Membranas

[2022]

Membranas is an essay on sonic emergence and practices of fuzzing. This thesis explores the vibratory—particularly the sonic through its aural and tactile manifestations—as intrinsically collective media that can activate more intimate and intricate ways of relating to each other and the world we are part of. This is a resonant investigation that proposes a body of work derived from the possibilities within the concept of La Membrana, an organizational apparatus for tuning into our vibrational reality. The practical that accompanies this document is an installation that is meant to be a continuous experiment and test bed for exploring resonance and improvisation as ways of stimulating more-than-human arrangements for collective emergence. The installation mediates the interaction between a machine, humans, the wind, and voices that travel within the wind—not only human voices, but a variety of sonic events propagated in the air. The installation constitutes an open system that provides a space to diffuse sounds and vibrations from agents in distant places, as well as for participants to listen to those sounds and to listen to each other. Shifting from Western notions of music, this dissertation explores Surlogical approaches and decolonial operations to open up modes of socialization through improvisatory call-and-response encounters.

This installation is part of my Ph.D. dissertation at MIT, Media Lab, Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences, June 2022.

Thanks to Jessie Mindell and Devin Murphy for technical assistance, dialogue, and friendship throughout the process.