CC BY
21https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.04.08 Research article
Magic Materialism: From Atmospheric Technologies to Architectures of Affect
Irina Oznobikhina (0) National Research University Higher School of Economics, Myasnitskaya St., 20,
Moscow, 101000, Russia reneozanam@gmail .com
Abstract
Along with technologically advanced contemporary reality, there has been a renaissance in the study of affect and atmospheres. Despite the critique of atmospheres as a diffuse and "groundless" theory, this investigation shows it to be a promising concept for a variety of fields, including science, art, and technology. Of strongest interest to this paper is the field of spatial arts, with a special focus on the affective dimensions of sound and light. Aside from emphasizing the material qualities of the latter along with feelings and affects, the correlation between these "atmospheric" components will be traced in the current research with relation to volume and intensity. Along with affording a critique of dominant theoretical approaches such as the new materialism, atmospheres are considered affective qualities that can be reproduced and mediated by technologies. Accordingly, the notion of "atmosphere" serves not only to "set" a territorial climate but also as a scaffold for the atmospheric architecture composed of sound and feelings: vibrant, fluid, and poetic, yet material.
Keywords: Atmosphere; Architecture; Soundscape; Technology; Light
Acknowledgments: To the Center of Practical Philosophy "Stasis," Prof. Dr. Gernot Böhme and all the birdies.
Citation: Oznobikhina, I. (2022). Magic Materialism: From Atmospheric Technologies to Architectures of Affect. Technology and Language, 3(4), 101-124. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.04.08
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
УДК 1: 534.32
https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.04.08 Научная статья
Магический материализм: От атмосферных технологий к архитектурам аффекта
Ирина Игоревна Ознобихина (И) Национальный исследовательский университет "Высшая школа экономики", Мясницкая ул., 20,
Москва, 101000 Россия reneozanam@gmail. com
Аннотация
Наряду с технологически развитой современной реальностью наблюдается ренессанс в изучении аффектов и атмосфер. Несмотря на критику атмосферы "беспочвенной" теории, лишенной всякого основания, заявленное исследование показывает, что она является перспективной концепцией для изучения различных областей, включая науку, искусство и технологии, в которых компонент аффективного упускается по указанной причине. Наибольший интерес для данной работы представляет область пространственных искусств, где особое внимание уделяется аффективным аспектам звука и света. Помимо подчеркивания материальных качеств последних, а также чувств и аффектов, в данном исследовании будет прослежена взаимосвязь между этими "атмосферными" компонентами в отношении громкости и интенсивности. Наряду с критикой доминирующих теоретических подходов, таких как Новый материализм, атмосфера считается аффективным качеством, которое может быть воспроизведено и опосредовано технологиями. Соответственно, понятие "атмосфера" не только позволяет исследовать ритмические сгущения территориального климата, но также выступает в качественной невидимой основой для атмосферно-акустической архитектуры аффекта, состоящей из звука и чувств: живых, текучих, поэтических, но материальных.
Ключевые слова: Атмосфера; архитектура; аффект; саундскейп; Новый материализм; Новая феноменология
Благодарность центру практической философии "Стасис" (Европейский университет, Санкт-Петербург), профессору Герноту Бёме и птицам.
Для цитирования: Oznobikhina, I. Magic Materialism: From Atmospheric Technologies to Architectures of Affect // Technology and Language. 2022. № 3(4). P. 101-124. https://doi.org/10.48417/technolang.2022.04.08
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Leib is our own nature -Gernot Böhme, Leib: Die Natur, die wir selbst sind, 2019
Chaos seems to be everyone's threat; I find it in my rhythm.
-Hansen
The dice are thrown against the sky, with all the force of displacement of the aleatory point, with their imperative points like lightning, forming ideal problem-constellations in the sky. They fall back to Earth with all the force of the victorious solutions which
bring back the throw. It is a game on two tables.
-Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 1968
INTRODUCTION
Along with the technological development of contemporary reality came a renaissance in the study of affect and atmospheres. Of strongest interest to this paper are several branches at once: the philosophy of media and sound art developed along with the affective turn focused on the intangible dimension of the world. It all began with , atmospheres.' The term has a spectacular history since its first mention, apart from its literal meaning as an envelope of gases surrounding the planet Earth. Among all scholars, Hermann Schmitz was the first one who systematically approached the following theme: despite the fact that his philosophy has never been popularised and is usually criticised by materialistic adepts of scientific proof and solid argumentation for the diffusive features of his 'groundless' theory and the vagueness of , atmospheres', Schmitz' System of Philosophy (1964-1980) expanded the horizon of environmental as well as technological investigations in different areas. The Society for New Phenomenology (Die Gesellschaft für Neue Phänomenologie, GNP) was founded in the 1960s to resuscitate the genuine phenomenological impulse, to revisit "the things themselves" and become attuned to the phenomena. As our imagination is being shaped by rationalistic scientific theories and constructions, which have become the accepted domain of education, they obscure the experience of the facts of life that was the initial aim of philosophy as such.
Following Hermann Schmitz' work on atmospheres in architecture, Gernot Böhme and several authors from various fields (see Fuchs, 2019; Massumi, 2019; Trigg, 2020) adopted that notion as a promising tool in studying the affective qualities of media and music. Italian philosopher Tonino Griffero argues that the possibilities of atmospheres have yet to be discovered (Griffero, & Tedeschini, 2019). Initially, atmospheres were understood as feelings poured into space or the environmental features that 'charge' a place with a certain energy that makes it meaningful (see Böhme and Thibaud, 2017; Griffero & Tedeschini, 2019; Relph, 1976, 1981; Schmitz, 2012;). In one of his seminal works, Böhme also notes the qualities that seem to 'float in the air' (Böhme and Thibaud,
2017) in relation to things and objects, inducing a certain manner of expression. This is the first point where I would note a difference to the approach of 'new' materialism. My critique of this approach emerges from Schmitz's neo-phenomenological theory derived from Gestalt psychology, it draws on examples from the physics of acoustics, and the history of the New Music, and is aimed at revealing its deficiency.
Written at the same time as Schmitz's "System of Philosophy," Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) "Thousand Plateaus" addresses with reference to Husserl "vague, in other words, vagabond or nomadic, morphological essences" (p. 366). The majority of authors from sound art, sound studies, and "new" materialism stick to this trajectory. Thus, the "magic" traces of sound and feeling, as well as their spherological occurrence, that are always present but in-between, are hugely neglected. Even though this endows a subjective side to the atmosphere charged with environmental, cultural, political, and historical predispositions (see Schmitz, 2011; Watsuji, 1961), the political possibility of sound and feelings (with their spatial mode) inevitably unfolds on a certain terrain that depends on the geological and culturological features of environments and landscapes. In this regard, after the technological, ontological, and affective turns in several disciplines, including sound art, it becomes possible to open the new possibility to express the "magic" realm by assembling and producing art installations with use of technology and involving the geological characteristics of landscapes that can be perceived corporeally [leiblich].
