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Book Reviews by Pulse: the Journal of Science and Culture

Volume 10, 2023

I will admit that, when I first proposed to review this edited volume, I was only attracted to th... more I will admit that, when I first proposed to review this edited volume, I was only attracted to the subtitle: Performance and Plant-Thinking. I had not yet seen the work at the crux of the volume, Manuela Infante's play Estado Vegetal. Shortly into the "Introduction" by Aloi I was hooked. This is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of the volume in question: as a truly interdisciplinary volume, with a somewhat unconventional structure, it has the ability to engage with, intrigue and challenge readers from a broad spectrum of vegetable curiosities. Aloi warns in his "Introduction" that the book is a continuation of thinking with plants rather than thinking about plants. As such, there are contributions of experimental poetry and fiction and an interview, as well as the more traditional scholarly chapters. The play in question appears at the back of the book, highlighting the fact that the many theories and thought experiments of the previous pages are not only applicable to the one performance. Rather, the performance provokes vegetal questions which could have answers in surprising places.

Volume 10, 2023

Martin Clancy's book, Artificial Intelligence and Music Ecosystem, an edited collection of fiftee... more Martin Clancy's book, Artificial Intelligence and Music Ecosystem, an edited collection of fifteen chapters, provides an all-round view of AI and music. Alongside Clancy, invited contributors to the book include composer David Cope, Miller Puckette (inventor of MAX and Pure Data 2), and AI music company founder Mick Kiely. Other chapters include interviews with ecosystem participants including Jacques Attali, Holly Herndon and Steve Cohen. Frustratingly, either deliberately or as an oversight, Clancy does not define the term music ecosystem until nearer the end of the book, when he states that it "encompasses ANT [Actor Network Theory] concepts to embrace human and nonhuman (AI) 'member organisms' located in civic, industrial, or academic domains, which can be considered stakeholders of the global music community. The term is designed to include but is not limited by the commercial boundaries of the worldwide music industry." 3 Therefore, Puckette's software MAX would be included as would Herndon and her various AI voice incarnations. 1 Hussein Boon is a principal lecturer at the University of Westminster and a member of the Black Music Research Unit. His publications include several short fiction stories about AI and popular music, and articles on the use of shift registers for songwriting, and the role of anti-aestheticism in music production education. 2 Both Max and Pure Data are important visual programming tools for computer music that do not require composers to know how to code in languages like C. 3 Clancy, 178. This contrasts with the view that the music ecosystem "essentially consists of two parallel oligopolies: music platforms owned and controlled by technology companies (with Spotify, Apple, Google, and Amazon dominant across much of the world, and Tencent in China) and a recording sector with corporate rights owners." David Hesmondhalgh et al., "Digital Platforms and Infrastructure in the Realm of Culture," In Media and Communication 11, no. 2 (2023): 303.

Volume 10, 2023

The volume Myth and Environmentalism: Arts of Resilience for a Damaged Planet (2024), edited by E... more The volume Myth and Environmentalism: Arts of Resilience for a Damaged Planet (2024), edited by Esther Sánchez-Pardo and Maria Porras Sánchez, is part of the Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies series, which includes collections such as Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises (2023) and UN Human Rights Institutions and the Environment (2023), among others. This particular volume examines how culture and science intertwine with the fields of environmental studies and myth. By navigating how myth, environmentalism, and the arts intersect, the editors propose points of view with which readers can reflect on the need to repair humanity's relationship with the world. The introduction written by Sánchez-Pardo illustrates just how connected the fields of environment and myth can be-constantly expanding as social notions of nature shift throughout space and time, as evidenced by the changing and differing definitions of terms such as "environment," "natural," "narrative," "myth," and "fiction." For instance, she quotes folklore scholar Elliot Oring's view that "narrative" is but another term for "story," while Sánchez-Pardo also explains that the terms "myth" and "fiction" are today often interchanged. 2 At the core of her introduction is a call for environmental education and literacy that recognizes the diversity of environmental perspectives and knowledges across the globe, including those in 1 Alexandra A. Bichara is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman. She received her undergraduate degree in Literature (English) from the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines and her MA in Literature, Landscape and Environment from Bath Spa University in the United Kingdom.

Pulse is currently looking for book reviews of a number of titles - please have a look and send u... more Pulse is currently looking for book reviews of a number of titles - please have a look and send us an email if you are interested.

Pulse, 2022

Mark C. Taylor, renown for his philosophical perspectives on human societies and the world they l... more Mark C. Taylor, renown for his philosophical perspectives on human societies and the world they live in, is a prolific American critic who has published so far more than twenty books, philosophically tackling thorny issues in religion and culture. His

Pulse, 2022

In March 2020, many US cities mandated "shelter in place" orders, or more colloquially, the "lock... more In March 2020, many US cities mandated "shelter in place" orders, or more colloquially, the "lockdown" began. In attempts to quell the surge of COVID-19 infections, restrictions minimized human contact and movement. Daily activity suddenly shifted to a standstill; a sudden reduction of sensorial stimuli led humanity into stark reality. In our previous social standards of saturated inputs and constant motion, being present to our five senses was alarming for much of society. We were 1 Marlo De Lara graduated with a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Leeds and a MA in Psychosocial Studies from the University of Essex. Her research areas include personal/social histories, feminism, and art as resistance, and her creative practice explores the realms of sound performance, visual distraction, and film. De Lara is an active member of the Sonic Cyberfeminisms cohort.

