Futuristic media: A temporal reflection and eternal platform capitalism
ABSTRACT Digital media is not a remedy for excessive consumption and environmental damage; the seemingly reduced impacts on the environment by the pandemic are on the ground of accelerating other modes of consumption, resource exploitation and capitalist investments. In this article, I would take China for a case to reveal the ephemeral ecology and the perpetual consumption on digital platforms in a singular future.
Journal of Environmental Media Volume 1 Supplement © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Intellect Ltd. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jem_00028_1
Sound as Community: How Far Are We from Terrene
ABSTRACT ‘Sound control’ is an embodiment of social governmentality, which shapes the social order and collective consciousness. In the pre-modern society, sound was a medium connecting the heavens and humans through rituals and music management. In the modern age, sound is a medium representing the relationship between national narratives and the individual through radio, telegraphs, and other mass media. Also, the worship of heaven through sound is transformed in a modern context: outer space is scientifically articulated to replace the concept of heaven, and sound is converted by transducer into the electrical waves and signals that extend to a space layer, communicating between satellite and signal station to support human communication on phones. In this article, I discuss Chinese modernization, and highlight three phases of ‘sound control’ in China, tracking its unfolding as the essence of modernity. However, we humans have never totally broken away from the (pre-modern) community, and the utilisation of sound sometimes reflects collective will.
FOCUS On Sound is an anthology of scholarly articles and artist responses to the subject of sound.
The new mixtape steems from recently launched journal-zine FOCUS On Sound, an anthology of scholarly articles and artist responses to the subject of sound. A one-shot issue featuring work by independent artists and articles by researchers and emerging scholars associated with different universities worldwide, where each contributor has a double-page, across which they present their focused take on the central topic, sound.
The magazine was founded and edited by Nicholas Burman – a writer, researcher and editor with a background in Comparative Cultural Analysis-, and features articles on topics as diverse as the relationship between sound and modernisation in China, decolonial listening practices, aurality and orality in Latin America and the use of voice recognition technology on the German borders to name a few. Among the multimedia, spreads are a stained glass collage, a memory-based comic, psychogeographic maps of sonic experiences, and a meditative photo/text combination. There are also a few creative writing pieces.
The mixtape presented here was a response to the obvious question of whether there would be a sound element for the project and the availability of a bunch unreleased tunes from one of the zine contributors.
