Special Issue 12

#12.0 23/04

With E.zn

Resources

Deep Lab >> Ursula K. Le Guin

Timeframe: 17:12 - 17:51

Nishant Shah at Impakt Festival [2019]

Timeframe: 11:39 - 14:09

Mimi Onuoha at Cybercon: 'What is missing is still there' [2017]

Timeframe: 06:43 - 09:52

#12.1 / 14.05 / Imagining re-thinking and recording the world outside

With Anna

A stream of conscious, guided imagination, dreamy flow.

We had an online conversation documented on this pad

a stream of thoughts regarding different layers of stories

this is because we are living within a special, spacial soundscape

we are hyper aware to our surrounding right now

i felt i needed to connect with other people sound environment

i also wanted to come back home, sometimes

I miss the sounds of my city too

In this weird situation I feel they live in a different world

it really is a different world, we a different law

Anna: and it's just a basic movement jurisdiction

Anna: u are not allowed to hear more than this

Avi: sometimes when I wake up in the morning it takes me a while to realise where I am

I have really weird dreams since this whole thing started

tonight i dreamed about a train workers strike

it's more than two months that i am not taking a train

it is 2 months that we didn't meet as a class

I wonder if it will be weird to meet again, sit in the same place

i'm afraid to touch my face sometimes, i'm feeling like is the vehicle of a plague

it really is

sometimes I feel like this apartment is the only thing that exists

I go outside and everything seems like a hallucination

everyone is running everywhere

i think that Rotterdam now is like built on different tectonic plates

u have to jump to reach another island

strong physical structure is needed

that's why we are all exercising

u need to do push ups to see your relatives

maybe Rotterdam has drifted to another part of the world?

who knows?

maybe our location is further/closer to home

i'm sure it happened

this weather is too mediterranean

But for real, I have such weird dreams

I feel connected but yet disconnected

I have this invisible stress all the time

we just unlocked a new level

this is a really good way to explain how I feel, a new level

i feel the trees in my backyard are far more "saturated" than the ordinary

yes! the green here is crazy! not like any other green I saw before

i'm having this feeling when i'm going to the supermarket: i'm convinced that i will receive coins if i keep the 1.5 mt distance correctly

I get it, the streets we used to walk before feel different

is this a test about behaviour and citizens responsibility?

i'm sure someone is taking scores

There are a lot more people walking aimlessly, maybe they are looking for something familiar

I even notice the stores signs more, some of them are really a work of neon art

true, the miami coffee shop next to my place already stole my heart

such a tropical vibe

but we are soon landing on a desert somewhere, the mission is to repopulate it

better this time

The desert in Israel is big and beautiful

You can get lost there and at night it seems like you are on the moon

When I was 11 my father took me to the desert to watch a meteor shower

it was a great night

but you can really loose your mind in the desert

holy land!

do you have any sign to orient yourself?

only stones, trees (?)

i've been in a desert one time

it was flat and covered with salt

but pink flamingos too

in the army they teach you how to navigate using the north star

the stars are so bright in the desert

if you want to really see the starts you should go there

that makes me think about the mountains

you are so distant from anything else

you forget about the city, you are just above everything

but you always know where you are somehow, you never feel lost

that's nice I'm sure if you know the place you feel more comfortable in the dark as well

maybe not

is this just walking in the dark? i can't really keep distance between objects and thought approaching me

I think that sometimes its dark, sometime its light, sometimes its in-between

basically we have a broken shutter and we need to fix it

it doesn't have to be fixed, I think that is the situation most of the time

you are probably right, i just can't accept what i am seeing right know

I feel very powerless against the powers that are in play

we made a spillover

moving from a material to another

like the virus

I agree, this days I feel one with the virus

during the plague in the middle ages they used to believe than the disease derives from stinky air

because the cities in the 14 century started to be super crowded out of nowhere

of course the streets were full of excrements

they also started to wear masks, this sort of giant beak with perfumed oils inside

how do you think people in the future will call this time?