Pulse, 2022

As I am writing these first lines of the book review, I am listening to Arthur Russell's Instrume... more As I am writing these first lines of the book review, I am listening to Arthur Russell's Instrumentals Vol. 1 from 1974. 2 These short tracks are recorded excerpts taken from a larger project that Russell had intended as a 48-hour long performance. The ambitious performance never materialised and yet the slowly wavering variations that we get to hear on the album "First Thought Best Thought" still carry a sense of imagined meandering. The music does not strive for structural development, but rather revolves around simple melodic motives. A refrain weaves through the ten tracks, gathered by the loose and intimated improvisations of percussions, a guitar or 1 Malte Kobel is an independent scholar. He has recently been awarded a PhD in Music at Kingston University London. His dissertation with the title "The musicking voice: performance, affect and listening" develops a theory of the voice as a musicking entity and poses a musico-epistemological problem to philosophies of voice and music. His work has been published in Journal for Cultural Research and Sound Studies. Apart from academic work he teaches, co-runs the record label Hyperdelia, curates radio programmes and is a freelance editor.

Pulse, 2022

Sound is inclusive in all spheres of human existence, serving varied functions in language, music... more Sound is inclusive in all spheres of human existence, serving varied functions in language, music, technology, films, and literature, and has been studied extensively across disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, acoustics, linguistics, media studies and cognitive science, among others. It is mainly with R. Murray Schafer's The Tuning of the World (1977) 2 that literature began to be witnessed as an archive of sound systems and their reception. Studying literature through sound has commonly been done through metaphors. Anna Snaith's edited volume, published in the series Cambridge Critical Concepts, offers a comprehensive and vast understanding of the most recent studies around sound and soundscapes and their application to literature and calls "for more explicit engagements with the symbolic registrations of sonic modernism in textual forms." 3 The collection is interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, with the aim to merge the sonic and the literary. It comprises eighteen chapters divided into three distinct parts-Origins, Development and Application. The collection examines the juxtaposition of the aural and the written, combining the audio (sound) and the visual (writing). The edited volume certainly has 1

Pulse, 2022

This collection of essays aims to investigate how acoustic ecology and soundscape studies can con... more This collection of essays aims to investigate how acoustic ecology and soundscape studies can contribute to current discourses on the climate crisis and Anthropocene living. This is done by reflecting on the legacy of R. Muray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project (WSP), a project formed in the 1960s at Simon Fraser University to research sound in the environment and communities, as well as by providing incisive contemporary research from the fields of sound art, noise abatement practices, media-theory, ethnography and other disciplines. Structured in three sections-the first being a critical reflection on acoustic ecology's foundations, the second discussing sound in community formation and the environment, and the last giving focus to sound in media and society-this book contains contributions mainly from sound researchers, ethnographers, communication and media scholars, and artistic researchers; overwhelmingly at Canadian institutions, but also reflecting an international community. Evident across this book is the influence Schafer and the WSP have had on thinking about sound in the environment-be it rural or urban-and 1 Dr Colin Frank is a percussionist, field recordist, installation artist, improviser, and multimedia composer. His works range from investigating found objects, machine noises, theatrical absurdity to site-specific performance, audience interactivity and DIY electronics. The PhD dissertation he completed at the University of Huddersfield considers how unconventional instruments and objects influence his creative process. In his duo project Brutalust he has released works on Verz, Accidental Records, and Crow Verses Crow, and he has worked notably with the Noisebringers, TAK Ensemble, AndPlay, Gods Entertainment, and the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble. His installations have appeared at Salem Art Works, Dai Hall, and Analix Forever. He teaches improvisation and experimental music.

Pulse, 2021

But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, you deem it incapable of bein... more But if from the comparative dimensions of the whale's proper brain, you deem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea for you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped's spine, you will be struck with the resemblance of its vertebrae to a strung necklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the skull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebrae are absolutely undeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it the Germans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once pointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with the vertebrae of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relieve, the beaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have omitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the cerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man's character will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel your spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine never yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in the firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the world.-Herman Melville At its core, Thomas Moynihan's Spinal Catastrophism is a proposal that

With The Value of Ecocriticism, Timothy Clark could be said to have successfully moved forward to... more With The Value of Ecocriticism, Timothy Clark could be said to have successfully moved forward towards a new conception of ecocriticism, or rather, of postcolonial

