B (they/them) @becfary@avantwhatever.org

welcoming @liampower to dot org! Liam AKA Very Low Frequencies makes music eg. https://verylowfrequency.bandcamp.com/music + neural network images eg. http://thismaskdoesnotexist.herokuapp.com/ + other creative uses of tech and sound. Liam, i think you already know @benbyrne + myself and @doktorb are mods + @p_hase and @pointy are regulars on this timeline and in DM chats. we're all down for music recs, questions, thoughts, and any other ideas you might have for how to use this space ⚡

"In this world of computational chill, heat is nuisance, an invisible enemy and index of harm, what the symbolic anthropologist Mary Douglas might have called ‘matter out of place’. Listening for heat is a skill Tom has honed, and one that he wields to ensure that the computational river of the digital continues to flow, unimpeded."

Steven Gonzalez Monserrate on meeting 'the people of the cloud': "I listen to the ambient din of fans roaring and cannot discern the sound of overheating he is describing. My untrained ear cannot differentiate that noise from the rest of the mechanical thrumming around me. But Tom can. Conditioned by countless hours in these mechanical halls, he hears the individual parts in a symphony of beeps, tones and pulses..." https://aeon.co/essays/downtime-is-not-an-option-meet-the-stewards-of-the-cloud

thank u @pointy for directing my attention to this Cher Tan essay!! https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/novelists-still-dont-know-how-to-talk-about-the-internet/ fucking love this phrase: "URL bleeds into IRL into URL again, a looping GIF of an ouroboros. And we continue to stare right into its barrel, hypnotised and removed." rtyi @p_hase

new https://longformeditions.bandcamp.com/ 💙 #nowplaying

CRiSAP's 'Wild Energies: Live Materials', "A three-day online event focusing on and around the work of artist composer Annea Lockwood." looks great, just booked myself in (free) - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wild-energies-live-materials-tickets-298088961107 - tho BST timezone conversion will be brutal, i hope they record some stuff!

https://www.thecommunity.garden/ looking forward to the Seedbox Community Garden festival next week (also loving the website!) 🌱

what's everyone else listening to atm? especially keen for ambience/drone/gentleness/environmental sound recs

loving this Oxtail Recordings show, backgrounding my (attempts at) writing this arvo https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=bugK3Sf_Mig&feature=youtu.be i'm yet to get to the Alexandra Spence/MP Hopkins set but that's what brought me here

catching up on my fav WFMU show while Adriene's back for a seasonal version of The Blind Tourist. always astonishing radio but this ep in particular is blowing my mind (creatively, existentially..) https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/104645

the site is a bit awkward to navigate but I'm into it, to me it has the vibe of bumping into people/losing sight of someone in a crowd? i'm keen to know what you think of it @benbyrne @p_hase ?

a bit in love with this rewire online festival platform 🤩 https://live.rewirefestival.nl/ the fest ended yesterday but there's a bunch of streams available til next weekend so I'm doing some catch-up (fav so far is the claire rousay/Morita Vargas collab from Saturday)

Spending time with this broadcast - https://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/98331 - from WFMU's Radio Row, Ariana Martinez + Jackson Roach listening-through/talking-through sensory ecologies and embodied perceptions 🍃

very lucky to be listening to a preview of Wound Without a Tear - https://daisart.bandcamp.com/album/wound-without-a-tear - a gorgeous compilation of 'Australian' ambient and experimental music from 1993-2008, releasing on Daisart next week + for now there's one streamable track at the link. this'll definitely be my writing soundtrack this week 💚

“The so-called cloud is a definitely material and mainly hardwired network...” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-hidden-costs-of-streaming-music [Kyle Devine on his book 'Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music']

this article (and presumably the book it's about) focuses on music streaming, and i'd like to hear more of these conversations in other online listening environments/communities — the materialities of the so-called cloud is something i'm trying to be more thoughtful about

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