Time-stretch as Unsound: operating with unknowability

Cássio Figueiredo
(00:00:26)

What are the benefits of approaching the seemingly imperceptible dimension of sound? The
term Unsound is extensively developed and explored in the recent book Unsound : Undead
by the AUDINT group in order to account for the manifestations of sound that transcend the
boundaries of what we usually construe as sound. Sound becomes independent of audibility,
as well as of the human as the universal measure. But even within our audible frequency
range we sometimes only later identify previously imperceptible elements which might be
said to partake in the domain of ​unsound as a concept. The differentiated character of sounds,
or vibrations, institutes them as a behavioural trigger at the most basic level, promoting
changes and transformations in the whole environment in which they are propagated.

(00:01:54)

From high-frequency crowd control systems, whispering windows, and directional

ultrasound technology to haptic feedback devices using vibration within immersive
VR, the parameters of the sonic are constantly reengineered. We refer to such
augmentations, which extend audition to encompass the imperceptible and the
not-yet or no-longer audible, as unsound. The term refers not only to what humans
cannot hear, but also to non-cognitive, inhuman phenomena connected to the
unknown, including the hum, hyperrhythmia, and auditory hallucinations.
(AUDINT. Unsound: Undead, p. 12)

(00:02:51)

An incautious description of the relation between unsound and what is usually called the
Outside (perhaps in this case outside human experience) might produce idle discussions. As
much as these kinds of phenomena are in all respects indifferent to human experience, we
should investigate in what ways human experience can ​use them: not as objects to be
translated or transduced for perception or contemplation, but as tools for devising strategies
to amplify perception and agency. In other words, we should pursue the transcendental
significance of Unsound despite but also in accordance to its independence of the human. The
unknown dimension in which these inhuman phenomena take place can be rendered as an
unexplored gray area whose boundaries are constantly shifting. Can we say that a current
state of theories of cognition set the vague limit to what can be called cognitive and what
cannot? Where can we find another determinant criterion?

(00:04:25)

What is intended is a mobilization of the unsound ​as an operator of unknowability articulated

in several practices and situations. Sonic vibrations are just a vehicle for unsound: it is
through vibrations that these forms of unknowability are instantiated in the world under the
point of view of the materiality of perception and action.

(00:05:06)

For example when a sound sample is stretched, for example, from 2 minutes to 2 hours,
usually we are no longer able to reconstruct its original dynamics i.e. the ways in which
different features of the sound produced are articulated in time. The outcome of stretching a
sound sample is, sometimes, what in music is called ​drone​. There are different methods
available to accomplish this transformation of sonic time-scale, and these different methods
produce also different results, therefore different dynamics, even when the duration is the
same. Paulstretch is a software designed specifically for this task. Its ​hyperstretch f​ unction ​is
capable of stretching any sound input to a duration that easily exceeds the lifespan of any
living organism, as well as exporting it into a file as long as there are computational resources
available for doing it.

(00:06:53)

Following Robin Mackay’s insight, developed by J-P. Caron in his paper “The
Transcendental Aesthetics of Time-Stretch”, what is particularly interesting is the transition
between ambient and structural listening. However impossible it might be for a human being
to even listen to the outcome of a stretched sound in its entirety, a transformative process in
regards to our local coordinates of experience necessarily requires attentive listening. that
permits a comparative approach between the dynamics of different time-scales of the same
sound sample. The question shows itself not only within the scope of aesthetics, but in a
broader framework wherein the relevance of the aesthetics is conducted by the transcendental
process of subjectivity formation, taking into account that this subject might not be human as
a natural species.

(00:08:20)

This extensive time, measure in time-units, irreducible to a specific quality of time

as in the Kramer diagram, is what opens up musical form to an alien intelligence-
one that is capable not only of synthesizing a certain time species from the
perceptual input, as in drone music in general, but one that is capable of following
the narrative form through its indexicals in the same way as one (a ‘human’ subject)
follows Beethoven´s 9 th . This means that, on the side of the subject there must still
be the possibility of structural rather than ambient listening- the exigency of which
opens the gate to the recognition of form by an apparatus capable of reconstructing
form in such proportions; while on the side of the “work”, there must not be
mereological identity from part-to-whole. That is, the form must be articulated by
differences among its parts and between those and the totality. One single sound
stretched to a million years doesn´t count as each constitutive moment rehearses the
work as a whole. (CARON, 2017, p. 136)

(00:10:00)

What is suggested here is a move from what we can construe as a quietist and mystical
approach (as generally conceived) to drone sounds to a more comprehensive and systematic
form of listening, so as to reconstruct differentiated elements in what is usually taken as
purely ‘ambient music’, or merely a soundtrack for meditation. Objectively, nothing is lost in
this transposition of scales, but often a structural reconstruction seems impossible due to the
increase of length in every sample or window of the sound spectrum. Fiction comes at hand.
We can imagine reasonable doubts for the grounds that lead us to see something as a
structure. Our conception of time is completely pervaded by non-temporal elements.

(00:11:22)

Sound-stretch as an artistic practice is committed to the idea of an exercise of constructing

counterfactual models of time, even if it exceeds the dimension of experience and existence.
A continuous sound that surreptitiously manifests very subtle dynamics and variations, which
can only be acknowledged through an acquired way of hearing. Could this way of hearing be
learned? Maybe it could be invented. How the standard musical theoretical criteria can be
transformed or discarded following new inventions within different time-scales? How can we
use sound, or more precisely, listening as a tool for re engineering our very experience of
sound, but not only? Our sensible apparatus is not the only determinant factor of experience.
In this framework, unsound can be said to have a relative autonomy in relation to the sonic
matter in question. Imperceptibility here can simply mean deafness to an aspect. Local
deafness. Contingent deafness. Collective deafness.

(00:13:28)

We must imagine the possibility of acquiring alien listening through an integrative support in
the intersections of technology, syntax, musical and social practices, without falling down
into an empty attachment to what we currently take as a normal conduct. The potency of
sound lies in its providence of points of no return to perception, ungrounding our most
entrenched beliefs in favour of disentrenchment as a ​motto.​ Sound-stretch unmasks time as a
shape-shifting dimension that supports what we can count on as particular experiences, but
only to the extent that we see its outcome as ​unsound : unground.​ Structural listening as a
way to make explicit the dynamic transformations that later will figure as objects of
comparison to the supposedly normal time-scale that organizes any practice grounded in
movement and succession.

Bibliographic References:

AUDINT. ​Unsound:Undead.​ Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2019.

CARON, J. P. C.​. “The Transcendental Aesthetics of Time-Stretching”. In: James Harris, Owen Coggins.
(Org.). ​Sustain/Decay: a philosophical investigation of mysticism and drone music​. 1ed.: Void Front Press,
2017, v. 1, p. 128-138.

Sound used:

Billy Idol - Eyes without a face in.: Rebel Yell (1983)

Audio-essay prepared as a final assignment for the seminar On Sound: Unsound by

Jacob Eriksen and guests at The New Centre for Research and Practice. December,
2020.