Pulse, 2021

Emily Alder's detailed examination of the scientific contexts of British weird fiction around the... more Emily Alder's detailed examination of the scientific contexts of British weird fiction around the fin de siècle is a welcome addition to recent scholarship on the weird. The book analyses works by the British authors H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, Arthur Machen, W. H. Hodgson, E. and H. Heron, Algernon Blackwood, and E. Nesbit, all either rarely subject to critical scrutiny, or often analysed but rarely in the context of the weird. Alder's clear and careful critical discussions add much to our understanding of the resonances of weird fiction in its historical contexts. She is refreshingly forthright in confronting and attempting to describe critically the category of the weird, defined here as "a mode of fiction that does not want to be known" 2-thus presenting problems for the literary-critical project of enhancing knowledge through textual elucidation. She argues (via H. P. Lovecraft's famous definition of weird fiction) that its apprehension is made easier if perceived through the lens of fin de siècle science, a scientific discourse "already weird" in its "emphasis on the limits of human knowing and the questionable stability of 'laws of Nature.'" 3 This brings weird fiction closer to science fiction (but Alder emphasizes that it revels 1 John Sears is a freelance writer and curator. His books include Stephen King's Gothic (2011) and Reading George Szirtes (2008), and he curated Taking Shots: The Photography of William S. Burroughs (2014) and 4 Saints in 3 Acts: A Snapshot of the American Avant-Garde (2018), both at The Photographers' Gallery in London.

Pulse, 2021

The multiple and eclectic argument of Squid Cinema from Hell is made clear in the formal approach... more The multiple and eclectic argument of Squid Cinema from Hell is made clear in the formal approach to this sprawling tentacular body of work. William Brown and David H. Fleming connect a vast assemblage of media archaeology, film analysis, philosophical argument, scientific theory and nature writing, fed through a Lovecraftian literary style which generates a work remarkable in its scope. The book contains eight chapters-the number eight observed running through a number of the 1 Joseph Jenner was awarded a PhD in Film Studies from King's College London in 2020. His research looks at the interconnection of science-fiction, posthumanism and theories of spectatorship. Recent publications include "Gendering the Anthropocene: Female Astronauts, Failed Motherhood and the Overview Effect" for the journal of Science Fiction Film and Television (2019), and "Towards a Chthonic Spectatorship: Becoming-With the Aquatic in Evolution" for the journal of Film-Philosophy (2020). He currently works as Course Leader on the BA (Hons) Programme at London Film Academy.

Pulse, 2021

The American Weird is an innovative and varied anthology of scholarly work on the topic of the we... more The American Weird is an innovative and varied anthology of scholarly work on the topic of the weird in contemporary American culture. As the editors explain in their introduction, the principle aim of the collection is to expand our critical vocabulary by re-evaluating the concept of the weird and granting it a new prominence in our approaches to American culture. 2 The book consists of seventeen essays divided into two sections. "Part One: Concept" is concerned with theorising the weird as an aesthetic concept, while "Part Two: Medium" focuses on "medial manifestations of the weird in word, image, and sound," 3 encompassing literature, cinema, visual art, and popular music. The weird, the editors claim, has remained "a haunting presence in American 1 Dr Sean Seeger is Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Essex. His research focuses on modernism, speculative fiction, utopian studies, and queer studies. Since 2019, he has been collaborating with the sociologist Daniel Davison-Vecchione (University of Cambridge) on a series of journal articles on the relationship between speculative fiction and social theory. He is also working on a monograph on a related topic and has recently started writing a science fiction novel. 2 Julius Greve and Florian Zappe, "Introduction: Conceptualizations, Mediations, and Remediations of the American Weird," in The American Weird: Concept and Medium, ed.

Pulse, 2020

This collection of thirteen chapters takes as its starting point H. P. Lovecraft's essay of 1927,... more This collection of thirteen chapters takes as its starting point H. P. Lovecraft's essay of 1927, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (SHL), in which the author most axiomatically sets out his paradigms of "cosmic horror" and "weird fiction," models with a vast (if selective) historical antecedence and a tentacular reach into the present of the horror genre, and its likely future. Divided into three sections, the volume focuses primarily on Lovecraft's own reading practices and his ungainsayable, yet controversial, influence on contemporary understandings of the weird. As John Glover puts it in his contribution to the collection, SHL "encapsulates the views that Lovecraft held which dictated the terms of weird fiction's reception for more than half a century." 2 As anyone even cursorily acquainted with Lovecraft's work will know, a great many of said views amount to a complex of hatreds whose breadth is remarkable, comprising just about every imaginable kind of racism as well as homophobia and misogyny, and whose putative 1 Niall Gildea is a researcher based in the UK. He is the author of Jacques Derrida's Cambridge Affair: Deconstruction, Philosophy and Institutionality, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. 2 John Glover, "Reception Claims in Supernatural Horror in Literature and the Course of Weird Fiction," in Sean Moreland, ed.

Pulse, 2020

The irruption of the 'Big Data' has, from every point of view, revolutionized the coordinates by ... more The irruption of the 'Big Data' has, from every point of view, revolutionized the coordinates by which reality is usually observed, as relations between subjects, and as a system of values and beliefs with which to interpret them. Following Bernard Stiegler, the externalization and sedimentation of memory on external devices constitutes the phenomenon that the French philosopher called "tertiary retention," a process of machinic "grammatization" of desire, which manifests a profound ambivalence. 2 That is, the hybridization between bodies and artificial intelligence stimulates the creation of new forms of materialistic epistemology situated between affects and cognition, in the interzone between the human and the non-human. Blackman's volume questions, in the wake of such ambivalence, the relationship between the data production circuit and scientific discourses. The author bases her argumentation on three analytical trajectories, capable of grasping the complex interactions between space and atomic declination of time, effectively shifting the perceptual horizons of classically founded subjectivity: affect, transmediality, and 'the weird' as applied to science. First, she redefines the materiality of bodies within the global networks of digital capitalism, highlighting how data is fully intersected by the affectivity of subjects that produce them, and how this same affectivity is fundamental to the systemic valorisation of networks. Secondly, the concept of transmediality links 1 Vincenzo Maria Di Mino graduated in Political Sciences, and is an independent researcher in political and social theory. 2 Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time 1. The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998.

