Body technologies are embodied experiences that not only transform the way humans live but also shapes our ideas of who we are and what we strive to become. Lately I have been reflecting on my life ethos and how it is continually conditioned by changing techno-political conditions. In face of the fast change of digital transformation in the age of the pandemic, my body, in its uphill struggle to adapt to cybernetic norms, has been pushing my being to review how I approach ideas of a life well spent. If Spinoza posits humans as natural beings who orient themselves with an innate striving to persevere, how does the orientation life’s perseverance continually transform with new changing definitions of what is a natural human being?
Decentralizing what it means to be human has been a reoccurring theme in posthumanist thought. To theorist Karan Barad, humans are a phenomenon that is performed as part of a holistic dynamic of intra-activities. In her essay “New Materialism: Posthumanist Performativity,” Barad speaks of liberating the concept of human beyond the scope of language; rather than understanding ourselves as independent entities with unique characteristics, we are beings in differential becomings and part of the making of space and time. Astrida Neimanis in her book Bodies of Water goes further with this temporal idea of humans by elaborating through the Deleuzian concept of virtuality. She proposes an extended body of could-have-been or might-becomes as well as its potential to affect and be affected in the past and future. By rethinking the body in terms of potentialities, we are invited to pull away from the object-oriented corporeal towards a performative technology that is invisible and material, such as sound.
“Sound can be very immediate, when you are on a battle field, when you are facing death, it is not a matter of visual signals—you hear sound first. And perhaps, when in doubt, you will look for the source of the sound and stare at it, deciphering whether what you heard was real or not. Of course, there are those who are more visually-oriented, but the majority of ordinary people listen first, and use their eyes to seek validation. And that is something very unromantic.” -Dino
I’ve always wondered what the late noise-musician Dino meant about romantic sensory decisions, and his words came to my mind again whilst revisiting King Hu’s film “The Legends in the Mountain.” In this Wuxia ghost tale situated in a world between the phantasmic and real, opposing forces utilize sound as a weapon to manipulate human consciousness and instate moral order. During a climatic battle scene between the Buddhist monk and spider spirit, aggressive drumming and cymbals reverberate in and out of an open room, inducing a tug-o-war of affects on the mind and body from headaches, hallucinations, fatigue to achieve submission, weakening of the will, or alignment with a side with righteousness. At one point, the spider spirit succeeds in weaving an invisible web of sounds, which overwhelms the monk in a state of disorientation, engulfing his consciousness into a sonic web of charms.
Sonic power that confuses the scale of humans and travels freely between earthen and transcendental. Although it is doubtful that Dino subscribed to any socio-political agenda in his work, one might find hints of his musical intentions in his description of no-input, “The kind of music I do is simple…only the first beat of sound you hear is real and the rest is fake, created by effects.” In his solo performance at Revolver organized Senko Issha in 2022, feedback signals travel between the original trigger and its shadows until space opens up and presents a trance-like melody and emerges like a rising phoenix. Even when heard as a recording, the phenomena generates a fluid time and space, leaving the listener struggling to adjust to loss of grounding.
“There is a body outside the body,
Which has nothing to do with anything produced by magical arts
Making this aware energy completely pervasive Is the living, active, unified, original spirit” – Sun Bu-er
The above excerpt from 12 Century Taoist Sister Sun Bu-er’s poem “Projecting the Spirit” speaks of an inter-body between all life, as connected by a holistic energy that invigorates us all. In the pursuit of immortality, the Taoist alchemists sought to cultivate one’s spirit, to purify, strengthen, and master transformations of form and essence. A spirit that is clear “may roam blissfully in space, looking down upon mountains and seas… some people shed their bones on wild crags…leave the body and go.” Decentralizing the mind from body by achieving a state of pure consciousness, one may finally surpass the limitations of the physical shell.
A resonating consideration of virtuality, despite appearing completely contrasting, can be found in the 20th century Futurist Words-in-Freedom poems devised by Italian poet Filippo Tomaso Marinetti. Diving deep into the well of the absurd and towards the potential of super-machine-human, Words-In-Freedom sought to reform the human mind by instilling a new type of superior aesthetics called the industrial. By breaking the spoken word into sonic interpretation of mechanical movements, perhaps we can see each performance as an opportunity to train the spirit and rewire the mind towards a new aesthetic pursuit. To embody alien body signals, if practiced enough, one may ultimately accumulate ample affects to reset what the mind and body considers natural.
Coming back to my original question about contemporary conditions of life’s motivations, I am continually reminded that despite the increasing entanglements of bodies, social relations and powers today, perhaps the answer still lies in the age old question of how we can define life’s perfection. To continually investigate the border between heaven and human through body technologies in order to approach and respond to the dark interior of the world.