this is interesting

i think is a difficult question, i have to say we don't have really good names for the plagues of the past

also because they were a lot of them

they never end, they never start

Maybe we imagined them and they didn't really happen

I don't really believe in that but sometimes its hard to tell what is the truth

or what is reality

i can relate, and now i'm starting to reconsidering things that i always assumed they were true

maybe this is too strange

is stranger that fiction

and i starting to believe in fiction

I think now nothing is too strange

maybe we need do embrace it

this is the new truth

whatever that means

this is line 104, i think we need to eat

yes let's do it

Resources

Field recordings from Israel, Italy
"Storytelling from earthly survival" Donna Haraway
"Always coming home" Ursula Le Guin
Twin Peaks dream [1990]

Spellbound dream scene [1947]

Ursula Le Guin & Donna Haraway Debate

#12.1 / 14.05 / Angry Women

With Sandra & E.zn

Resources

Husbands by Nuriz Zarchi
Strawberries by Yona Wallach [english version]
Research 13 - Angry Women / Introduction p.4-5
Juliana Huxtable - Mucus in My Pineal Gland
Feminist Data Manifest-No
I Am Not Your Negro [James Baldwin]

Strawberries / Yona Wallach

When you come to sleep with me

wear a black dress

printed with strawberries

and a black wide-brimmed hat

decorated with strawberries

and hold a basket of strawberries

and sell me strawberries

tell me in a sweet high voice

strawberries strawberries

who wants strawberries

don't wear anything underneath the dress

later

strings will lift you up

invisible or visible

and lower you

directly on my prick.

#12.3 / 28.05 / The Benefits of Patriarchy

With Damla

A talk between two women walking around Rotterdam West

This track is accompanied by this video, play them together:

Resources

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/women-react-to-sexism-in-the-workplace.html
https://www.ted.com/talks/laura_bates_everyday_sexism?language=en
In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate CrimesBy Barbara Perry: Page 84 - https://books.google.nl/books?id=doDHZXvq19YC&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=i#v=onepage

Males as a group have and do benefit the most from patriarchy, from the assumption that they are superior to females and should rule over us. But those benefits have come with a price. In return for all the goodies men receive from patriarchy, they are required to dominate women, to exploit and oppress us, using violence if they must to keep patriarchy intact. Most men find it difficult to be patriarchs. Most men are disturbed by hatred and fear of women, by male violence against women, even the men who perpetuate this violence. But they fear letting go of the benefits. They are not certain what will happen to the world they know most intimately if patriarchy changes. So they find it easier to passively support male domination even when they know in their minds and hearts that it is wrong. ― bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.

Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies? Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it's all a male fantasy: that you're strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur. ― Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride

#12.4 / 04.06 / A shift of power

With Max

Human - technology relationship is an unbalanced one. Technology, software and data are dictating our lives and we do not seem to care. What if we were in control of what lies behind a screen, will we continue to provide it with so much power? When did we stop contributing and start being ruled?

During our contributions the "power" is shifting between us, the contributors, the listeners and the machine.

The broadcast had 3 stages

1] Contributors power

Making our contribution using a script that takes text file, convert them to sound files with espeak, normalizing audio files and joining them all together to one audio file.

mkdir -p tmp
mkdir -p contributions
for i in *.mp3; do
ffmpeg -y -i "$i" tmp/"${i%.mp3}.wav"
done
for a in *.txt; do
espeak --stdout -f "$a"  > tmp/"${a%.txt}.wav"
done
cp *.wav /var/www/html/radio/m_a/tmp
cd /var/www/html/radio/m_a/tmp
for x in *.wav; do
ffmpeg -y -i "$x" -ar 44100 "${x%.wav}_lit.wav"
done
for y in *_lit.wav; do 
ffmpeg -y -i "$y" -ac 2 "${y%.wav}_final.wav"
done
sox *_final.wav output.wav
ffmpeg -y -i output.wav output.ogg 
mv *_final.wav /var/www/html/radio/m_a/contributions
mv output.ogg /var/www/html/radio/m_a/output.ogg
cd /var/www/html/radio/m_a
ls *output.ogg >> m_a.m3u
rm -rf tmp

During our broadcast the listeners annotated in this pad

2] Listeners power

After broadcasting our contribution, we interfered the live broadcast with a new audio file that was generated live out of the contributions that were written in the pad (using espeak).

