FUTURE STRATA
By Robyn Maree Pickens
Your physical body and your quantum body of probabilities are like two candles on a table. 1
Probabilities and possibilities of receiving, creating, co-creating, distributing, and registering energy. As pulsation, skin breeze, molecular excitation, somatic crinkle, affective activation. Between you and the earth (encrustations of salt, sugar, minerals), between you and the earth (the pressure of terra, the compression of limbs [tree] and bones [all]), between you and extractivist capitalism (the mutation of unburied sunlight also known as time and space into oil, plastic, metal) between you and the military industrial complex (taking from the earth to take more from the earth and the wellbeing of others also known as neo/colonialism, mining pits, trade agreements, surveillance), between you and the universe (collisions, formations, cosmic dust), between you and the artist (energetic traces, homegrown crystals, assemblages of earth metal and earth salt, oil formed into plastic-metal circuit boards, the intention of frequency), between you, the artist, and Guido d’Arezzo (the latter invented the solfeggio scale), between you and your senses of perception (the vibrations that travel down your ear canals, across the porous membrane of your being [palm, hand, face], the reception of light on your retinas, the torquing of your quantum consciousness, the unique arrangement of your affective self into an emotion of or not of your choosing), between you and other people (the particular activation of humans in the company of one another [and all the other beings and forces] who respond in different ways to the sensors’ awareness of their presence, to the sounds the other makes in/advertently, to the un/certainty of each other’s movements and gestures, to others as they enter). These are some of the probabilities and possibilities of interacting with an assemblage of crystal formations and sonic/sensor technologies designed to engage you and your non/companions.
You observe creative emergence.2
In the druse, the encrustation of crystals forming on hexagonal wires, the addition of dyes to the saturated solutions (of borax-sodium borate, copper sulphate, sugar, Epsom salts, alum), the hidden durations and number of saturations to enable crystal seeds to grow. In the earth that is not static and monolithic even if it looks that way from outer space. In the thought-action to bury the hydrophone in the sand and to turn this into a sound that you can encounter around this table. In the embedding of sounds in sensors and buttons and the containment of sensors in crystals. In your hands that make sound through passing, pressing, or warping the waves of the theremin. In your repetitive acts and pauses, and in your exchange with others.
All around are invisible realities where contact may occur.3
You know the earth is ringed by orbiting space junk. You know they make movies and fund organisations to prepare us for the mineral extraction on planets other than earth. You know the workers who extract coltan for your device do not wear any protective gear and are poorly paid.4 You have known for a long time that the cloud is heavy: data is heavy, likes are heavy, clicking is heavy, sharing a cat reel is heavy. So too is accumulation, the not really of recycling, the mislabelling of shipping containers, the small fires burnt to extract remains, the heavy air, the need to swap, to eat. All of that exists and will continue to exist. Our future to last. Our (some of our, our unequal) contribution. These transformations of the earth. These now burdens. These future burdens. The Anthrobscene.5 Asymmetrical fossils.
She taught us to hold our connection with each other in a new geography that weaves stars with the ground.6
This line, despite the word “geography” almost sounds like psycho-geophysics, a methodology, an orientation, a practice, that goes beyond the urban of Situationist psychogeography.7 The devastation, the embarrassment, the belatedness, the overdue recognition on the part of western cultures to take cognisance of earth and account for materiality, the sentience of materiality, even. What are the ethics of taking a recording of sound away from its location? Can it be returned?8 Charlotte asks these questions and in so doing she also draws attention to the materiality of sound. What sounds did the salts, sugars, and sulphates of the earth hear and/or what frequencies of sound are bound up in their molecular composition when they were turned over by tectonic plates? What did they hear in the supersaturated solution as they grew? What molecular frequencies will they hear over the duration of Unstable contacts? How will the deep time tides, crystalline earth archives, reconstituted fossil fuels and you interact? What is your feedback for each other? Your molecular frequencies of attention? Your contribution to the fossils and calm strata of the now~future?
