a political one. The mixing can include (field) recordings that I have produced and external samples that are part of open sound libraries.

experiment of combining sounds that I produced on October.

The samples are taken from the freesound library.
layring human and non-human breaths
https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/pitch%20experiments/breaths.mp3

For the jams, the editing and the DJing I am going to use (field) recordings that I will produce according to the above strategies and use already existing sounds as samples, which I consider that are strongly connected to my research. I will refer to the sampling process below.

Readings

In parallel with my practical attempts, there are several readings that map my gestures, sharpen my questions and emancipate me.

body inscriptions
The Counter-sexual Manifesto (Preciado, Kevin Gerry Dunn and Halberstam, 2018) voices with a plethora of creative ways how sex can be read as technology and genitals as biopolitical apparatuses that blur pleasure with reproductive acts. I hold this idea to navigate through my sound practice.

pleasure activism
Pleasure Activism (brown, 2019) opened to me a whole new perception around the embodied practices of individual and collective healing, the power of the erotic, the fight for social change through pleasure. This perception is shaping the collective embodiments of my research.

listening
Through Deep listening (Oliveros, 2005) I came to experience more clearly that listening requires engagement and is connected to a sound filtering process. This filtering process is influenced by cultural and political factors.

Libraries for future sampling

I have started navigating the freesound.org library (Freesound.org, 2011) with keywords such as body, machine, prosthesis, robot, cyborg, organ, sex, gender, natural, artificial, animal, human, non-human, woman, indigenous, non-binary, trans in order to listen to the different entries that these keywords bring. This material is specifically interesting for the diverse interpretations that these keywords carry, which are several times connected to dominant perceptions around living bodies and objects. Several of these sounds can be sampled. For these actions, it is important that I don't reproduce relations of power around sex, gender, ethnicity, species but if needed engage with them in a way of underlining existing hierarchies. Throughout the research I want to explore further more sources of sound that are conceptually related to gender binaries and sample them.

Software for Sound Editing and DJing

The past two years I have been using Reaper for sound editing . For DJing I have tried one session with Djay Pro and another one with Serato. For this project, I would like to experiment around creating a simple software/instrument for editing and mixing live the recordings and samples that I will use. This is for being active in the decision making process of the software design and for building step by step the editing approach. I will try to work with Pure Data, Live Coding and/or with designing a web interface, where the uploaded recordings will be edited though Web Audio Api.

example of breath pitch modulation and looping through sonic pi

https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/pitch%20experiments/breath%20random%20stretched%20loop.mp3

What is your timetable?

This process of producing my graduation project is iterative and the elements can go back and forth in time.

October - December

- Reading excerpts and annotating Counter-Sexual Manifesto (Preciado, Kevin Gerry Dunn and Halberstam, 2018), Deep Listening (Oliveros, 2005), Pleausure Activism (brown, 2019), Cyber Manifesto (Haraway, 1991), Situated Knowledges (Haraway, 1988), This track contains politics (Liechti,2022).
- fisrt jam around deep listening
- second jam at Leeszaal during xpub2 first public event
- listening from the freesound library and researching more sampling ideas
- sample editing tryouts
- recording tryouts
- prototype a first sound editing and mixing software tryout; with web audio API, or live coding (probably with python) or PD

January - March

- jam(s) tryout(s)
- recording tryouts
- sample editing tryouts
- further developing of the editing and mixing software

April-June

- jam(s) tryout(s)
- recording tryouts
- sample editing tryouts
- finalising the editing and mixing software
- finalising sound editing and mixing performance(s)

Why do you want to make it?

my research intersects with a personal journey around binaries

This research started out from a persistent need to understand how hierarchies of gender are embodied, in connection to my own personal journey of being out of the binary. I feel it as a process of self-nourishing and shelter-building by acquiring the power to write my personal knowledge, to sketch the framework that I can flourish inside of it.

