The audio paper about The Chronic Illness and The Dungeon Of Polymorphous Pan consists of three main parts, made in different ways and at different times. The most interesting and humorous part was recording during the event itself, which happened on 1st December 2023. I interviewed random attendants and some performers about the Polymorphous Pan. All performances and interview with people during the event were done with Zoom H6.

The introduction and the interview with the curator, Neo Fung, were recorded in my room, upstairs above The Dungeon Of Polymorphous Pan (I am not sure if I mentioned that I have been living in the building since 2016) on condenser microphone Tonor TC20.

I have recorded enough material to create a podcast lasting 25-30 minutes. I had to really think about which 3 questions from the 7 ones recorded I would use for the interview. Although I wanted to keep the pace and form of the interview as naturally flowing as possible, cutting out a lot of stuttering made to fit more information for sure. I will definitely make an extended version over the Christmas break. I have resulted to modulate my own voice with pitch down and flanger on several occasions in order to emulate the voice of a mutant – mutation is after all an important part of the topic discussed in the interview.

LUFS metering was a tedious but helpful process. It pushed me to make levels right, and the whole piece sounds more cohesive than before mixing. I kept the loudness target under -23, which the free version of YOULEAN Loudness Meter 2 allowed me.

The podcast series Ways of Hearing explores shaping of our perceptions of the sound and recording in era of analog following by the digital era and switching in between them. The first episode of the podcast talks about differences of how our perception has changed from the point of view of the time.

After listening to the podcast I realised few differences comparing both eras. Analog time feels more present (‘real time’ recording), digital time provides certain realm of timelessness (easier possibility of endless back and forth editing). After listening to the podcast I realised that recording in the time of analog often required necessity of the musical skills and and way more precision in executing them. Recording must have been done precisely in order to safe material (recording tapes) and therefore money. Of course in the digital world the same skill is still appreciated but doesn’t seem to be so essential as on computers we can edit much easier than cutting tapes or re-recording the whole takes. In the end of the day it always breaks down to the preference and there are people who these days prefer to edit as well as to record the whole takes precisely. However, and that was another important point mentioned in the podcast, in analog era this wasn’t an option.

Coming back to analog-present versus digital-timeless. Digital technology also entered the music composition. Drum machines put music more onto the grid together with evolving but constant repetition. A lot of popular electronic music sort of endeavour to reach some sort of timelessness – being able to tap in at any moment possible. This extends into ways how we nowadays reproduce and stream the sound.

Of course both eras has pros and cons. Digital technology made sound and media in general more affordable and attainable to almost everyone, but according to Damon Kurowski, this came with the cost:

“We give up on the opportunity to experience time together – in the same instant – through our media.”

This extends also to the nowadays common way of communication via texting and social media. In analog time the conversation often had a start and the end and somehow more often encompassed the goal of its content. These we have an option to step out of the texting at any time possible and come back to it whenever later – but later the momentum of the conversation or the necessity of communication of of agent involved in the conversation with another one, might be long pass.

When the Walkman emerged in 1980, it started a revolution in how we consume music and other sonic media. There were, of course, appearances of negative and fearful opinions predicting that Walkman would make people psychotic and disconnected from the surrounding environment. There have always been fears and uncertainties attached to new inventions throughout history, not only from the media realm. For example, the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 was, by certain groups, considered a threat to public morality because the sudden access and democratisation of wider knowledge provided by books to common people allegedly could cause chaos in what we are being taught. Indeed, at the time, it caused the acceleration in questioning of certain status quo, and the invention of the print press played a significant role in enabling Christian reformation in Europe in the 16th century. Nowadays, we encounter similar discussions regarding Virtual Reality headsets with fears of people becoming utterly detached from reality. Did the Walkman become comparatively influential politically? It may have become another expression or by-product of individualism.

When we discussed in class how the invention of portable audio devices (we can extend Walkman followed by Discman, MP3 players, iPods, and smartphones these days) is influencing our interactions with the environment and our reasons for using them, people were describing similar things. The Walkman became a predominantly urban audio device, and many people use it to conceal or shield themselves from the city environment’s surrounding chaos.

Portable audio devices also change our imagination induced by music (or other sonic art forms). Before, it would be exclusively tied to a place produced live at the gig or at home, reproduced by a record or a radio station. The Walkman suddenly opened the door to the ‘scoring of the life’ on a different level. New sceneries (from urban to natural ones) supported by our choice of favourite music suddenly provided new scales of imagination and possibly even inspiration.