Pulse, 2020

In the essay "Hybrid Ecology-To See the Forest for the Trees" Laura Beloff writes that hybrid eco... more In the essay "Hybrid Ecology-To See the Forest for the Trees" Laura Beloff writes that hybrid ecology is a growing concept within bioarts that braids together aesthetic investigations and processes with environmental or biological questions. This concept is central to the ideas explored in Art as We Don't Know It (2020) but could also be read as the organizing system of the book-a network of knowledges built between the interconnected thinkers found within its pages. A mix of hard science, philosophical inquiries into human relationship to nature, and artistic experiments with the biological and chemical world, this volume merges silos of knowledge that have traditionally been separated. The book was published to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Bioart Society, an association that supports international artist residencies, programs, and exhibitions that bring together art and science in Finland. It is broken up into four thematic sections: Life as we Don't Know It, Convergences; Learning/Unlearning; and Redraw and Refigure. Within each section, essays, interviews, and art project descriptions mingle together, informing each other as well as pointing to the ideas that slide outward towards other fields. For example, the first section places an essay by scientists Markus Schmidt and Nediljko Budisa on the contemporary xenobiology field alongside an essay by artist Adriana Knouf. Knouf argues that hormone treatments are a vital practice for hybridizing humanity-making gender binaries (the male/female categories 1 Tori Bush is a writer, teacher, and PhD Candidate at Louisiana State University. She is the co-editor of the anthology, The Gulf South: An Anthology of Environmental Writing 1900-today, forthcoming from University of Florida Press in February 2021.

Pulse, 2020

Weird fiction as both a term and genre brings with it a fair amount of baggage, much of it Americ... more Weird fiction as both a term and genre brings with it a fair amount of baggage, much of it American. It immediately evokes a certain creepy yet popular aesthetic from 1920s and 1930s America, where authors such as Clarke Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, and, of course, H. P. Lovecraft, not only loom large 2 but were often admirers of and even collaborators with one another. 3 This is, of course, a flawed assumption. All manner of authors dabbled in the genre, beyond these usual suspects and outsiders. For example, Tennessee Williams cut his teeth on the lurid short story, "The Vengeance of Nictoris," first published in a 1928 issue of Weird Tales, the pulp magazine often seen as one of the key publications of the sub-genre. Moreover, as this new book by James Machin demonstrates, weird fiction was neither exclusively American, nor even a particularly American movement. Indeed, it is easy to 'recognise' what Weird is, but like its latter-day cousin, 'hauntology,' it is harder to properly and formally define it the more one tries to. 4 Both, after all, concern themselves with 'reality,' and how tenuous it is the closer we study it, hinting at far darker possibilities as a result. Weird fiction is, rather, something felt, rather than understood. One knows 1 Alexander Hay is currently holding the post of Research Fellow at the University of Southampton. 2

Pulse: the Journal of Science and Culture, 2019

Science: the Journal of Science and Culture, 2019

Volume 10, 2023

Pulse, 2022

Pulse, 2021

Pulse, 2020

Pulse: the Journal of Science and Culture, 2019

Science: the Journal of Science and Culture, 2019

Volume 10, 2023

Animals are telephones, Derrida muses, and sometimes the other way around. This comment, while ab... more Animals are telephones, Derrida muses, and sometimes the other way around. This comment, while abstract, speaks to a history of animal life that has haunted the telephone since its inception, with questions of life and nonlife hovering in the balance. Whether it is the use of pigs' bladders for the first Chinese telephones, the moth-eaten fur of Thomas Watson's stuffed family cat, or the frogs' legs that Luigi Galvani exposed to electricity, the telephone has consistently mediated the divide between the categories of who and what-'who' referring to those considered to be above the law or protected by it, and 'what' to those who remain outside the law and by extension, the grasp of justice. Instead of avoiding this history of animal suffering, Derrida picks up the telephone to call upon the "question of the animal" as a conversation that can wait no longer. If, as Derrida tells us, animals are telephones and vice versa, then they demand the same attentive urgency given to the insistent clamour of an incoming call, where the consistent lack of certainty regarding who or what is on the other end always prevails. This article is about how the means, medium and materiality of the telephone is indebted to animals, how telecommunication has mediated a tenuous 'conference call' between technoscience, spectrality and animal vulnerability since its introduction, and how listening-as-reading becomes a way of touching upon those who normally remain unheard in times of crisis.