The noisy buzz of the world becomes non-sensical (Merleau-Ponty, 1947) with complexity of differentiation either by means of rational sense or virtually as a screen-framed reality - it can be comprehended only by means of physical body with its situatedness. Accordingly, the concept of felt-body (Leib), not physical body (Körper), becomes important for the reasons that will unfold in the following paragraphs. Listening and the felt-body become an inextricable unity for translation, attunement due to the subject being physically immersed in different urban environments and situations appearing as atmospheres. Technology seems to be a mediator to expand the affective qualities of environments in the chaotic diversity, it marks and encodes territories and composes architecturally dense buildings. These 'codes' do not necessarity require 'physical' participation but predetermine possibilities and involve a virtual dimension. Along these lines Jan Slaby argues that Massumi and Schmitz have much in common regarding the notion of atmosphere with their focus on affectivity. According to his idea, both of them consider affects as being independent of the human mind, regarding them as cyclonic and gripping forces (Massumi, 2021; Slaby and von Scheve, 2019). In turn, sounds and feelings are similarly structured by volume and intensity and figuratively revealed as constellations thus invoking the notion of Gestalt in psychology. From this notion there are several problems that arise here: (1) if sounding and affectivity are autonomous forces emerging from the external flux, what is the role of the subject in the settled spatial realm? (2) could technology 'magically' help reveal the characteristics of the sensory and the sound in urban spaces, or would it only distort these modalities, reinforcing the violent rhythms of contemporary life?
Considering this knot of questions I am suggesting a creative approach to the problem through atmospheres that can be re-produced and mediated in urban
environments by technologies. These would be atmospheres that do not only enclose or encode territory but to create 'magical' sonic worlds (Voegelin, 2010) and to enlarge the existing urban atmosphere and sonic environment available for everyone. On the one hand, technological development opens a new horizon for soundart and urban studies, on the other hand it reveals a new political dimension that allows for sonic manipulation by imposing a certain framing or ethics. In order to prove that the 'magic' qualities of atmospheres depend on approaches that are distinct from and critical of the new materialism, I will address several artists and scholars from sound studies. In this context, I will also refer to various works of such sound designers, musicians and composers as Jacob Kierkegaard, Iannis Xenakis, Alvin Lucier, Marien Amacher, Kristina Kubisch, and Elen Radigue to exhibit real cases of sonic techniques as they allow to unfold and manipulate rhythms and affective tonality in different environments. Finally, I aim to show that atmospheric constellations are set by a certain ontology access to which requires sonic imagination as well as a certain mode of belief and mood [Stimmung] for the 'magic' character to be attuned to the above mentioned imagination, belief and mood. This ontological realm must not be confused with merely a set of examples and illustrations that express a perspective (in most cases male and dominating) which identifies the ontology with rhythmicatical invasiveness and which is dictated by politics of intangible control. There should be a method to navigate the forcefully attractive field of atmospheres, a method not dictated by the 'rational' side of the problem that is always limited by experience or representation.
THE NEW MUSIC AND NEW PHENOMENOLOGY: FULL EMBODIED
EXPERIENCE OF SONIC FLUX
The fundamental shift in science that occurred in the second half of the 20th century was crucial in terms of perception. Inspired by phenomenology, this discipline sought to justify phenomena that occurred prior to experience. The situational wholeness of the figure emerging from the unity of elements was found to be more important than the separate features of what is perceived. The framework of various spaces took place throughout the 1960s, along with influential works by John Cage. Happenings, Fluxus, and installation art experiments brought together the visual and aural arts, revealing a multi-dimensional spatial practice based on various philosophical assumptions that supported sound, text, and enacted processes. These assumptions are significant for emphasizing the idea of an extended acoustical field against a certain theoretical background and understanding of temporality. They also relate to the meaning of space as understood by Schmitz. Although John Cage (1961), for example, did not specifically focus on the political possibilities of sounding, he certainly implied the liberation of sounds in space from any interpretative human-controlled intention. The legacy of Cage brought a massive shift to cultural and theoretical musical and site-based practice. Despite this, sound was still perceived as a material, an amplified object recorded on a magnetic tape with its phenomenal presence, and, more importantly, always marked by the linguistic codes of the listener's interpretative process. Later on, after abstract expressionism revealed the spontaneous burst of dynamic color and improvisation in
Jason Pollock's famous action paintings that involved bodily movements and sound, art became an event based on chance and possibility. Indeed, Pollock realized at some point that the purity of the rhythm could not be articulated exclusively with the movement of the human body (LaBelle, 2006).
Moreover, the human body comes out as an actor, a receiver and almost replaces an art object. By finding oneself always within the fluxes, flows, and rhythms, the immediacy of chance within such a chaotic currency becomes clear, and the body itself becomes the carrying vessel. This is where the referential line in abstract art reveals a visceral meaning. With material sound purity praised by Cage, the formalist aesthetics developed by Clement Greenberg, referencing Pollock and others, presents a plain but radical fluxus reality. There are multiple ways to obtain such ontological knowledge about placing people's bodies within the corporeality of their sensorium. The whole construction of the events moves away from the stability of visual objects, and the acoustic matrix of sound activates perception. Whereas the field of vision limits subjects and objects, sounding comes upon them with a certain power. One could point at a picture or an art object and note the distance to their beholders, but with sound and affect, there is a mode of aesthetization that manifests itself in a mirror-like fashion. An acoustic mirror of this type is a sounding plate made available through the kinetic-affective embodiment. In other words, according to the majority of theories from the period of the 1950s-60s, Fluxus appropriates music as a direct path to the core of perception, but the sounding register requires something else. The Fluxus movement blurs the distinction between subject and object. We could argue that this process is entirely post-cognitive: sound unfolds in one's imagination and is usually perceived through a certain mode of acoustic suggestion. Such an extensive and experiential domain is possible and reveals both aesthetic and political dimensions, leading to a series of critical notes. On the one hand, one may note that there is a contradiction in the notion of imagination in relation to sonic and affective modes, as one may claim that we perceive phenomena with an orientation to the visual. Generally speaking, the concept of imagination includes all of the senses (Oliveros, 2010).
Technological development allowed scholars to collect, produce and explore constellations and assemblages of various spaces, environments and landscapes aiming at getting to the 'real' register of sonic phenomena. Thus, the process of listening along the lines of the felt-body is point of departure for translation and becoming attuned to sounding environments. Technology, then, seems to serve as a mediator expanding the possibilities of atmospheres along with their environmental and affective features that may be reflected as a gestalt appearing from the vortex of chaotic manifold. Finally, this paper draws attention to atmospheres and their immersive qualities that can encode and mark territories or, in other words, build possible worlds (see Oznobikhina, 2022; Voegelin, 2018). Their influence, however, is not signified in purely materialistic terms.
Atmospheric grip is not simply a temporary change that affects an individual for a while and then passes away again. Schmitz articulates the notion of atmosphere as having had, historically, constitutive power. For him, history is not about critical situations and the productive responses of a mass of people to those events. Schmitz opposes an approach to history based on a chain of analogous events. He advances the idea that
spatially and affectively charged atmospheres with certain climatic features can shape the flux of history. Such climatic flows provide people with their dispositions, styles, impulses, inclinations, and specific creative powers, thereby leading them to the ideas and decisions that play out in historical events and selectively transform into cultures that are of a particular character.
Tonino Griffero, an Italian philosopher, explores the aesthetic dimension of atmospheres. His concept of aesthetics is similar to the political assumptions advanced by Swiss sound artist and critic Salome Voegelin as the political possibilities of sound. Both of the approaches presuppose a passive or pathic disposition towards events and situations with atmosphere and sound. At the same time, they adopt a passivity endowed with agency. These remarks are important for the current research because of the 'pathic' component, whether aesthetic or political, which means that the so-called 'passivity' in situational and all-encompassing situations still exhibits an agency that was historically hidden.