the editing approach

Through my reality of being part and around anti-austerity, feminist, queer, anti-extractivist movements in Greece, I chose the position of a seeker for the political nature of aesthetics. To dig for the ideological structures that give form to a cultural reality. In parallel to this understanding, I am specifically interested into the editing processes of a material. The editing moment is usually the space where all the noises, dirts, monstrosities ought to be fixed in order for a homogenous product to be released. The specific guidelines that an editor follows for this process are a condensed theory of someone's decisions.

sound is intimate for me

Sound has been an intimate medium of expression for me throughout the years. Through receiving training in jazz guitar and by being active in musical circles, many times I felt trapped between my need for connection and intuitive doing and the institiotionalised perceptions of correct and wrong sound making. The more I was scratching these "prohibited soundscapes" the more I would see their connections with non-"western"(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA&list=PLBcZM94cb2UxtAqsfIWY1R4OrlkD323qd&index=23, 2020.) musical systems, with lo-fi recordings, with open source ideas of distribution, with non-virtuoso and non-dominant endgoals. Somehow my embodied sound experience connects with my living body's external categorisation; Inscribed rules that filter a very personal source of pleasure and belonging.

Who can help you and how?

Ål Nik (Alex Nikolova)

for jams facillitation and for discussing and practicing DJing. Here is the wiki page that we have already created, dedicated to our shared jam research.
https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/Sound_jams_research
Here I link three informal jam-experiments that I had with Alex at 08.10.2022. These improvisations are not directly related to my research theme, but are part of its shaping process.

• spontaneous vocal and instrumental jam with Alex after reading the Deep Listening (Oliveros, 2005).

https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/jam%20with%20alex%200.0/jam_alex_mitsa_08.10.mp3

• spontaneous DJ jam with alex after reading the Deep Listening (Oliveros, 2005).

https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/jam%20with%20alex%200.0/impro.mp3 https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/~mitsa/XPUB2/jam%20with%20alex%200.0/impro-back.mp3

Aggeliki Diakrousi

in relation to the political sound editing.

The re#sister community

for connecting with people that are experienced in listening, recording, sampling, jamming, editing or DJing in an non-purist way, for getting feedback.

Relation to previous practice

This project is connected with research processes, methods and questions of previous practices.

soundscape as commemoration

For my collective graduation project Echoing Evrotas at Patras school of Architecture, I co-created an archive of soundscapes from the self-settled refugee camp that existed as a village inside the city for 7 years. The camp was violently demolished by the municipality. Listening to moments of the camp's everyday life was a way to grasp and commemorate its animacies, conflicting with the filed's current soundscape after the camp's eviction.

political editing

special issue 16 ; ...and I wish that your question has been answered:

The creation of a text interface for replacing several words with certain others, working on the political speech of Mark Rutte and Kyriakos Mitsotakis about refugees' pushbacks on the greek border with Turkey. We wanted to reveal how a specific language-phrasing can justify state violence, naturalise anti-refugee politics, nationalism, necropolitics.
https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/si16/projects/and-i-wish-that-your-question-has-been-answered/

special issue 18; Radio Implicancies; weekly sound publications

the jingle board parliament. instrument / release 04

A collection of audio snippets around pop culture in order to perform a parliament conference.
https://issue.xpub.nl/18/04/

MiMi / release 05

Playing with the detuning of a narrative voice.
https://hub.xpub.nl/soupboat/SI18/05/recordings/MiMi.mp3

unPublic #81 at la Generale

Free collective sound improvisation with a script.
https://unpublic.bandcamp.com/album/paris-22-june-2022?from=fanpub_fb&fbclid=IwAR0i1kkNAKDhjbYlqrWgB_Em58f0Q9PaPAbfhg0XiaZbguPMEafLhENfLuQ

the diffractive dj set

Soundscape creation using a mixing console and a dj sofware. Re-performing the collective material of Radio Implicances, at the xpub2 graduation show, as a way of publishing.
https://media.xpub.nl/2022/gradshow/WalkieTalkie-XPUB1.mp4?fbclid=IwAR18OjRoXJo5zrMCCWqu0XR_vFFO8dl0lCViy3-K1KWAAuat3ggLgZo_iNo
Listening to the diffractive dj set and note taking for unpacking the experience.
https://pad.xpub.nl/p/diffractive_session_worm