Volume 10, 2023

Resorting to "benevolent" anthropomorphism, David Attenborough's Our Planet (2019) uses voiceover... more Resorting to "benevolent" anthropomorphism, David Attenborough's Our Planet (2019) uses voiceover narration to construct a comprehensive understanding of the vulnerability of wildlife, with the intention of inspiring empathy towards the nonhuman beings pictured on-screen. As Alexa Weik von Mossner notes, "the commercialism and sentimentalism of popular films does not necessarily stop them from being effective ecofilms; their affective appeal may in fact give rise to both enjoyment and reflection." 2 Though the comfortable immersion offered by conventional wildlife television certainly has its merits, the alluring spectacle it presents, and its strategies of inquisitive inquiry and knowledge production often violently cross a boundary between human and nonhuman experiences. Dedicated to bridging that gap more cautiously, Victor Kossakovsky's Gunda (2020) attempts to resist anthropocentric and anthropomorphic tendencies by refusing to provide viewers with the storied lives of animals and doing away with a coherent narrative frame. An intriguing example of slow animal-cinema, Gunda may facilitate an embodied empathic engagement, and exhibits some potential at inviting more haptic modes of relating to the mediated representation of nonhuman beings. Presenting a comparative analysis of these case studies, this article looks at the filmic techniques employed by "Jungles" (a selected episode of Our Planet) and Gunda in promoting empathic engagement, and explores how the fluctuation of (anti-)anthropomorphic and (anti-)anthropocentric tendencies relates to the potential evocation of empathic responses in the audience.

Volume 10, 2023

Anthropologists and scholars of science and technology have discussed the accuracy of describing ... more Anthropologists and scholars of science and technology have discussed the accuracy of describing "Western" societies as being underpinned by an ontology of unitary nature in contrast with the multinaturalism of "non-Western" ones. They have postulated instead that multiple realities are enacted by practices and made to hang together through various forms of coordination. In this paper I analyze how coherence is achieved in a natural protected area in coastal Peru and discuss its particularities vis-à-vis other proposed types of multiplicity. By observing a group of fieldworkers engaged in practices of direct observation, I focus on the use of the caseta, a perceptive device designed to approach birds without disturbance. Reflecting on this specific context in which this method is used, I argue that a refractive multiplicity emerges due to the interaction of institutionally differentiated perspectives that get entangled within the caseta.

Volume 10, 2023

This interdisciplinary research investigates the potentials of animal enrichment as it pertains t... more This interdisciplinary research investigates the potentials of animal enrichment as it pertains to the conceptualisation of more-than-human aesthetics. This occurs by analysing the creation of a series of digitally interactive sculptures called the Quantum Enrichment Entanglers (2021-2022), designed with and for flying foxes in rehabilitation care. In doing so, I argue for a multispecies future for arts practices in which the human perceiver is decentred, and the needs, wants, and practices of other species are considered within the interactive arts. While we cannot yet know the phenomenal experiences of other species, I contend that through knowledges from the fields of animal enrichment design, we are better able to create cultural artefacts and artistic outcomes that cultivate joy or interest beyond our own species. This research is situated within a practice-based research approach, informed by animal enrichment design. I develop processes of approaching animal participants with interactive stimuli in order to reflect on engagements between animals and artefacts. This develops its own aesthetic register based on what I call sensory affordances.

Volume 10 of Pulse, 2023

This article examines the application of ecological metaphors to socio-technical systems. This is... more This article examines the application of ecological metaphors to socio-technical systems. This is a long and contested tradition that has often been critiqued for misapplying biological principles to the understanding of socio-technical systems. The practice of linking ecology with technology, however, is not inherently problematic. In this article, I seek to demonstrate how modern ecosystems are predicated upon dualistic ideologies that allow for the subsumption of nature into techno-capitalist value extraction. When applied to AI systems as such, the ecosystem metaphor obscures the material, spatial, and interrelational roots of AI. Ecology, however, is conceived differently in Indigenous island traditions, especially across the Pacific. Here, the world is seen as a continual emergence out of rich, diverse, and complex multispecies interactions. We may thus begin to see the parallels between islands and AI as world-1 Rhea Jiang is a graduate of the Master in Design Studies program at Harvard Graduate School of Design. making projects. This article then explores how new formulations of AI-informed by Indigenous island ontologies-can be more inclusive of not just human creators and users but also the minerals, plants, and animals that directly or indirectly impact AI's formation. This expansive understanding compels us to confront the extractive relations that underline AI today, but also to imagine a different model in which AI systems exist not as a monolith but as multiple heterogenous forms. This vision of AI is therefore one of biotechnical diversity, which can be nurtured and restored to introduce new forms at smaller scales, thereby addressing a fuller spectrum of moral and environmental questions.