In the book "Sonic Flux," Christoph Cox (2018) postulates the eponymous notion as being essential for aesthetic theories based on sound. We would agree with him at this point that overlapping with atmospheres has gained popularity over the last few years due to various and expansive peculiarities. Object-oriented ontology is no longer dominant within this aesthetic. The notion of sonic flux refers to an autonomous flow of sound appearing as a force, framing the atmospheric discourse in a more precise manner. Going beyond Deleuze and Guattari with the influential work of Emmanuel Delanda (2000), Cox denotes that sound art could be labeled as the "intensive" dimension of sound with its own history (Cox, 2018, p. 18). The opening gambit here casts Schmitz' atmospheres as affectively charged and captivating historically formed forces within which one can find oneself, if not vis-à-vis but at least in the same league as the mentioned authors. Thus, I would like to compare and contrast both of the approaches, the one unfolded by Christoph Cox and by neophenomenologly, in order to open possible lines for further development and research.
In every sound experience, physical contact primarily occurs through vibration (micro-rhythms). The acoustical physics of cymatics and the visualization of sound would, of course, pose the questions of listening and cognition, mentioning certain frequencies and harmonics. Ernst Chladni (1787) conducted experiments with vibrating plates and frequencies and published the results in his book "Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges." He made a significant contribution to the investigation of acoustic phenomena. Dealing with atmospheres as aural envelopes of gases or affectively charged space, classical acoustical theory refers not only to a liquid medium that envelopes and resonates with environments and territories but deals also with aerial qualities. The notion that sound designer and musician Steve Goodman labels as an ontology of vibrational force reveals "... when intuitional (visceral) percepts are initiated by the sonic and the body (in a couple of seconds) is instinctively triggered by surpassing the cognitive ability to process the impulse. Peculiarities of atmospheres, though, are not limited by their captivating or all-encompassing powers at the very certain moment" (Goodman, 2010, p. 48). With specific designs their 'magical,' yet in-between disposition allows us to
investigate a variety of possibilities and transitive constellations available for attunement rather than intentional or cognitive processing.
Christoph Cox claims, however, that his research moves in the opposite direction (see Cox, 2018, esp. chapters 2-4), thus revealing the new domain opened by sonic arts, realistic as well as ontological. With reference to Friedrich Kittler (1943-2011) Cox notes that "recorded sound bypasses the imaginary and the symbolic" to give access to "the real": the perceptible plenitude of matter that underlies all representation, a material core that is not basic but a primordial flux out of which all signals and signs emerge and into which they inevitably recede." (Kittler, 1999/2009; cf. Cox, 2018). Thus, he suggests that sonic flux might confront the phenomenological as well as poststructuralist accounts of sound imposed by a sound art where the human subject is the one who "receives and interprets the auditory signals" (Cox, 2018). There is no doubt for Cox when he regards human history and culture as part of the history of nature and claims that sound precedes the emergence of humanity. This goes beyond the field of sound art, where asonic flux is treated technically. In this regard, Cox also tries to provide an anti-correlationist argumentative line enframed by a wide range of authors experimenting with sound techniques aimed at reaching the 'real' sound domain, or sound-in-itself. The majority of them are following the same perspective resulting from practical confusions and interpretative relations associated with cultural and historical conditions, binary oppositions, and the problem of cartesian duality that comes out of notions of sound capture, fragmentation, and interpretation (pro or contra the existing tradition).
Alongside this materialist account emerged the New Phenomenology as a community that develops an alternative approach with a wide scope of disciplines including law, art, medicine, urban and sound techniques. Of main interest here is a conceptualization that goes beyond the schematizations of the natural sciences, offering a perspective that may fill the gaps in sound art and urban studies. By means of philosophical criticism, the phenomenologist can point out and dismantle the concepts and constructions that govern and constrict our everyday perceptions and train a more open attitude towards the urban environment and life. Most relevant to this position is the insight that rational human thinking productive of so-called disenchantment (Entzauberung) does not embrace the affectivity of the autonomous powers. In contrast to scholars from sound studies with orientation to new materialism, I would consider New Phenomenology to be the discipline that could draw attention to the various environments and spaces with certain atmospheres, that could thus develop sonic imagination and provide possible ways to create non-intentional spaces available for everyone. Needless to say that Cox' urge to settle a taxonomy for the variety of flows, branches and approaches towards sound art perfectly matches the traditional set of authors and artists common for his own field. Moreover, he unites the multi-dimensionality of the fluxes into the one autonomous realm without even considering the paths that lay beyond his research scope and methodology.
Such knowledge does not help us with the totality of contemporary environments with their invasive chaotic rhythms that could be approached by way of atmospheric methods. Atmospheres are perfect conceptual moves in this case as their non-intentionality is, firstly, not dictated by the Promethean attitude aimed to strive, capture,
interpret and preserve or, to put it in Cagean terms, to conserve, intangible knowing by innovative listening. Secondly, apart from sound art the non-intentional stance of atmospheric methods poses no risk of deformation of the emergent and passing style of the phenomena. Some of the experimental works and installations based on scientific inventions though are crucial for the present research to answer the questions raised.
ELECTRIC TERRITORIES AND URBAN ATMOSPHERES: MAGIC TECHNOLOGIES IN SONIC DESIGN AND LANDSCAPE ART
When in 1877 the phonograph was invented, Thomas Edison was the one who formulated the aesthetic focus on the world of sound apart from music and speech. He did so from the mechanic perspective endowing it with certain ontological facilities extracted from its source including the environmental noises and hum of the machine that produces it. In this section we are going to unfold some of the approaches from noise studies to get to the crossroads of three conceptual notions that will serve as further points of departure for the present research. The examples are derived from noise studies, minimalist music and the drone installations of Eliane Radigue, Kristina Kubisch, Max Neuhaus, Alvin Lucier, and Maryanne Amacher in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. They are aimed at revealing the autonomous yet influential qualities of sound that are usually dismissed while influencing our lives in major and quite 'magical' ways as we do not usually catch up with their influence.
Our sonic as well as affective thinking is predetermined by these intangible aspects as spatiality, temporality and intensity - drastically different from what we were taught in various institutions along with the technologically dense reality we inhabit. One of the significant approaches to sound was implemented by Ray Murray Schafer who gave explicit definition to sound design along with his notion of soundscape. His intention was to combine different aspects of sound production that finally transformed into whole disciplines known as film and theatre production, stage and urban design, different sound entertainment as well as objects from our daily life that we consider natural and include them into urban context, for example, electrical cables, traffic lights, flickering banners and ads. Remarkable studies of the CRESSON research team and laboratory were made with respect to this orchestra of designed sounds (Augoyard & Torgue, 2005) as the majority of these are repressed by citizens without even being consciously processed. Undoubtedly, this density caused a bad effect not only on the natural realm of human ears to hear the tiny sounds but also in respect to our attunement to the environment. In this manner, affective and sound density is always present before even being registered by humans. Moreover, it is also contingent with its indications of potentiality and relationality. Thus, the human body placed in metropolitan spaces is subsumed by a hyper-intensity that requires a certain kind of involvement and energy.
Among other fields urban and environmental design plays one of the central roles in composing or building the spaces suitable for human interaction, entertainment and public life. For Kevin Lynch (1960) the whole idea of the city is memorizable and mappable. However, a lot of mega-cities are losing their vibrancy due to unknown reasons. As a theorist in urban history Richard Sennett raised the same problem and
questioned the gap between the historically conditioned context of the cities that were originally built with the aim of creating spaces where people would be comfortable with each other, and the changed situation of a vertical and horizontal expansion of urban spaces. Lifeless urban landscapes and an abundance of non-places such as airports, gasoline stations and fast food spots are a part of big cities and yet they convey no sense of life due to their complete emptiness.