touch request.txt
curl  https://pad.xpub.nl/p/shiftofpower/export/txt > request.txt;
line_no=$(cat request.txt | wc -l)
input="request.txt"
i=0
while IFS= read -r line
do
i=$((i+1))
touch "$i"_request.txt
echo "$line" > "$i"_request.txt
done < "$input"
for x in *_request.txt
do
espeak --stdout -f "$x" > "${x%.txt}".wav
done
sox *_request.wav finalreq.wav
mkdir -p contributions
rm request*txt
mv *request* /var/www/html/radio/m_a/contributions
cd /var/www/html/radio/m_a/contributions
rm *.txt

We added this to the general liquidsoap script so we can interrupt the live streaming (adding another mount point)

radio =
fallback(track_sensitive=false,
          [input.http("http://echo.lurk.org:999/m_a_live.ogg"),
           radio])

3] Machine power

Finally, the machine takes all the audio file that were broadcast, edit them to snippets and plays them randomly (using shuf. During the broadcast an unexpected thing happend and the audio file was really slowed down, proving the point that we didn't have control over it.

cd /var/www/html/radio/m_a/contributions
mkdir -p tmp
for i in *.wav; do
ffmpeg -y -ss 00:00:05 -t 00:00:03.00 -i "$i" tmp/"${i%.wav}_cut.wav"
done
for x in *.wav; do
ffmpeg -y -ss 00:00:10 -t 00:00:03.00 -i "$x" tmp/"${x%.wav}2_cut.wav"
done
cd /var/www/html/radio/m_a/contributions/tmp
touch playlist.m3u
ls *_cut.wav >> playlist.m3u
shuf -o random.m3u playlist.m3u
cp random.m3u random.txt
sed '1d' random.txt > temp.txt
sed "s/^/file '/" temp.txt > random.txt
rm temp.txt
sed -e "s/$/'/" random.txt > temp.txt
rm random.txt
mv temp.txt random.txt
ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i random.txt -c copy random.wav
ffmpeg -y -i random.wav random.ogg
mv random.ogg /var/www/html/radio/m_a/random.ogg
cd ../
#rm -rf tmp

We used a script that will generate stage 2+3 in one command line

bash curltwo.sh
sleep 5
bash random.sh
sleep 3
touch ashiftofpower.m3u
echo /var/www/html/radio/m_a/finalreq.wav >> ashiftofpower.m3u
echo /var/www/html/radio/m_a/silence.ogg >> ashiftofpower.m3u
echo /var/www/html/radio/m_a/random.ogg >> ashiftofpower.m3u
liquidsoap -v max_live.liq

Resources

Douglas Rushkoff: How to be "Team Human" in the digital future

Maya Indira Ganesh, Nishant Shah: Data Discrimination, Dystopia, and the Future of Citizenship

Nishant Shah: From GUI to No UI

Program or be programmed / Douglas Rushkoff

"Kids learn how to use popular
spreadsheet, word processing, and browsing software so that
they can operate effectively in the high-tech workplace. These
basic skills may make them more employable for the entry level
cubicle jobs of today, but they will not help them adapt to
the technologies of tomorrow.
Their bigger problem is that their entire orientation to
computing will be from the perspective of users. When a kid
is taught a piece of software as a subject, she’ll tend to think of
it like any other thing she has to learn. Success means learning
how to behave in the way the program needs her to. Digital
technology becomes the immutable thing, while the student is
the movable part, conforming to the needs of the program in
order to get a good grade on the test."

"As we lose the ability to program the world’s
computers, we lose the world’s computing business as well.
This may not be a big deal to high-tech conglomerates who can
as easily source their programming from New Delhi as New
Hampshire. But it should be a big deal to us.
Instead, we see actual coding as some boring chore,
a working-class skill like bricklaying, which may as well
be outsourced to some poor nation while our kids play
and even design video games. We look at developing the
plots and characters for a game as the interesting part,
and the programming as the rote task bett er offloaded to
people somewhere else. We lose sight of the fact that the
programming—the code itself—is the place from which the
most significant innovations emerge."

"We cannot truly
communicate, because we have no idea how the media we
are using bias the messages we are sending and receiving.
Our senses and our thoughts are already clouded by our own
misperceptions, prejudices, and confusion. Our digital tools
add yet another layer of bias on top of that. But if we don’t
know what their intended and accidental biases are, we don’t
stand a chance of becoming coherent participants in the digital
age. Programming is the sweet spot, the high leverage point
in a digital society. If we don’t learn to program, we risk
being programmed ourselves."