Volume 10 of Pulse, 2023

This paper undertakes a critical analysis of Michel Faber's novel, Under the Skin (2000), with th... more This paper undertakes a critical analysis of Michel Faber's novel, Under the Skin (2000), with the aim to explore ethical relations between different species. The primary objective of this analysis is to delve into the concepts of speciesism, subjectivity, and Deleuze and Guattari's 'becoming-other' in order to investigate their potential in the realm of science fiction literature that mirrors practices of more-than-human animal exploitation and questions their ethics. The novel Under the Skin presents the viewpoint of Isserley, a female alien sent to Earth with the mission to capture human male hitchhikers, destined to become a meat delicacy on her home planet. Isserley, who has speciesist modes of thinking towards humans and, therefore, does not acknowledge their subjectivity, is resilient to becoming-other. This article seeks to criticize speciesism and anthropocentric subjectivity through the lens of critical animal studies, using Faber's novel to explore themes such as speciesist behaviour and modes of thinking, carnism, self-centered anthropomorphism as a form of anthropocentric projection, and the possibility of ethical relations between different species. The paper also explores hierarchical systems of oppression, emphasizing the necessity to extend ethical affinities to more-than-human animals. By making use of Deleuze and Guattari's concept of becoming-other, the research advocates for reconceptualizing boundaries between humans and more-thanhuman animals, challenging exploitative practices. The study contributes to the field of critical animal studies and science fiction literature by pursuing vegan literary analysis and fostering a reconsideration of exploitative practices towards more-than-human animals.

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Pulse, 2022

Following a research project working with the concept of mountains in the age of the Anthropocene... more Following a research project working with the concept of mountains in the age of the Anthropocene, this article takes on an experimental exercise in sonic thinking applied in the phenomenology of space. Instead of providing a reader with a concrete set of answers or methods, it presents processoriented insight into an emergence of a possible perspective on spatial research represented by the persona of liminaut. The liminaut strives to narrow down the epistemological gap between the subject and the studied space by thinking through media, and approaching space not as a disjointed object of inquiry but as an organic plane, which 1 Tomáš Roztočil is a PhD student, university lecturer at Palacký University, Olomouc, and avid interdisciplinary scholar rooted in theory of literature and space. He has always been fascinated with the profound impact of "the speculative" and "the fictional" upon what we call "the real" in a range of different narrative media and modes from academic writing via literature to intermedial narratives. Among other topics, Tomáš has been recently invested in the exploration of the concepts of liminality and ritual in everyday life in the age of the Anthropocene.

Pulse, 2022

Starting from an elaboration on John Cage's ominous sentence and on the stigmatization of humor i... more Starting from an elaboration on John Cage's ominous sentence and on the stigmatization of humor in intellectual discourses, this article tries to understand the history of farts being considered funny in Western culture, with an emphasis on the role played by the sound of flatulence in this comical aspect. After all, if there isn't something inherently funny about the sound of farts, a complex association between senses and social relations has nevertheless made fart-like sounds at best silly and at worst abominable to our ears. What does this mean for the imagination of fart-like sound effects, such as some of those produced by pedals and modular synthesizers? Isn't the moralization of intestinal fermentation a constraint to the ways the human body can be used as a musical instrument? And how could an ANT approach enhance our knowledge of how farts "resound" socially?

Pulse, 2022

By addressing the sound recording technology's capabilities in catching its objects, this article... more By addressing the sound recording technology's capabilities in catching its objects, this article presents a materialist theoretical ground, connecting François Laruelle's understanding of immanence in his non-philosophy to Friedrich Kittler's technomaterialism that employs three fundamental recording technologies. As Kittler inquires in his book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter in depth, the phonograph is the only recording technology that is able to catch its object as it is, without transferring it into any semiotic system that is essentially different from it. It is the sound recording technology's ability that distinguishes it from the other two recording technologies and the very reason to design a materialist approach to sonic thinking. Ultimately, the theoretical inquiries given by a non-philosopher and a media theorist will give us a new base for sonic thinking and pave the way for various possibilities to approach the reality of sounds and their relationship with technology. The article suggests that nonphilosophy finds its very performance in the practice of the phonograph.

Pulse, 2022

This article contributes a media ecological approach towards relevant topics within Science and T... more This article contributes a media ecological approach towards relevant topics within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Critical AI studies concerning cybernetics, the boundaries of consciousness, neural plasticity, and sensorial awareness, by way of discussing soundscapes produced in the ambient music genre. I will discuss the ways in which the ambient music framework provides potentialities of psychologically entering multimedia realms, (non)physical realms, and realms of altered states of consciousness, which creates creatives spaces of/for increased possibilities of/for the mind(s). I will examine the producer, visual (light) artist, and musician Brian Eno. I will argue that Eno's artistic philosophy and approach to the ambient music genre consists of a generative cybernetic scaffolding, within which he builds his ambient worlds and soundscapes, providing expanded non-physical spatialities that often explore possibilities of sensorial affect and perceptions 1 Megan Phipps is a Lecturer in New Media & Digital Culture and Research Assistant in Media Studies, Blending Learning, and Audiovisual Archives for CLARIAH Media Suite and CREATE (Creative Amsterdam: An E-Humanities Perspective) at the University of Amsterdam. of the self, increase potentialities for individual neural plasticity, and heighten cybernetic ecoconsciousness. I will thus explore the ways in which Eno's ambient audiovisual media, abstract aural architectures or soundscapes, and meditations on cybernetic environmentalism allow for non-narrative psychological emancipation from the formalism imposed on the 'self' in everyday lifestyle and technoculture. Consequently, Eno's ambient, subconscious awareness confronts viewers with contemporary and future usages and values linked to a) expanded edges and/or boundaries of synaesthesia; b) neural plasticity and notions of 'self;' and c) cybernetic questions concerning the human-machine relationship to collectivity, shared environments, and eco-consciousness.