The domains of the vertical and horizontal are close to what Baudrillard was developing when mentioning the emptiness behind the flickering surfaces of the glass facades of an idealized metropolis. This appearance of the facades is determined by a view that puts too much weight on the surface, and that does not take into account the mode of the 'inside' where a signifier is constantly substituted or 'simulated' by another, leaving the signified isolated, or derelict (simulacra) (Baudrillard, 2006). Technological development initially aimed at improving the quality of citizens' lives but instead amplified lifeless forms of 'flat' experience: screen-framed reality and personal detachment lead to the loss of felt-bodily resonance is amplified and this loss is amplified by indigestible urban life rhythms. Communicative detachment and mass atomization remind us of Michel Certeau's description of New York in 1980. The city appears as lined space filled with the trajectories of the 'Wandersmanner down below' always being in flux, a city within a city inhabited by citizens contingently building their invisible paths with their transient sonic and affective agencies.
However, there was a period when technological development seemed to be on a promising path towards the future. The ideas hovering in the space of that time allowed many female artists to emerge from the shadows of their male colleagues and realize projects whose material products we see in our daily lives. Pioneering at sonic agency exploration in an urban environment, sound artist Marianne Amacher, a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (19721976) was primarily interested in psychoacoustics of space and personalized time successions and sequences. Her contribution is remarkable, especially because these artists were working with concepts of what is only today known as virtual reality and the Internet. For three years she received a continuous real-time transmission of the Boston Harbor sound environment in her private studio. During her experiment she installed a microphone on the window with a view of the ocean at Pier 6 Boston Harbor with separate radio channels transmitting live sound. Later on she was giving lectures at MIT, with her course called "Lived Space" working out the results of her experiments with overlapping stereo and auditory dimensions:
Composite mental images of immersion in space, direct physiological experience of an acoustic space, as distinguished from the perception of an acoustic space,
aurally as image. After-images. Thresholds. Physiological resonances......
(Amacher, 1994).
Along with this she was experimenting with the subjective experience of sound and emotions in urban spaces creating aural architectures such as the telematic installation series "City-Links" (1967-1981). With long-duration recordings of urban sites, "City-
Links" exhibits the musicality of ambient sound recorded on tape. Amacher herself comments on her research in the following manner:
I think of it quite literally in terms of architecture itself. When I'm able to have the opportunity to make a large installation, I learn the acoustics of the place, and I can work in more than one room: I may have six, I may have four, I may have seven rooms, or the entire structure. All of that began not because I had a fixed notion. Really it began because I hated loudspeakers. I was working in electronic media, so it was quite a contradictory thing. I was always interested in the spatial aspects of sound. I discovered that maybe if I put the speaker in there [points to the kitchen] -the way that you heard it from another room became much more rewarding. I could make a virtual meta-space, so you wouldn't get the sense of these [gestures to a nearby loudspeaker] boxes. (Amacher, 1994)
One of her works with the title "Synaptic Island: A Psybertonal Topology" is devoted not strictly to the material qualities of a building's infrastructures but also to the anatomy of the human body that was not passive in sound perception anymore: The plasticity of the inner ear stimulated by the tones automatically transformed itself into mini-synthezisers that amplified the sounding. The regions of space she researched 'on site' allowed her to experiment with textures and waves by building installations within a certain environmental location. Further series of installations designed by Amacher were called "MUSIC FOR SOUND-JOINED ROOMS" (1980-1995) and "MINISOUND SERIES" where she referred to the architectural features of sound, but this time the main interest of her was concerned with intense, location-based, dramatic sonic experiences built from "structure borne" sound (sound randomly passing through walls, floors, rooms, corridors) which acoustical engineers distinguish from the "airborne" sound experienced with commonly used loudspeaker stationing. A series of rooms were providing the space for staged design of sonic and visual installations created by the artist. This aural architecture was so immersive that it captivated the audience. One of her main aims was to create a special atmosphere with sound forming 'sonic theater' magnified by the expressive qualities of places: from rooms and corridors to walls, balconies, stairways. Sounding site-specific installations allowed her to build affective multi-dimensional experience before virtual reality was even created. The spaces were literally 'singing': reverberating and magnifying such environmental qualities as color and light; amplifying spatial presence as the sound shaped and interacted with the structural characteristics of the rooms before reaching the ears of the audience. The spaces themselves produced sound perceived through the bodies: felt and physical. This spatial realm is experienced by addressing the sonic aspect of architecture and the vibrancy of the urban environment. Indeed, it is not so much about implementing sound into the environmental context, it is really about rethinking listening, perception and affective aspects of finding oneself within the environment.
Extensive development of computer programs allowed for manipulative practices to explore sound synthesis possibilities in architecture. In order to master the orchestral sound masses Iannis Xenakis experimented with probability theories. He was primarily interested in the unity of heterogeneity to compose an intangible architecture of sound.
And yet, many theoreticians are comparing the concepts of stochastic and aleatoric or 'chance' music emerged from serialism as a method of composition initially crystallized from Olivier Messiaen's technique and further developed by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen with high variability of such sonic components as rhythm, pitch and tone. They differ, however, in how they leave the musical setting open, allowing improvisation to emerge. Apart from the conceptual framework of "chance" music, the stochastic approach implemented by Xenakis allows for a greater understanding of a disordered coherency that he orchestrated through sound masses by folding a united set of random events forming a heterogeneity. Thus, randomness understood by chance as a free choice is entered into without any persuasion or method but predetermined by successive statistics inherent in the more probable 'state of affairs.' That leaves a certain openness and contingency of the sonic situation and that is what makes Xenakis works significantly different from aleatoric music - especially Pithoprakta (1955-1956) translated as "actions by means of probability." With negation of the common compositional structure Xenakis made revolution in music and opened a new temporal domain revealed through the atmospheres which rhythmical pulsations perceive corporeally. We will turn to this with greater precision in the next paragraph.
Since the beginning of the 19th century, human beings understood landscape formations from a geological perspective. Urban development led to pollution and prompted several changes in nature itself. Because of this, the whole idea of nature was reconsidered. The ethical questions of how to aesthetically, practically, and politically integrate nature into society were raised. In the middle of the 1960s, the majority of the artists started undertaking attempts to place their works of art outside the galleries, right into the landscape or urban environment. Their aim was not to emphasize land or earth peculiarities; they simply incorporated various aspects of the environment in their projects, with the materials engaging the landscape. Such artists worked with galleries only occasionally, given the fact that modern urban industries were rearranging and deforming the general landscape and structure of the ground. A full understanding of this would imply techniques for the emergence of a wide range of human interactions between the natural and built environments. In this respect, landscape and site-specific art offer a variety of possibilities and models.
One of the pioneers of landscape art, Hans Haacke, incorporated into his works such components as wind, water, and changing aspects of the environment with its natural systems, which were not necessarily placed on the bare ground outside the urban environment. His early ideas engaged waves, bubbles, sways, streams, whirlpools, and drops with precise levels of movement that he incorporated into his installations. Water is also not the only material he used in his works when compared to natural and non-organic liquids. Nonetheless, he encompassed water in a broader sense, including rivers, oceans, and underground turbulence. The blowing wind systems he created and carefully integrated in the 1965 installation "Blue Sail," imitated and manipulated liquid and aural sources. The piece of silk waving in the wind in an impulsive manner provides a mutual interaction between the technically elaborated environment and the wholeness of the installation experienced by the viewer in a corporeal manner. The water constructions built by Haacke are difficult to articulate in words due to their original program-oriented
meaning, which is organized as a language to a certain extent. As the non-organic and fluid substance that is most alive, water requires the process to describe its hydrodynamical events and the sequence of these events refers to what we usually encounter as a whole. Haacke noted that despite the environmental and aesthetic aspects of his artistic experience, the "magical" combination derived from process and the quality of things still appears to be surprising. Although he considers the role of the observer to be of high importance, the sense of landscape and the artistic work incorporated into it demand a forming process in the domain of time emerging as a waveform or in the frequency sphere as a spectrum of power that is always ambiguous and always moving. In fact, his works were made with a certain impulse to compose something complex and inseparable with regards to humans and nature. After all, these systems operate apart from what we used to understand as stable objects-merely mechanical equipment that is manipulated by invisible forces. In this sense, the sound art techniques of memory and preservation are opening a new temporal perspective.