Probabilities and possibilities of receiving, creating, co-creating, distributing, and registering energy. As pulsation, skin breeze, molecular excitation, somatic crinkle, affective activation. Between you and the earth (encrustations of salt, sugar, minerals), between you and the earth (the pressure of terra, the compression of limbs [tree] and bones [all]), between you and extractivist capitalism (the mutation of unburied sunlight also known as time and space into oil, plastic, metal) between you and the military industrial complex (taking from the earth to take more from the earth and the wellbeing of others also known as neo/colonialism, mining pits, trade agreements, surveillance), between you and the universe (collisions, formations, cosmic dust), between you and the artist (energetic traces, homegrown crystals, assemblages of earth metal and earth salt, oil formed into plastic-metal circuit boards, the intention of frequency), between you, the artist, and Guido d’Arezzo (the latter invented the solfeggio scale), between you and your senses of perception (the vibrations that travel down your ear canals, across the porous membrane of your being [palm, hand, face], the reception of light on your retinas, the torquing of your quantum consciousness, the unique arrangement of your affective self into an emotion of or not of your choosing), between you and other people (the particular activation of humans in the company of one another [and all the other beings and forces] who respond in different ways to the sensors’ awareness of their presence, to the sounds the other makes in/advertently, to the un/certainty of each other’s movements and gestures, to others as they enter). These are some of the probabilities and possibilities of interacting with an assemblage of crystal formations and sonic/sensor technologies designed to engage you and your non/companions.
You observe creative emergence.2
In the druse, the encrustation of crystals forming on hexagonal wires, the addition of dyes to the saturated solutions (of borax-sodium borate, copper sulphate, sugar, Epsom salts, alum), the hidden durations and number of saturations to enable crystal seeds to grow. In the earth that is not static and monolithic even if it looks that way from outer space. In the thought-action to bury the hydrophone in the sand and to turn this into a sound that you can encounter around this table. In the embedding of sounds in sensors and buttons and the containment of sensors in crystals. In your hands that make sound through passing, pressing, or warping the waves of the theremin. In your repetitive acts and pauses, and in your exchange with others.
All around are invisible realities where contact may occur.3
You know the earth is ringed by orbiting space junk. You know they make movies and fund organisations to prepare us for the mineral extraction on planets other than earth. You know the workers who extract coltan for your device do not wear any protective gear and are poorly paid.4 You have known for a long time that the cloud is heavy: data is heavy, likes are heavy, clicking is heavy, sharing a cat reel is heavy. So too is accumulation, the not really of recycling, the mislabelling of shipping containers, the small fires burnt to extract remains, the heavy air, the need to swap, to eat. All of that exists and will continue to exist. Our future to last. Our (some of our, our unequal) contribution. These transformations of the earth. These now burdens. These future burdens. The Anthrobscene.5 Asymmetrical fossils.
She taught us to hold our connection with each other in a new geography that weaves stars with the ground.6
This line, despite the word “geography” almost sounds like psycho-geophysics, a methodology, an orientation, a practice, that goes beyond the urban of Situationist psychogeography.7 The devastation, the embarrassment, the belatedness, the overdue recognition on the part of western cultures to take cognisance of earth and account for materiality, the sentience of materiality, even. What are the ethics of taking a recording of sound away from its location? Can it be returned?8 Charlotte asks these questions and in so doing she also draws attention to the materiality of sound. What sounds did the salts, sugars, and sulphates of the earth hear and/or what frequencies of sound are bound up in their molecular composition when they were turned over by tectonic plates? What did they hear in the supersaturated solution as they grew? What molecular frequencies will they hear over the duration of Unstable contacts? How will the deep time tides, crystalline earth archives, reconstituted fossil fuels and you interact? What is your feedback for each other? Your molecular frequencies of attention? Your contribution to the fossils and calm strata of the now~future?
Writing on the exhibition ‘Unstable Contacts’ by Charlotte Parallel
13 July - 13 August, 2022
Audio Foundation
Hours: Mon-Sat 12pm - 4pm
13 July - 13 August, 2022
Audio Foundation
Hours: Mon-Sat 12pm - 4pm
1. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, “Scalar” (poem), Granta, 2019. https://granta.com/two-poems-berssenbrugge/
Accessed 1 July 2022. 2. Ibid.
3. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, “Jaguar” (poem), Granta, 2019. https://granta.com/two-poems-berssenbrugge/
Accessed 1 July 2022.
4.Heather Davis, “Blue Bling: Extractivism,” Afterall 48 (2019), 13.
5. Jussi Parikka, The Anthrobscene (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).
6. Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, “Scalar” (poem), Granta, 2019. https://granta.com/two-poems-berssenbrugge/
Accessed 1 July 2022.
7.Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 61-66.
8. Charlotte Parallel, WDTTS (Port Chalmers: Anteroom Publishing, 2017), 8-10.