Pulse, 2022

By drawing on the difference between the avant-garde and the alternative forms of art, this paper... more By drawing on the difference between the avant-garde and the alternative forms of art, this paper deals with the beginnings of performance art in the realm of the alternative music community in Croatia. One of the first meeting points of performance art and music in Croatian avant-garde art can be found within the punk subculture, which rejects the traditional notion of 'melody' while favoring noise as the predominant and desired type of sound. In addition, the fact that punk puts little emphasis on musical virtuosity and highlights 1 Ljubica Anđelković Džambić holds a PhD from Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. Her research focuses on the performing arts and alternative culture. She works as a high school teacher of philosophy and a lecturer of theater studies at the Faculty of Textile Technology in Zagreb, Croatia. This article was originally written in Croatian, and translated into English by Pulse. amateurism as a legitimate artistic stance makes some artists prone to theatricality and performativity, either in the form of performative gests or performative acts. The article illustrates these issues by focusing on the Croatian alternative punk scene and the New Wave music of the late 1970s and first half of the 1980s.

Pulse, 2022

This historical review of the intonarumori noise music machines of Futurist painter/composer Luig... more This historical review of the intonarumori noise music machines of Futurist painter/composer Luigi Russolo, along with a chronicle of known recordings of the intonarumori, contextualizes the Czech ensemble Opening Performance Orchestra's recording: The Noise Of Art: Works for Intonarumori.

Pulse, 2022

This essay addresses the sounds of Brazilian mining, focusing on the State of Minas Gerais, where... more This essay addresses the sounds of Brazilian mining, focusing on the State of Minas Gerais, where two recent catastrophes occurred as a result of the collapse of mining tailings dams: Mariana and Brumadinho. The purpose of this article is to develop a sound cartography that articulates different dimensions of the exploratory processes of extractivism, an economic model that has become central in Brazil since colonial times, and which establishes a relationship with the Earth as an inexhaustible supplier of natural resources. Mining structures complex relationships that range from endless perforations of the Earth and the opening of monstrous craters that ravage entire ecosystems to capital flows that enrich the stock market, but keep the 1 Frederico Pessoa has obtained his PhD in Arts from the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is a sound artist and a member of "ESCUTAS: Grupo de Pesquisa e Estudos em Sonoridades, Comunicação, Textualidades e Sociabilidade" (research group on sonorities, communication, textualities and sociability) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, where he also works as sound engineer. population's basic needs unmet. The path followed in this text crosses multiple aspects that make up the sounds of mining and that are symbols of the predatory action that humans have continually exerted on their surroundings. The human species has forgotten that it is ontologically a constitutive part of the environment and that its actions result in ever-increasing changes in the fine fabric that connects beings and forms the biosphere. Mining is one of these actions and a symbol of a way of life that has led us to the critical moment we are in.

Pulse, 2022

The concept of the Anthropocene, based on the premise that mankind has become a major geological ... more The concept of the Anthropocene, based on the premise that mankind has become a major geological force in its own right, has grown into a central theme with issues such as ecological crisis, climate change, or sustainable futures. On the other hand, posthumanist and new materialist approaches have developed philosophical insights that call into question the dominant position of humans in the universe and the anthropomorphic premises associated with it, particularly focusing on the unfolding of symbiotic modes that traverse the entire nature-culture continuum. This article, rather than directly engaging with Anthropocene debates, aims to explore how different modes of human-microbe interaction crystallize in different sound compositions through the conceptualization of "microbesounds." The notion of rhythm is central here, encompassing both the vital processes and the 1 Emre Sünter received his PhD from the Department of Communication at the University of Montreal last year for his work on "microbe-artworks." His research interests include aesthetic theory, ethics, ecology, and philosophy of science and technology. I would like to thank the reviewers for their valuable contributions to this article and the editorial team of the Pulse journal for their constructive attitude. emergence of technical forms. Three different case studies-the work of Interspecifics, Anne Niemetz and Andrew Pelling's the dark side of the cell, and Victoria Shennan's Anthropocenewill be examined, and the ways in which they mobilize different technical means to plunge into a microbial level and activate its various electrical, chemical, physical, and/or vital properties in a particular sound composition. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's analysis of rhythm in A Thousand Plateaus (1987), and Gilbert Simondon's concept of transduction in his theory of individuation (2005), will be mobilized in order to examine how disparate elements of different rhythms operate in solidarity to produce a microbe-sound composition.

