Nico - Induction of Sonic Distance

The current text examinates the concept of induction, both from a technical and a theoretical perspective. This inquiry stems from a personal interest in noise reduction algorithms– such as those found in Active Noise Canceling (ANC) headphones– and their increasing prevalence in our everyday lives. Unlike conventional headphones, noise-canceling algorithms employ a miniature microphone to capture ambient sound, which is then processed and “removed” from the desired signal. This requires a two-step process of transformation: first capturing an environment sound and converting it into digital data, and later reproducing the processed digital data into sound. The resulting signal comprises the “desired signal” (e.g. music, speech) and the environmental information in its inverse negative “denoised” form.

The central argument of this project is that by artificially reducing acoustic noise and cleansing sonic environments, ANC algorithms are inducing a different kind of noise into our perception of reality, manifested in a parallel sonic reality, a sonic distance, which, although sensible, is contingent to the biases imposed by the algorithm. In order to develop this argument, it is necessary to introduce a few (re)definitions.

First, noise refers to a broader categorization that goes beyond the acoustic and the informational and encompasses social and cultural dimensions. Cécile Malaspina differentiates between noise as a qualitative measure of sound and a quantitative measure of information in relation to noise, where the first measures noise as an object of perception, the latter measures a relation of probability. (Malaspina 2016, 154). As a perceptual phenomenon, noise is always culturally and historically contingent, as Mark Hagood notes: “Noise is othered sound, and like any type of othering, the perception of noise is socially constructed and situated in hierarchies of race, class, age, and gender.” (Hagood 2011, 574). Consequently, noise-cancelling algorithms have the potential to reconfigure our sensory experience of noise’s socially constructed demarcations. For Jacques Attali, noise is an act of violence, disruption and disconnection, an interruption of a transmission (Attali 1979, 26). Within ANC algorithms, the violence and disruption is found in the compulsory modification of the inherent environmental sounds of our everyday life (crowds, traffic, soundscapes, etc), which might or might not be perceived as noise.

Second, induction is considered within the context of Gilbert Simondon’s theories of individuation. This in contrast to a more technical definition, of electromagnetic induction, which nevertheless also relates to technical functionality of audio technologies such as speakers and microphones. Technically, induction refers to an electromagnetic phenomenon in which a changing magnetic field generates an electrical current. This form of induction is also the underlying principle through which unwanted signals (i.e. noise, disturbance) are generated into an electromagnetic system (c.f. electromagnetic interference). Conversely, Simondon considers induction within his philosophical theories of individuation, a process which is afforded by a transductive method (Simondon 2020). For Simondon, induction is a unidirectional process: it generates plausible realities for individual observations and cannot content with heterogeneity. In ANC, the unidirectional inductive process is exemplified by the transformation of environmental sound into a simulacrum of reality. The outcome of this process is pre-predetermined by the algorithms’ embedded observations and presented afterwards as a virtual reality.

The inductive algorithms that process the noisy environment introduces noise into the resultant reproduced listening signal, by negating the processes of transduction, defined by Simondon as “a physical, biological, mental, or social operation through which an activity propagates incrementally within a domain.” (Simondon 2020, 13). Transduction provides the basis for an explorative thought which is not necessarily teleological or linear, and which allows for reconfigurations of new structures without loss or reduction (Simondon 2020, 15). In Simondon’s words: “the veritable limit of induction is plurality in its simplest and most difficult form to cross: heterogeneity. As soon as inductive thought is faced with this heterogeneity that it must resort to transductive thought.”(Simondon 2005, 127)

Finally, the induction of sonic distance the refers to a form of alienation, and the imposition of an inductive sonic reality, which is already determined by technology, and is one that carries over the implicit biases of its teleological functioning. Withing this framework, listening could be considered as a fundamental transductive act: not in the actual transformation of from acoustic energy to electric neuronal signals, but also a process of individuation. If listening as a transductive process is understood as cognitive labor, noise canceling algorithms reduce this process to an inductive one, where validating the algorithm’s mechanism of signal processing becomes the objective. Like so, this kind of inductive listening removes the agency of the listener and alienates the subject from the product of its own labor, i.e. the transductive exploration of the listening act itself, interrupting the process of individuation by generating acoustically isolating and socially alienating the individual.

Mark Hagood considers noise canceling technologies as mechanisms through which personhood is created and reinforced, enclosing the self and protecting it from the increasing sources of environmental noise (Hagood 2019). Hagood also differentiates between traditional narrative media that entertain or inform, and current forms of media that not only try to make the medium invisible, but also try to invisibilize the content itself creating a perceptual absence. (Hagood 2019, 22) Concretely, the signal processing of environmental sounds as an act of content creation through re-synthesis is deemed to be invisible.

Ultimately this noise is induced by the complex dynamics of the creation of the sonic distance through isolation and alienation and its invisibilization and naturalization, as a re-representation of reality of which the used is not actively aware. Listening as a transductive process of intuition, discovery and becoming, affords an exploration which “discovers and generates the heard” (Voegelin 2010, 4). This conflicts with the inductive method imposed by ANC, which implies a loss of information: there is a deaf trust in the algorithm’s consideration of noise, which is not accessible by the subject’s perception.

ANC algorithms are distinguished by their active awareness of its surroundings and the digital transformation that make possible its re/synthesis and actualization of a parallel reality to create a virtual personal sonic space. Instead of by negating its surroundings by reemploying its acoustic content as with headphones for media reproduction (Hosokawa, 1984), the listening process the process of transduction and individuation is relegated to the algorithm’s contingent biases. The promise an expreienece of individual calm, is only archived by the simultaneous violenent and disrruptive imposition predetermined biases of algorithmic mediation. i.e. the induction of noise. By replacing exploratory listening with synthetic experience, this induced sonic distance not only alters our relationship with our surrounding soundscapes, but also induces “noise” in the form of alientaion of our senses.  

References:

Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hagood, Mack. 2019 Hush: Media and sonic self-control. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hosokawa, Shuhei. 1984. “The Walkman Effect.” Popular Music 4: 165–80.

Klett, Joseph. 2016. “Baffled by an Algorithm.” In Algorithmic Cultures: Essays on Meaning, Performance and New Technologies. Edited by R. Seyfert and J. Robberge. New York: Routledge.

Malaspina, Cécile. 2018. An Epistemology of Noise. London: Bloomsbury.

Simondon, Gilbert. 2020. Individuation in light of notions of form and information. Translated by Taylor Adkins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Voegelin, Salomé. 2010. Listening to Noise and Silence. Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. London: Continuum.

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