Research Networking Day 1: The Sound of Healing

Helen Anahita Wilson

00:00

Jasmin Schreiber

00:00

Shrey Kathuria

00:00

Hosted by Anita Jóri

00:00

Free

Welcome

In a short welcome word, Anita Jóri introduces CTM 2022's Contact theme and the day's three modules that address the topic from a variety of perspectives. The sessions will be streamed live over CTM’s YouTube channel. The audience is invited to send questions via the YouTube chat. These will be discussed at the end of each module together with the presenters and host.

Krankenhausfunk and the Extrinsic Death Receptor Pathway

Helen Anahita Wilson (SOAS University, London, UK)

In a re-imagining of hospital radio, »Krankenhausfunk and the extrinsic death receptor pathway« is an invitation to make contact and experience contiguity with the Sontagian idea of the kingdom of the sick. This practice-led research project explores issues in acousmatic life writing in the critical medical arts, creating a localised radiophonic space derived from extraordinary, extreme, autoethnographic experience. By disrupting the traditional radiophonic dynamic where the patient consumes hospital radio music requests, this work is an invitation to listen to the experience of the patient in a retrospective encounter designed to foster empathy, emotional resonance, and solidarity.

Life writing in music, and especially the presentation of illness narratives in sound, is a nascent field in the academy: my research sits at the investigatory intersection of compositional process, sonic narrative, embodiment, affect, and time. What are the possibilities of sonic, medical life writing beyond the soundscape? How can the traditional, top-down directed structure of hospital radio be disrupted? And how can the re-sounding of patient experience facilitate a beneficial change in the understanding of serious illness?

Helen Anahita Wilson is a pianist, composer, and sound artist currently completing a practice- based PhD at SOAS University of London. Her research examines the creative possibilities of applying Indian rhythmic theory and autopathography to contemporary cross-sensory composition. At an intersection of medical arts and humanities, practice research, and life writing, her work challenges both traditional cancer narratives and classical Indian rhythmic theory through mutually-generative musical processes. Her output closely engages with konnakol, Karnatak music, Tantra, autopathography, and illness narratives.

Self-fulfilling Prophecies: Perversion and Ethics in the Cyberpunk Era

Jasmin Schreiber (Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, DE)

In the late 1990s, the University of Warwick spawned a later denounced group called the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). Convinced that reality can be hacked by creative experiments with fiction and writing, they coined the neologism »hyperstition.« This term describes the phenomenon in which articulated ideas bring about their own reality – how fiction can function as self-fulfilling prophecies.

Speculative narratives of utopian and dystopian fictions imagining the societal, cultural, and moral implications of technological advancements have been around for decades. However, the prolonged worldwide lockdown has irreversibly accelerated our digitization and tech dependence. As we reflect on the ramifications of enforced isolation, it may be useful to uncover the ways in which we can manufacture our realities through narratives propagated in cyberspace. By delving into the concept of »hyperstition,« we can analyse how past, seemingly far-fetched ideas have made themselves manifest. In this discussion, I will present specific examples of cyberpunk fictions that have shaped our contemporary cultural paradigm and hope to harness ideas in which we can hack reality by imagining better futures.

Jasmin Schreiber is a cultural scholar currently based in London. She is a co-founding member of the Berlin-based performance arts collective MSG and Friends. She is interested in the mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophecies and the negotiations of reality.

Entangled Silence: Reimagining the Continuum of Silence in the Age of Lockdown

Shrey Kathuria (University of the Arts, London, UK)

In April 2021, India experienced an insufferable rise in its Covid cases that destabilised the healthcare infrastructure in all major cities resulting in approximately 400,000 fatalities. The situation worsened with each passing day as the country saw a monumental decline in oxygen supply, hospital beds, and crematoriums. With distressing visuals of families struggling in hospitals and cremating their deceased loved ones donned in PPE suits, India’s Covid crisis soon became global news. In this catastrophic mess of 2021, the people of India endured some of the most challenging psychological complexities as they powered through loss, dislocation, uncertainty, and painful self-isolation.

»Entangled Silence« aims to uncover and analyse some of those complexities through the lens of sound studies. Via a series of interviews and discussions that I conducted between August and September 2021, this research elucidates the differing meanings of self-isolation and reifies the notion of»‘loneliness« through the medium of sound, noise, and silence. In this research, I explore the shift in urban soundscapes of cities like New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, etc., and investigate the agency of silence, as a sonic phenomenon, in the age of quarantine. Furthermore, »Sounds of Lamentations« borrows from Don Ihde’s writings on phenomenology and sound as it explores the chaotic relationships between internal (inside the head) and external (around the body) soundscapes.

Shrey Kathuria is a New Delhi-born, London-based audiovisual artist whose body of work investigates speculative landscapes in the human-tech relationship. Through hybrid methods of practice in graphic design and sound art, he aims to create interactive experiences that inform and reimagine the essence and purpose of being in the realm of screens. Kathuria is also a self-taught musician who has released music under the alias of Hitherto. With an ever-developing interest in experimental music, he searches for new methods of sound-based practice to develop a critical body of work. He is pursuing my Masters in Interaction Design at London College of Communication (University of the Arts London).