The Earth's landscapes are rich in natural systems with a huge variety of processes, atmospheric changes, sonic events, islands, and traces of human activity. The sublime face of nature is revealed through the openness of the symbolic gesture. It is a pure and naive viewpoint that imbues the atmospheric qualities of the environment with a certain sounding innocence that differs greatly from what the Romantics, for example, praised. These natural sites, changed and transformed, have become the center of artistic activities. Then, one might wonder, what is the connection to atmospheres in this context? As long as each work demands a unique approach that celebrates the artist's relationship with the environment, and as long as atmospheres are attached to certain landscapes and seasons, such as thunderstorms, November weather, and spring air, we are dealing with affective atmospheres that are anchored to landscapes or cityscapes with a certain "style," both, meteorologicaly and affectively. Examples range from the tense atmosphere of a protest parade to the calm or restless atmosphere of a city, all of which emerge as naturally composed events in the open air. Another famous landscape artist, Alan Sonfist, was interested in myths and territorial entropy which led to his spiral-shaped and symbolic art. His aesthetics shaped the attitude between nature and mankind: each site he uses for his artistic move is thoroughly chosen and submerged with the natural peculiarities of place. He finds symbols and places them on the canvas laid out on the ground. Alan Sonfist's "Time Landscape" (1965-1978) is famous and widely recognized as a well-constructed design plan with a certain rhythm and vast acoustic space. Such spatial phenomena exist, even if they are not or hardly taken into account by the classical dogma of emotions encoded in the classic cultural dogma which still dominates the majority of contemporary societies.
PULSATING TEMPORALITY IN TRANSLATION OF THE
RHYTHMOSPHERE
Moving on from the theoretical foundations of Music and Sound Art to the practical assumptions of Hermann Schmitz's New Phenomenology, it is worth noting that the Deleuzian and Guattarian approaches, similar to his idea, are pervasive and
universalizing. In his provocative manner not only does Schmitz go further, exhibiting eight dynamic modalities of the felt-body (Leib), he also provides a non-classical approach to almost every sphere of human and non-human life applying his understanding of atmospheres. The definition of atmospheres, though, remains a conundrum, as Schmitz tends to situate his notion in cases from a dense variety of authors. The only concept that Schmitz uses as a universal one to analyze the state is the island of the body [Leibesinsel]. But even these islands are not located calmly and distinctly, but are constantly moving and floating. The other nine terms in Schmitz's understanding require dynamism: the corporeal state is then a kind of pulsating magnetic field. Along with the dialectics of contraction and expansion, Schmitz uses nine states to navigate the field of the felt-body which he claims to be autonomous from the physical body as it expresses the intense fluidity of the bodily state. The variety of transitions between the individual as well as collective states of the body turns it into a certain kind of sonar for humans and non-humans. As soon as a person is alive, (s)he is always trembling. This is not a pulsation that makes the felt-body resonate but it is the environment with a certain atmosphere attached to the landscape that has a specific rhythm and temporality or duration which I define as a rhythmosphere.
Apart from their definition, the temporalities of atmospheres are hard to approach due to a variety of factors. Of course, the first factor and most common subject of critique is their diffuse character. Secondly, there are some objections claiming the dynamic impossibility of atmospheres (Kinch & H0lund, 2012). Atmospheres reveal temporal dimensions that are hard to neglect with all the suggestive movements they imply along with corporeal stirrings. Here we claim atmospheres to be dynamic by using extracts from the famous debate between Gaston Bachelard and Henri Bergson on rhythm in the context of duration. Of course, rhythm here exemplifies the elaborated relativity of temporal dynamism, requiring bodily and spatial awareness to be phenomenologized. French urban theorist Jean-Paul Thibaud defines atmospheres and ambiences through the notion of resonance that encodes their temporality. They fill the environments with a sense of life by setting a vibrant tonality of places. Tonality, in turn, could be measured as volume and intensity and is something that unites sound and feelings. They would hardly be approached without temporal aspects as both of the components emphasize a fleeting dimension and in-betweenness. As a result, the concept of rhythm not only composes the unique path to felt-bodily interaction with the environment, both human and non-human, but it also enframes the reality of the perceiver and the perceived. One can hardly predict a certain way of sensing the atmosphere but it is certainly possible to observe the effects of how humans and non-humans are founded within certain environments enveloped by the radiance of atmospheres. The sense of temporality derived from an Eastern emphasis on natural cycles of rhythms such as waves or heartbeats that renew with every return could easily be compared to monotonous and repetitive rhythms. Thus, as Lefebvre suggests, "a rhythmic or dynamic atmosphere not ,placed' inside or outside but in the shifting relation between the interconnected rhythms of the self, the other and the environment" (Lefebvre, 2004). This feature of atmosphere that unites sound and feeling as phenomena through their temporal unfolding also opens the ecological dimension of the body and the environment.
With the analysis of an object that is separate from its source (objet sonore), the founder of Musique Concrete, Pierre Schaeffer, noted that there are a lot of sounds amidst which we usually find ourselves, but not all of them are musically composed and, in a chaotic manner, appear as noise. For him, sounds are separate ontological individuals with particularities. "As soon as the call is in the air," indicates his follower, entomologist and sound artist Francisco López, it no longer belongs to the frog that produced it (López cf. Cox, 2018). Here, we suppose that both of them miss the fact that these are merely perceived and anticipated temporal events. When it comes to sound, time-based media has altered how we perceive the chain of signification. There is always anticipation as well as appropriation of what we hear, but it's problematized by relational and dialectic relationships.
For the musician and percussionist Jarrod Fowler, such kind of dialectic is rhythmic. Basically his idea is based on two-way relationships between the two elements involved in the interaction. "The interaction of drum skin and stick, for instance, shares important attributes with the interaction of text and voice" (Kim-Cohen, 2009). He conceptualizes rhythm by implying that the beat is fundamental in sound production. Most of the revolutionary movements of twentieth-century music, from Stravinsky to Reich and Cage were experimenting with rhythm and variations of the beat in both minimalist composition and music in the age of technological reproduction. Fowler himself is deeply immersed in postwar musical and artistic practice, citing as influences Cage, Fluxus, minimalism and experimental hip-hop. The two apparently discontiguous areas of experience initially come together for Fowler's practice in the "systems of field guides, morphology, taxonomy and their translation" (Bolle, 2007). For Fowler's early work, field guides to trees, birds, insects, and other non-human subjects serve to overcome the existing sonic context and implement something fresh. Dealing with time and space, not only were they inspired by the content itself but also touched fundamental questions of the conditions of experience and existence. These attempts were systematic as well but in the course of his research Fowler came upon the question of the translation of rhythm (see Fowler's (2006) CD Translation as, especially the track named "Wittgenstein to Fowler," that encodes the ordering of remarks in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and translates it into a rhythmic structure), its typology and morphology. What Fowler literally does with the "Tractatus" is that he translates it into a sequence of clicks:
"Each section is represented by a silent duration equal in seconds to its number (e.g., section 1.12 is 1.12 seconds long). The start of each section is denoted by a click. The result is a sequence of clicks, moving farther and farther apart in time. "'So you literally think of those numbers [of the Tractatus] stacked up
against each other. So you have click, click . . . click ...... click ...........
click.'" (Kim-Cohen, 2009, p. 233, quoting Fowler).