Pulse, 2022

This paper discusses how the natural soundscape of Max Frisch's novella Man in the Holocene (1979... more This paper discusses how the natural soundscape of Max Frisch's novella Man in the Holocene (1979) affords a contemplation on the inadequacy of human epistemology against the immense temporality of the geological deep time. The sound of rain, wind, and thunderclaps in Frisch's narrative evokes a vaster temporal scale and constantly challenges its protagonist Herr Geiser's faith in science and objective knowledge. Following Émilie Hache and Bruno Latour's advocacy of "resensitization," and Derek Woods's call for attention to scale variance and boundaries of our scalar epistemic framework, this article argues that the interrelation of sound, weather and our senses in Man in the Holocene sheds 1 Dong Xia is a PhD student in the School of English at the University of St Andrews. She has published about the diachronic transformation of the ideas of body and subjectivity in email novels. Her current research concerns the cross-pollination of literature and technology in contemporary novels via the idea of chance. Her research interest is on how literature registers, reconfigures and is reconfigured by the involvement of nonhuman forces, technological or natural, in our daily discourses and experience. Acknowledgments: I would like to thank James Purdon, Susanne C. Knittel and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable suggestions. light on the limits of an anthropocentric framework of understanding, the discontinuities between different scales, and how we can reposition ourselves across and inhabit multiple epistemological scales without losing sight of their discontinuities. Weather is a profoundly intermingled sensory experience and carries temporally and geologically vast, non-human agency. By focusing on meteorological phenomena and atmospheric sound, this paper aims to contribute to the scarce literature on sound in ecocriticism and on natural soundscapes in the studies of acoustic ecology.

Pulse, 2022

This paper focuses on game calls, also known as appeaux in French or Wildlocker in German, instru... more This paper focuses on game calls, also known as appeaux in French or Wildlocker in German, instruments located at the intersection of interspecies communication and aesthetic creation. A reciprocal barking encounter with a roe deer in the Black Forest in Germany serves as a starting point to explore alternate semiotic registers that involve similarity and mimicry, beyond the exclusive symbolic structures of human language. This article highlights several non-symbolic properties that emerge through sound mimicry with game 1 Diane Barbé is an independent researcher, musician and curator based in Berlin, Germany. In her artistic practice, Diane listens, records, fabricates and manipulates field recordings as well as synthetic sounds, curiously touching the borders between certitude and the invisible, between human knowledge and non-human knowing. Her debut album of "cinema without images," a conference of critters, was released on the Berlin phonography label forms of minutiae in October 2022. Diane worked as a research associate focusing on urban heritage at the Habitat Unit-Chair for International Urbanism and Design at the Technische Universität Berlin from 2015 to 2019, and graduated with the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts master's degree from the Universität der Künste Berlin in 2022. Contact: www.dianebarbe.com calls: a kind of playfulness of magic, a deep emotional implication, a familiarity and embeddedness in the particular Umwelt of the individuals, and the impossibility of translation into (human) symbolic language. The article suggests that new tools for investigation need to be developed to be able to learn about these issues, as called for by recent posthuman literature on multispecies relations. KEY WORDS: game calls, interspecies communication, mimicry, Black Forest usually called bird whistles or game calls in English, appeaux ("caller") in French, and Wildlocker or Lockjagd in German. Game calls are most often wind instruments that use fipples or reeds to resonate hollow cavities, but they also include rattles, twisted pegs, membranes, and other ways to produce and amplify sound. Interestingly, in English, there is no dedicated name to designate the instruments; a call usually refers to the cry itself, the summons or invitation, derived from the same verb that comes from the old English cognate ceallian, for 'to shout, or utter in a loud voice' (Online Etymology Dictionary). In French, appeau is a term used specifically for whistles made to 'counterfeit the voice of birds to lure them into a trap' (Dictionnaire Le Littré), while the related appelant refers to using live captive animals to call prey. In German, Wildlocker and Lockjagd are used interchangeably, with Jagd being the substantive 2

Pulse, 2022

Performative methodology of the House of Extreme Music Theater led by Croatian, Zagreb-based perf... more Performative methodology of the House of Extreme Music Theater led by Croatian, Zagreb-based performing artists Damir Bartol Indoš and Tanja Vrvilo is largely based on the creation, recycling and abundant use of sound objects, deconstruction of voice and text, and collaborations with alternative rock and noise musicians and multimedia artists. But precisely because of its apparently chaotic, noisy manifestation, it is easy to miss the structure and concept that is undoubtedly in the background of every performance. If we take into account the predominance of music and noise in such an open model in terms of genre, it would be appropriate to try to define theoretical and methodological guidelines for its description, which this article will try to do. Observing the work of House of Extreme Music Theater, the following questions arise: How does its "noisy" poetics affect the definition of genre and analytical approaches to it, and, 1 Anamarija Žugić Borić is a PhD student at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, where, in addition to studying digitization of performing arts and digital humanities in general, she explores music in theater and performing arts at the intersection of semiotic and musicological approaches. conversely, how does the chosen genre framework affect the status of noise that is produced in the performances of this "theater"? In this sense, the article will refer to the previous theoretical reflections on the House of Extreme Music Theater genre coordinates while trying to expand them with the concepts of independent auditory semiotics and musicalization, closely related to the notion of postdramatic theater as proposed by Hans-Thies Lehmann. Finally, the analysis of the music theater performance Schachtophonia Accenni for Kamov will try to show how the broad and permeable postdramatic determinant shapes the interpretation of noise in theater or noise as theater.

Issue 5 (2017/18) of the journal 'Pulse'