Relation to a larger context

I see my project emerging in relation to the following contexts:

gender (de)construction processes

My project is connected to the writings of Paul B. Preciado about the different political, epistemological and technological procedures that construct gender and create hierarchies to living bodies. (Preciado, Kevin Gerry Dunn and Halberstam, 2018) Furthermore, I was heavily inspired by Preciado's text AN OTHER VOICE (Preciado, 2020), where he describes the process of his voice change by injecting hormones and the new binary classifications that his body entered through this transformation. However, my project is deeply shaped by the lived experiences of lgbtqi+ people, by being part of queer mutual aid communities in Greece, and by sharing several experiences with trans folks now in the Netherlands.

animacies

Animacy (Chen, 2012) is a linguistic term that is connected with liveliness, agency, awareness, mobility. It is cast out as a spell to human and non-human bodies and objects, creating categories of value among them. What is animate and inanimate is constantly under negotiation. Animacy hierarchies are biopolitically produced by notions of citizenship, race, sex, ability and sexuality. In my project, I would like to explore sonically the threshold in which while being inside someone is understood as a man, as a woman, as an animal, as a human, as natural, as artificial. To explore and blur the key-points of these significations through listening and sound manipulating.

political perceptions on sound manipulation

While writing this proposal, I came across the book This track contains politics (Liechti, 2022). This book explores the reasons why artists of experimental electronica sample and focuses more on the sampling processes for political reasons or sampling political material. Through reading and listening to the book's case studies I come across different strategies on sound editing that connect to political and personal relations.

Reference list

brown, a.m, 2019. Pleasure activism : the politics of feeling good. Chico, Ca: Ak Press

Chen, M.Y., 2012. Animacies : biopolitics, racial mattering, and queer affect. Durham, Nc: Duke University Press.

Freesound.org., 2011. Freesound - Freesound. [online] Available at: https://freesound.org[Accessed 17 Nov. 2022].

Haraway, D.J., 1988. 'Situated knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective'. Feminist Studies. Vol. 14. No. 3. pp. 575-599

Haraway, D.J., 1991. Simians, cyborgs, and women : the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge.

Liechti, H., 2022. This Track Contains Politics. Bern: Norient Books

Oliveros, P., 2005. Deep listening : a composer’s sound practice. New York: Universe.

Preciado, P.B., Kevin Gerry Dunn and Halberstam, J., 2018. Countersexual Manifesto. New York, Ny: Columbia University Press.

Preciado, P.B., 2020. APARTMENT ON URANUS : chronicles of the crossing. S.L.: Semiotext(E.

www.youtube.com., 2020. Music Theory and White Supremacy. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr3quGh7pJA&list=PLBcZM94cb2UxtAqsfIWY1R4OrlkD323qd&index=23 [Accessed 13 Nov. 2022].

Bibliography

Isartum.net., 2022. [online] Available at: https://isartum.net [Accessed 8 Nov. 2022].

Mathieu, W.A., 2011. The listening book : discovering your own music. Boston: Shambhala.

radioactive.w-i-t-m.net., 2020. Radioactive Monstrosities. [online] Available at: https://radioactive.w-i-t-m.net [Accessed 11 Nov. 2022].

shell-song.neocities.org., 2020 . Shell Song. [online] Available at: https://shell-song.neocities.org/# [Accessed 8 Nov. 2022].

Wishart, T. and Emmerson, S., 2002. On sonic art. London: Routledge.

Wishart, T., 2019. Red Bird: A Political Prisoner’s Dream. [Vinyl, LP, Stereo] London: ICR DISTRIBUTION. Available at: https://icrdistribution.bandcamp.com/track/red-bird [Accessed 8 Nov. 2022].