When it comes to rhythm, Schmitz implies not only pulsation but the dialectical intensity emerging out of the durational process. Bachelard sticks to nearly the same view by noting that it is not the melody that determines duration but the rhythm (Rutgeerts, 2019). Thus, rhythm is not limited by naturalistic exemplifications such as heartbeat or
breathing but by the pulsating fluctuations that we experience in pain or pleasure (see Soentgen, 1998). Rhythm, according to Schmitz, is one of the forms of suggestive movement that manifests itself as a gripping force and imposes itself through Gestalt-progressions (Gestaltverlauf). Half-things are thus the sound gestures from which sonic events, motifs, affective themes, and melodies are constructed with their bridging function for corporeal communication. Interestingly, he also includes disturbing noises such as intrusive voices, whistles, and the dripping of the faucet (Schmitz, 2005). Their immediacy makes sounds and feelings impossible to distance themselves from.
When Schmitz unfolds his notion of the felt-body, it should be stated that he is not concerned with a living body (corps vivant) as opposed to the scientific notion of the body but with the felt-body (Leib). The phrase 'living body' though, refers to the idea of the organism as objectified by natural sciences and modern medicine. Such a body incorporates most of the things that are known to be human behavior, such as expressive behavior that is controlled by feelings and intentions, behavior in talking and thinking, etc. Merleau-Ponty (2002) and, more recently, Thomas Fuchs made imilar attempts to conceptualize the 'whole person' as a "living organism" and objectified natural body, raising understanding of human experience to the level of existential psychology. The idea of the living organism, or corps vivant, goes back to the above mentioned split of the human being into body and soul and lies in the attempt of the natural-scientific worldview to dominate human behavior, which includes affective and sonic agency. Schmitz, on the other hand, insists on the fallacy of antiquity: It is incompatible with the corresponding characteristics of the physical body to posit sensations in one's own body. That means to posit the use of the five senses before physical action or to posit a body schema not derived from one's life experience, including the nine felt-bodily states mentioned (such as hunger, thirst, pain, lust, freshness, and fatigue). This is why the living organism cannot be introduced as the 'inside' of the body being scientifically investigated, as Merleau-Ponty did, because the opposite side must at least coincide with the outside. Such an understanding of the body is "like an attempt to impersonate a song (in the dimensionless space of sound) as the inverted voice of the singer (in the body space that contains the surface) out of which it emerges" (Schmitz, 2017)1
Instead, the body (Leib) is to be examined partly in conjunction with the physical body (Körper) in specific localities. This perceptive body deserves to be examined because of its indispensable significance in relation to subjectivity, where its potential to be affected serves as a resonance board (Resonanzboden) for the affective essence (affektive Betroffensein). It is the basis for all contacts in corporeal communication (leiblicher Kommunikation). Thus, according to Schmitz, the subject floats in an ocean of feelings, sounding like a swimmer.
My starting point for speaking of "rhythmosphere" is the concept of non-pulsed time (Aeon) derived from Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus." Their definition of time differs from the understanding of "territorialized" or pulsed time, it thus differs from Chronos marking time merely by the repetitive rhythm of a narrative or musical
1 My translation of: „[...] als umgedrehter Körper dem Versuch gleicht, einen Gesang (im flächenlosen Raum des Schalls) als umgedrehten Stimmapparat des Sängers (im flächenhaltigen Raum des Körpers) auszugeben, weil er aus diesem hervorgeht."
composition. Rather it follows a concept of time which Deleuze also defines as Bildungsroman time, marking the formation of a subject (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Non-pulsed time (Aeon) is a developing process reminding the listeners of the territorialization of space with its intrinsic properties and velocity, whereas pulsed time is more about a clear sense of chronological time. In this way, pulsed time is also a musical time with its unique sonorous characteristics and spatial, performative, and aesthetic possibilities of becoming. Although the noises we usually hear have no harmonic properties, they do, of course, have the potential for such. Apart from Cage, the first one who made a remarkable investigation into the non-musical sounding world was Max Neuhaus with his work "LISTEN" (1966), as he tended to the sound and affective qualities of the work outside the concert hall in order to examine the environmental qualities of sound. He labeled the hands of participants with the eponymous word "Listen," inviting them to walk outside and experience what they hear, allowing the massiveness of urban noises to be blended and perceived in a precise manner. His focal point in sound installations was the work "Drive-In Music" (1967), in which the sounds were free of any burdens imposed by a visual arts framework. These practical assumptions, without doubt, shared in Cage's rebellious understanding of temporality and duration, as well as processes and becoming. In his highly influential essay "Art and Objecthood" (1967) Michael Fried drew a distinct line between sound installations requiring the intentional participation of the audience and the works that suppose physical presence and agency, including the epiphany of the aesthetic. This is what Böhme would term as the "anesthetization of reality" (Böhme & Thibaud, 2017). The unity that modernist painting and sculpture achieve, as Fried suggests, are complete in the banality of their wholeness. By contrast, theatrical works demanding physical presence of the spectators focus on the materialistic conditions and capture the visitor's way of finding oneself within a certain space. Spatio-temporal relationships of such contemplation are in-between and atmospheric. Indeed, in his book Cox notices a specific detail in Fried's research that emerges from an account of night drive to New Brunswick by sculptor Tony Smith. He emphasizes the movement through the changing landscape and the road which is artificial and yet the process itself is revealing:
At first I didn't know what it was, but its effect was to liberate me from many of the views I had had about art. It seemed that there had been a reality there that had not found any expression in art. The experience on the road was something mapped out but not socially recognized. I thought to myself, ,It ought to be clear that's the end of art.' Most painting looks pretty pictorial after that. (Fried, 1967 cf. Cox, 2018)
Indeed, just as the lived experience of a road over a certain duration has its effect, so does the atmosphere perceived in the openness of a pre-dimensional character, mainly through the resonance and vastness [prostor]. This evokes the distinction between spatiotemporal concepts as traced by Schmitz: There is space as an Aristotelians topos and there is measurable space as conceived by Descartes. The space that is not measurable physically is also not geographically located and, at the same time, requires corporeal dynamics of the felt body-rhythmical pulsations of contraction and expansion dependent
on a certain atmosphere. Needless to say, atmospheres are not simply available through the efforts of human beings and material culture. They have temporal dimension changing in accordance to the material or, to be more certain, physical features of the environment. This leads to the conclusion that atmospheres themselves require multi-dimensionality including the temporal tensions.
Apart from Brian Kane, the critique of the ontological turn does not arise from Schmitz's and Bohme's notions of atmosphere. I add to this that despite Schmitz's systematic approach the ambiguity of his „atmospheres" is hard to be grasped even after thorough analysis of the whole work. At the same time, atmospheres are a semantically wide and adaptable tool that is not conceptualized to be universally used. Interestingly, Schmitz also suggests that atmospheres are captivating and temporal, ensuring a certain continuity and duration as well. In the separate volume of his intellectual endeavor devoted to perception (Der Wahrnehmung) excavates the felt-body (Leib) not only to emphasize its role in arts and psychology but also in spatial navigation within chaotically changing world (Schmitz, 2019).
