Author: Aalya Sharaf

To start, what I found extremely intriguing in this article, was the title of the piece, particularly the concept of “Listening as Activism”. When reading it, I found that it slightly confused me, which is what captivated me. To me, when I think of activism, the first thing that comes to mind is a voice: being heard. While I am aware that it is not the only form of activism, it is the first thought I get. I have heard of silent protests, written protest, verbal protest, but I never thought of listening as something that constitutes activism. When you think about it, it is something that goes hand in hand with having a voice and taking a stand, but it was not a connection I made until I read this article.

Once I read the article, the details of how listening is activism, became clear to me. I was introduced to Olivero’s “Sonic Meditations” and the power that sounds have. One quote that particularly stand out is:

“Her eccentric sound exercises—what she once called “recipes” for listening”

That stuck with me for some reason. It goes back to the topic of listening, and by using “recipes”, it refers to a way in which it can be recreated. Listening is one thing I would never correlate with a recipe, yet Olivero has managed to create a recipe for activism through listening, at a time of huge political turmoil. Olivero also says:

“Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”

There is something about this that just seems so powerful to me. Your feet, probably the furthest things in your body away from your ears, can also be channeled into a listening device.
How your bodies then become a vessel of listening, not just to outside noise, but to internalize those listening skills. Similar to how Elaine Summers, taught students to become sensitive to signals in their bodies. To truly understand what it is that is happening around you by listening and to familiarize yourself with what would have gone unnoticed before.

It was also beautiful to see how this particular form of activism was used to support women, at a time where they did not get a voice. Since they had been “held down” for so long, musically and in other ways as well, Olivero’s group and method was just one way in which they could take back what they could express and channel into something powerful. There is something truly moving about that…

This week’s read was definitely an interesting one because it brought to light very relevant and important questions regarding the intersectionality in between the various forms of art. I never quite realized how tightly these different art forms are interwoven, and how they greatly affect one another, whether we consciously realize it or not. One particular case that stood out to me is that of synesthesia. From my understanding, synesthesia is one you are able to experience one sense through another. It resonated with me because it reminded me of an article I recently read talking about an artist who has visual responses to music, and who has turned this ability into a performance. Similar to how we live code, but she reacts to music with physical handmade drawings, which is something that I found to be quite interesting.

To me, this clarified just how powerful the relation between such art forms is in the sense that music can inspire art, and vice versa (and this also extends to other forms of art as well: film, fashion, etc…). You have the ability to use another art-form as a source of inspiration, allowing for double the amount of talent to shine through. This is something that is also extremely relevant to our class as we are merging these two art forms (music and visuals), and constantly working to figure out what images would fit what sounds. That in itself is an interesting topic because objectively, these are two separate entities, so how is it that one has the ability to inspire the other? This just goes to show that sometimes, the way that our brains are wired, allows us to make these interpretations, and differentiate what visuals fit with what sounds, and what exactly is “appropriate”, when in reality there is no correct answer. I never made these connections, and this reading allowed me to do so!

Here is a link to the article I mentioned above if you would like to read some more!

For my research project, I decided to go with Gibber. Gibber is a live coding environment for audiovisual performance. It is a program based in Javascript that works by dynamically injecting realtime annotations and visualizations into a programming environment for a live coding performance.

There are a few things that stood out to me regarding Gibber. First, is the fact that it is in JavaScript. It made understanding the syntax of the code way easier. I may not have been particularly familiar with the actual application, but because I understood what the syntax of JavaScript, I was able to piece things together and make sense of the bigger picture. The documentation was also quite extensive, which is something that really helped me in understanding the core concepts of this program. The second things that particularly stood out to me, was the interface used to execute the code. You can see this through the link attached below but I really enjoyed how there were different elements on the screen being highlighted, to indicate which part of the code was being currently executed. It is a small addition, but I really feel like it ties everything in together, especially from a users perspective. Finally, it is quite versatile in the sense that it allows for the incorporation of external audiovisual libraries such as: p5.js, tidal, Hydra, and more.

Overall, I find Gibber to be an extremely useful tool that is quite developed. I really enjoyed playing around with the different settings and it was a fun experience.

Gibber Playground – Try and experiment for yourself!

“Put simply, information theory is a mathematical theory of how to optimize a signal for communication in a noisy channel and of how communication degrades in such a medium.”

The starting line of this article immediately caught my attention. There is something about the way the definition was so precise, and the way that the author portrayed it so confidently. As a reader, it draws me in and intrigues me, making me want to explore what exactly they mean by the phrase above. As I continued reading, I quite enjoyed the way that the author slowly built up to their point, the same way a musician would slowly build up to the final composition of their song. Instead of directly introducing their point, the broke it down into smaller pieces, which when put together, mended together to form the whole point. It felt familiar in a way, and it is something I quite enjoyed.

Another thing that stood out to me was when the author asks the question “Is it musical?”. Although mentioned in different context, it is a phrase that was mentioned quite a few times in the text. It felt as though they are echoing their thoughts and ideas. As a reader I felt included in the process. Not only that, but I felt validated, in the sense that I felt like I was not the only person who has these questions in their head. When it comes to composition, you are relying on your own sound. What makes this so difficult and intimidating is that every person has a sound that is unique to them. That is why when it comes to sharing your work, you become intimidated by the fact that your work may not resonate with people, because it may not meet a certain standard. We even saw this in during our latest live coding performance in class. Although the content that we learn is the same, the way that each person approached their project was completely different. To link it back to the main point, by saying “is it musical?”, the author is in a way confiding in the readers, showing that while each person has a different process, there is comfort in knowing that there is somewhat of a shared and common struggle when it comes to the composition of a piece. I am not quite sure how relevant it is to the reading, but it is a correlation that immediately came to mind, one that I wanted to share. That is why when the author also casually and consistently mentions this question, and outwardly expresses their thought process, I feel even more connected to the work.

I believe that in order to be a live coder, a certain sense of experimentation and creativity needs to be involved, and I found that this reading brought up a lot of points that reinforced this concept. One topic in particular has to do with ownership, and it made me reflect back on some discussions that we had in class. The uniqueness of live coding, and something that had originally drawn me to the course, is the ability to see the coders making real changes in real time. Prior to this class, I had not realized the importance of such a display. By putting the coder’s work at the forefront of both the visual and auditory elements, we are bringing up a very important topic of ownership and inclusion.

“Live coding allows a change in code to be heard or seen immediately in the output, with no forced break between action and reception.”

There is something so powerful about the concept above. We are bringing in the audience into an experience that would otherwise be a private one. The process of creating something, whether a game or a website, is something that is not one that involves others in every step. With live coding, the audience is able to go on that journey with the creator. Even though it is a performance, there still is a sense of inclusion. It is such a unique experience, and reading this paper only helped me further understand that.