It also changed the way we walk in the environment. I found myself extending my journeys on streets to wherever I was heading on many occasions so I could listen to my favourite music for longer. Occasionally, it became an unconscious ritual reminding me that ‘the journey is the goal’.

All this suggests what is written in the article about the Walkman providing certain autonomy (Hosokawa, 1984: 166). Having the possibility to opt in and out from whatever is happening around you is undoubtedly an advantage, but there are also negatives coming with all of this. I certainly haven’t encountered anybody losing their mind and getting psychotic attacks based on prolonged headphone-wearing. However, hearing damage from quite a young age is real – reducing sensitivity to specific frequency ranges contributes to developing severe and long-term tinnitus (both based on my own experience).

Bibliography:

Hosokawa, S. (1984) ‘The walkman effect,’ Popular Music, 4, pp. 165–180. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261143000006218.

Music historians Chris Smith and Tom Irvine are in their podcast bringing their points of view on environmental impact of the digital media and streaming services in comparison to other musical media of ‘post-consumption era’ as well as ‘pre-consumption era’. Those were marked by transition from purely acoustic music to electronically recorded and reproduced to recording media like shellac records, vinyls, CDs etc.

“Every system of inscription is tied to a system of extraction. Every discourse network is a resource network.” (Devine, 2019)

Chris’s and Tom’s main outcome, based on Kyle Devine’s conclusion, is that every single type of record media which emerged in capitalistic consumer society is somehow linked to extraction of natural resources as well as contributing to environmental problems as many other human activities. An interesting point is highlighting the fact that apparent current streaming services aren’t less damaging than for example CDs, vinyls or shellac records in the past. Behind every streaming service stand huge servers consuming enormous amounts of electric energy so they can continuously work.

They also came with in my opinion very interesting historical analogy comparing this invisible impact or toll to the invisibility of sugar cane business prosperity being inherently rooted and dependent on trans-Atlantic slave trade. There has been happening an apparent progress in British cities like Bristol or Southhampton in 18th century but not many people could actually see that this ‘progress’ has been built on exploitation and enslavement of a large part of humanity. Similarly people cannot see the invisible impact of many many data servers on the carbon imprint and the climate change.

Another interesting topic which Chris and Tom touched is AI generated music, particularly AI Jazz. Is AI Jazz problematic? They came to the conclusion that people who make AI algorithms don’t know that algorithms are working and ‘risk reducers’, in this case reducing risk of ‘wrong’ musical decision, thus they are influencing the composition into something which is less creative and basically getting stuck at the same sounding composition over and over again. The human element of improvisational base of the jazz encompasses remembering what other people had done and picking up what works for the musician and not what note to play at the certain time, which is what the machine does – quickly calculating musical decisions.

Personally I see a problems in other parts of AI music too. I am not fearing of musicians being replaced. AI can be utilised as a part of the performance and compositions but the fully generated AI music might mis-place the historical background of music genres or sort of erasing those backgrounds. This could be extended to the whole ‘genre’ or approach of AI music. AI algorithm doesn’t know where for example jazz comes from and doesn’t know its historical background.

https://www.soundinghistorypodcast.com/episodes/episode-8

Devine, K. (2019). Decomposed : the political ecology of music. Cambridge, Ma: The Mit Press.

I have decided to create an audio paper about the underground art event called The Chronic Illness (previously The Chronic Illness of Mysterious Origin) and its venue ‘The Dungeon of Polymorphous Pan’. It will be an interview with the curator Piotr Bockowski aka Fung Neo about the event and the venue in the context of his research about the fungi, post-internet performance art and squatting.

Some possible questions to be asked:

What is The Chronic Illness of Mysterious Origin, when and why it started?

Who or what is Polymorphous Pan?

Where The Dungeon of Polymorphous Pan sits in wider context of squatting in London?

Fungal Fetishism, rotten performance at the Dungeons of Polymorphous Pan

Insight: Politics of Human Waste – agitprop theatre at ‘Chronic Illness’ events

Bockowski – Artaud’s media of corporeal decomposition

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/31708/

https://libsearch.arts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=1450625&shelfbrowse_itemnumber=1774022#shelfbrowser

https://libsearch.arts.ac.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=1535659&query_desc=kw%2Cwrdl%3A%20squatting%20in%20london