When it comes to perception there are several meanings and one of them could be stated as directionless space. Apart from atmospheres there is also the felt-body turning into a "sounding board" (Slaby & von Scheve, 2019) or naturally elaborated and sonar. Always being in a certain disposition and communication through rhythmical pulsations, namely contractions and expansions, this body forms not only a subjective rhythmosphere but also allows the subject to navigate the chaotic world of fluxes by attuning it to different environments. This does not involve cognitive process at the specific moment of affectation especially when it is amplified by artistic practices. In this sense Schmitz regards rhythm not as something similar to the heart beating but quite eccentric and including the pulsation movements known from being in pleasure of pain. From scientific perspective it is the tympanic movement transferred in the air to liquid, so that the pressure in air that fluctuates turns to oscillating flow, a movement of a fluid. Thus, in simple words hearing of terrestrial vertebrates happens underwater through the contact of hairs and nerve cells transducing sound into nerve impulses (Wiley, 2015).
This apparatus does not amplify the energy of the sound. It instead transforms fluctuations of pressure in the air to movements of fluids in the inner ear. Yet this change greatly improves the mechanical efficiency of bending the tiny hairs that trigger action potentials in the in the sensory cells. It is another elaborate system of impedance matching
At this point, Kane's notion of the fallacy and the confusion in sound studies of embodied experience and exemplification opens another dimension and mode of temporality. On the one hand, one is able to navigate the noisy world with the help of the felt-body due to its existential qualities of finding oneself somewhere. These felt-bodily states and dispositions play a crucial role in perception for Schmitz, besides, these are always subjective. On the other hand, Sonic Flux autonomised by Cox is like an ocean for sounding potencies. In order to navigate a drastically changing world, one needs a method, and in the artistic realm needs something more than such an oceanic or aquarian description. Here, the New Phenomenology has the potential to provide access to the phenomenon. There are, however, several things that I see as problematic in the
understanding developed by Schmitz and his followers of the felt-body and physical body and their temporality.
In his analysis of Schmitz's System of Philosophy Jens Soentgen (1998) mentions a tendency to autonomise and separate the felt-body from the physical body and, what is more, to empower it with forces beyond any phenomena at all. However, as we learned from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, the physical body (Körper) is always present and placed in the noisy and chaotic world. Barely anyone can deny that it is impossible to ignore the noise. Just like atmosphere, noise has a certain temporality, intensity, and duration. All three components are united by rhythmical progressions. For the following reasons this is important when it comes to bodily, felt-bodily processes and sonic experience. First, as noted before, noise and density of affective patterns are imprinted through an all-encompassing condensed figure-background pulsation available in the process and amplified emerging through instants with a certain duration. Despite the wide range of metaphors associated with rhythm and duration, Bergson chooses melody to draw attention to the first component. The second reason concerns the relation of ,outside' and ,inside' perspectives. It is not only about Nomos regarded as a melody or a custom, a law, a habit or even a tradition. There is the domain of the 'outside' perspective that reveals the whole affective architecture that is possible to undertake relating to distance itself. The "calling" is more than the Greek Nomos, it is a sound constellation that regulates animals, insects and other creatures in the environment and world (Umwelt) and makes the landscape unique. This opens the perspective we got use to as quite anthropocentric with the skin (both human and non-human) may be regarded as a huge membrane being faster to receive the environmental stimuli than thoughts that are processed cognitively (see Massumi, 2019). Due to the constant spatial pressure on the membranes of the human body (from the inside), the fluctuations in forms of a sound waves on the outside stimulate vibrations that reach the membrane of eardrum. Animals and insects are also able to convert sounds and wave frequencies to nervous impulses involving cell membranes of their neurons. For example, the bugs and the bees have membranes that cover enclosed spaces in the wall-like area of the thorax, abdomen, or legs.
The human skin turns out to be a huge membrane, a 'macro' version compared to what we have in our ears, then the 'surfaceless' space without distance' that Schmitz compares to anocean or pool in micro/macro scales can navigate by 'inner' sonar, namely the felt-body tha is encoded with a certain disposition. The elasticity of the rhythmosphere, which is available at a wide human and non-human range, solves anthropocentrism and the subsequent cultural or historical narrowness that arises here.
In Western cultures visual perception is endowed with a dominant epistemological value. Ocular-centrism usually leads to biases and ignorance of the things that are ambiguous, untamed, always in-between and in-becoming. The best examples are sound, weather, and feelings. As John Cage noted, "sounds invade areas where nothing's definite (areas - micro/macro - adjacent the one we know in). [...] It'll sound like what we hear when we're not hearing music, just hearing what we happen to be" (Cage, 1993). The transient and all-encompassing qualities of sound and feeling allow as to provide a clear definition of our feelings or to detect the source of sound only when it is already gone and
we have seen evidence of its existence. All of the other cases seem to be visually representative and 'flat' in the sense of reference to experience. Italian futurist Luigi Russolo (1986) was intimidated by the phenomena of noise. He investigated the noisy world within the Futurist movement right after the significant inventions of Edison and managed to invent new noisy instruments (intonarumori) to capture large-scaled sound. These instruments had orientations for glissando, a continuous slide of pitches. That is why "enharmonic notation" consisted of "continuous lines rather than discrete points" (Cox, 2018, p. 326). As one of the main figures of experimental music of the 1970s Chris Cutler conceptualized noise differently than Jacques Attali. While Attali regarded noise as a system of codes, Cutler (1992) embraced the idea of noise as a "memory system." Interestingly, atmospheres similarly carry placeless and intangible memorial pieces of information available for a perception without focusing.
Later on, Pierre Schaeffer started experimenting with the new dimensions of sound that became available through the phonograph and the manipulation of fragmented and concrete sounds. The main purpose was to investigate noise as isolated from its form in order to reveal sound matter as such. Another influential male figure was Christian Marclay who attempted to explore the full potential of sound through turntabling (scratching) techniques, by interacting with improvisational montages of sound collages, by creating new configurations and sets of records. The idea of temporality, understood as the longest distance between two points, would definitely not be supported by him. Instead, he used turntabling techniques to create a temporal structure that was discontinuous and nonlinear. This neglects the historical and cultural features of the sonic materials, although they crucially matter in sonic and urban design.
Finally, when one speaks of sound in terms of the ontological turn (Cox, Heindge, and Goodman) and of these sound artists one is constantly referencing experience, whether human-oriented or constrained by correlationist frameworks. The ontology proposed by such authors and the pursuit of innovative listening implies a Promethean attitude and depends on a predetermined setup that is already set upon a "more" or "hyper," often purely instrumental and aimed at regulating and modifying sound through technology and software techniques. In contrast to the work, for example, by Marianne Amacher, the pulsation of such tuned and natural flows has an autonomous temporality that already occurs in relation to the one who perceives them and is often violent at its core.
CONCLUSION
By examining the subjective disposition of the felt-body (Leib), always in communication, it is possible to register the residing of sound and sensory events according to predispositions and personal rhythms that change according to the environment, space, or collective in which subjects reveal themselves. Thus, I argue, sound artists operate in terms of different branches of materialism within an aquarian environment that is structurally encoded with the sets of rhythms reproduced by the subjects. Their experimental ways of accessing the senses and sound per se through various ways of compressing, capturing, and manipulating these elements reduce them to
an element of the private, subjective, and diffusely experienced within a particular ontology - which is described in the terms from which these theorists derive their critique, such as dialectic or Cartesian dualism. Ultimately, the integrity of the autonomous modus of sound and the climactic properties of the sensuous are perforated by intense attempts to overcome the above terms, the use of which is provoked by the conceptual foundations of the material processes of expression, constrained by such loops of signification.
