Tuning Speculation 7: NON

Tuning Speculation 7: NON
November 15-17, 2019, Array Space, Toronto

Plenary Speakers: Beatrice Fazi (University of Sussex) and Sarah Sharma (University of Toronto).

Frequently heard accounts of the ear as a passive organ, perpetually open (even in sleep) and always prone to infection, bring on concomitant reports of both subliminal and more conscious forms of control. While these are warranted given the amount of acoustic modulation that operates in our cybernetic society, they often mask the potentials of an active ear, an ear specifically tasked with hearing differently and attending to those who hear differently: ears that skew normative physiologies, that search for alternate agencies. These are ears of refusal, nonears that are never mere feedback organs and instead resound that which is lived but not heard. To tell the story of these ears we appeal to the physiologically idiosyncratic, the amusial, and the lesioned ear. We invoke machinic ears, cyborg ears entwined with prosthetics on manifold scales, xeno-ear (machine) learners bootstrapping themselves into existence, deaf ears, occult ears, hyperstitional ears, ears abled at undocumented points on the acoustical continuum, hallucinated ears, and ecstatic ears that put “the ear” out of place.

In short, we seek narratives that explore and speculate on the possibilities of re-earing not just things, but more especially the nons that texture such things in their relations, and the insights these offer into the possibilities of (non)sonic intervention into contemporary social and political (non)reality.

For this seventh edition, we’re encouraging contributors to consider audio, visual, and textual experiments to elaborate the potentials of ecstatic (non)ears. 

Please send an abstract (maximum 250 words) and a brief biographical sketch (150 words maximum) to tuningspeculation@gmail.com by 1 July 2019. Notification of acceptance will be given in early August.

A-non, from the phonoccultural capital!

The Occulture

(David Cecchetto, Marc Couroux, Ted Hiebert, Eldritch Priest, & Rebekah Sheldon)