All along, technologies and various ways of capturing sound open up a new political dimension that enables the manipulation of the locations of the auditory and the sensual, alienating the spheres of corporealized sensations from subjects following deterministic routes not only in the affective modalities of the sensual but as part of the urban setting. Thus, the intensity of sound and sensuality that is not grounded nevertheless has a material character, often demonstrated in sound and art installations, but in a private way, as it sets a certain temporality and affective modality expressed in a spatial flow that affects the behavior and well-being of subjects but is not fixed in place. However, the movement of flows of sound and energies within the natural world is often overlooked by most materialistic art, despite the broad framework of site-specific art and urban installation subjects. Phenomenological inquiry based on the practical assumptions of Hermann Schmitz's System of Philosophy and the results derived from the artistic and scientific investigations of a wide range of researchers, designers, and authors allows one to "focus without focusing," in other words, to non-intentionally become attuned to dynamic phenomena and to find oneself amidst the forests and sonic worlds of intangible architecture of affect available with certain rhythmospheres formed in the chaotic realm of the contemporary world.
Although the sensory qualities of sound and feeling can change, we have considered instances of continuity and focused on environmental rhythms that are formed in the various cleavages of the temporality of different spaces. Due to the variety of bodily states, one is unstable within such temporal articulations of an intense continuum. The radical shift in the conception of temporality towards duration and becoming, noted by theorists of auditory culture that are influenced by the philosophy of Bergson, Whitehead and Deleuze, fuels experimental sound art practices and installations by artists such as Max Neuhaus, art historian Michael Fried, and others, demonstrating the diffusive spatiality of temporal markers of feeling and sound. These practices and installations involve the manipulation by computer programs, preceded by civil and ceremonial practices of marking time, including the quantitative capture of time by mechanical clocks. Such mechanical markup of equidistant sequences of equivalent and impersonal moments resonates with those singularities of memorable moments that were characteristic of the concrete life of a community that has its own rhythms distinct from the scientific approach to time. Chronological time subordinates spatiality, but does not take into account that it passes and lasts. In this regard the merging of rhythm and atmosphere reveals a new affective and sounding domain: the political dimension of eternal becoming.
REFERENCES
Amacher, M. (1994). Synaptic Islands: A Psybertonal Topology / Architecture as Translation of Music (E. Martin, Ed.). Princeton Architectural Press.
Augoyard, J-F. & Torgue, H. (2005). Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds. McGill-Queen's University Press.
Baudrillard, J. (2006). Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press.
Böhme, G. and Thibaud, J. P. (2017). The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. Routledge.
Bolle, S. (2007). An Interview with Jarrod Fowler. Rare Frequency Web page. WZBC radio. www.rarefrequency.com/2007/07/jarrod fowler.html
Cage, J. (1961). Experimental Music // Silence: Lectures and Writings. Wesleyan University Press.
Cage, J. (1993). Art and Technology. In R. Kostelanetz (Ed.), Cage J: Writer (pp. 111113). Limelight Editions.
Chladni, E. (1787). Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges [Discoveries on the theory of sound]. Bey Weidmanns erben und Reich
Cox, C. (2018). Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics. University of Chicago Press.
Cutler, C. (1992). Necessity and Choice in Musical Forms. Autonomedia.
Delanda, M. (2000). A Thousand Years of Non-Linear History. Griffero, T., & Tedeschini, M. (2019). Atmosphere and Aesthetics: A Plural Perspective. Palagrave Macmillan.
Deleuze, G & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Fried, M. (1967). Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews. University of Chicago Press.
Fuchs, T. (2019). The Uncanny as Atmosphere. In T. Griffero & G. Francesetti (Eds.), Psychopathology and Atmospheres (pp. 101-118). Cambridge Scholar, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Fowler, J. (2006). Translation as Rhythm [Album]. Errant Bodies Press
Goodman, S. (2010). Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. MIT Press.
Kim-Cohen, S. (2009). In a Blink of an Ear. Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. Continuum.
Kittler, F. (2009). Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (G. Winthrop-Young and M. Wutz, Trans.) (pp. 15-17; 22-24). Standford University Press. (Original work published 1999)
Kinch, S., & H0jlund, M. K. (2012). Designing Dynamic Atmospheres - Highlighting Temporality as Design Concern within Interaction Design. In Ambiances in action / Ambiances en acte(s) (pp. 229-234). International Congress on Ambiances.
LaBelle, B. (2006). Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. Bloomsbury Academic.
Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City. MIT Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1947). Sense and Non-Sense (H. L. Dreyfus and P. Allen Dreyfus, Trans.). Illinois Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge.
Massumi, B. (2019). Architectures of the Unforeseen: Essays in the Occurrent Arts. University of Minnesota Press.
Massumi, B. (2021). Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (12th ed.). Duke University Press.
Oliveros, P. (2010). Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992-2009. Deep Listening Publications.
Oznobikhina, I. (2022). Space, Rhythm and Architecture: Atmospheres in Works of Iannis Xenakis. In A. Georgaki & M. Solomos (Eds.), Proceedings for Xenakis 22: Cetenary International Symposium (pp. 320-327). Spyridon Kostarakis. https://xenakis2022.uoa.gr/proceedings/
Relph, E. (1976). Place andPlacelessness. Pion.
Relph, E. (1981). Rational Landscapes and Humanistic Geography. Barnes & Noble.
Russolo, L. (1986). The Noises of Nature and Life (Timbres and Rhythms). Pendragon.
Rutgeerts, J. (2019). Revisiting Rhythmanalysis: How Rhythm Operates in the Work of Gaston Bachelard and Henri Bergson, Parrhesia, 31, 85-102.
Schmitz, H. (2005). System der Philosophie: Band III. Der Raum: Teil 2. Der Gefühlsraum [System of Philosophy: Volume III. The Room: Part 2. The Sensorying Space]. Bouvier.
Schmitz, H. (2011). Emotions outside of the box-the new phenomenology of Feeling and corporeality. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 10 (2), 241-259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-011-9195-1
Schmitz, H. (2012). Atmosphärische Räume [Atmospheric Spaces]. In R. Goetz & S. Graupner (Eds.), Atmosphäre(n) II. Interdisziplinäre Annäherungen an einen unscharfen Begriff (pp. 17-30). Kopaed.
Schmitz, H. (2017). Zur Epigenese der Person [On the Epigenesis of the Person]. Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg.
Schmitz, H. (2019). System der Philosophie: Band III. Der Raum: Teil 5. Der Wahrnehmung [System of Philosophy: Volume III. The Room: Part 2. The Perception]. Bouvier.
Slaby, J. & von Scheve, C. (Eds.). (2019). Affective Societies: Key Concepts. Routledge.
Soentgen, J. (1998). Die verdeckte Wirklichkeit. Einführung in die Neue Phänomenologie von Hermann Schmitz [The Hidden Reality. Introduction to the New Phenomenology by Hermann Schmitz]. Bouvier.
Trigg, D. (2020). The Role of Atmosphere in Shared Emotion. Space and Society, 35(2), 100658. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2020.100658
Voegelin, S. (2010). Listening to the Noise and Silence. Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. Continuum.
Voegelin, S. (2018). The Political Possibility of Sound. Fragments of Listening. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Watsuji, T. (1961). Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study. Ministry of Education.
СВЕДЕНИЯ ОБ АВТОРЕ / THE AUTHOR
Ирина Игоревна Ознобихина Irina Oznobikhina
reneozanam@gmail .com reneozanam@gmail .com
ORCID 0000-0001-5363-451 ORCID 0000-0001-5363-451
Статья поступила 9 октября 2022 Received: 09 October 2022
одобрена после рецензирования 15 декабря 2022 Revised: 15 December 2022
принята к публикации 25 декабря 2022 Accepted 25 декабря 2022
