David Roden takes us through the viscous labyrinth of Speculative Posthumanism, Disconnection Thesis, Sonic Ontology and Agency, and his recent work, Xenoerotics.

David Roden's published work has addressed the relationship between deconstruction and analytic philosophy, philosophical naturalism, the metaphysics of sound, and posthumanism. His works include Posthuman Life: Philosophy at the Edge of the Human(2014), Snuff Memories (2021), Xenoerotics(2023).

Cold Reading

Posthuman Xenophilia w/David Roden

Wtf use 3 chords when 15 will do (I'm not counting) & dial up absolute prog madness!

Grinder MA

Reworked material from the second part of an improvised set I performed in Madrid with Ed Keller for the Cosmic Brains Symposium at Matadero Media Lab. The last part of the performance is featured in a video of the Symposium here
youtu.be/EGbBnCsOP-w?si=aVP8lwFUB1Sczqys

Chaos Drive [Antikythera Part II]

‘At bottom the esthetic phenomenon is simple; one need only have the ability to see continually a living play and to live perpetually surrounded by hosts of spirits, and one is a poet; one need only feel the drive to alter oneself (sich selbst zu verwandeln) and to speak out of alien bodies and souls, and one is a dramatist. Dionysian excitation is capable of communicating to a whole multitude this artistic power to feel oneself surrounded by such a host of spirits, with whom one knows oneself to be inwardly one. This process (Prozeß) of the tragic chorus is the originary dramatic phenomenon: seeing oneself altered before one's very eyes (sich selbst vor sich verwandelt zu sehen) and now acting, as though one had really entered into another body, another character. This process stands at the beginning of the development of drama. ... Here already the individual gives itself up by entering into an alien nature. And what is more, this phenomenon arises epidemically: a whole crowd feels itself enchanted in this way. ‘
from Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, trans. Samuel Weber

At its core, this project attempts the genesis of worlds, universes, using specific sonic and instrumental gestures. It is a project of I/Thou, in the sense explored by the above passage from Birth of Tragedy, which focuses on the invocation of a 'host of spirits' with whom we find ourselves at one; atoning, and exchanging identity, spirit, mind.
The limits of mind and 'microworlds', as birthed by sound.

VERWANDLUNG: Æther is one half of a 'double album' recorded across a few months in 2021. The two albums cleave in two, roughly along lines whereby the rowdier tracks fall into Prozeß and the softer tracks into Æther. But also as there are reworkings of two tracks on each, so the variation on a theme was simply appropriate to deploy in two separate 'listening blocks.' Thematically some of this material resonates with the Laws of Form EP, which was recorded 'live' in July 2021 for the Singularity Music Series curated by Alvaro Domene.

In all cases, the fundamental approach to gesture which we can extract from 'Laws of Form'- whether a physical gesture, a logical gesture, or a musical/sonic gesture- this orients the work towards a critical reimagining of 'genesis' and 'consciousness'.

VERWANDLUNG: Prozeß is here: thermalhowl.bandcamp.com/album/verwandlung-proze

Caveat Audiens! 
credits
released September 29, 2022

released September 2022

Ed Keller, solo electric guitar.
Recorded August-October 2021.
Mastered by Álvaro Domene at Singularity Studio (Kingston, New York)

Tracks were recorded in improvised, unrehearsed single takes. LoopyHD was used to remix the sessions in single, performative remix takes; ÆTHER - Verwandlung [Monovocities] was recorded as pure solo in a single take. The second pass of this track appears on Prozeß as PROZEß: Verwandlung [Dialog] 'mixed' live as a double loop. Similarly, Feroce is a remix of Suspense Feroce, which appears on Prozeß.

Signal path: Strandberg Boden 7 string >Audient iD4> iPad > Audiobus > BiasFX > LoopyHD > speakers. The signal path inside BiasFX is: Noise Gate > Compression > Boost > Splitter > dual Klon > dual amps [Tweed Deluxe and Matchless, sometimes a Rectifier] > Dark Memory Delay > Ambient Reverb.

Album cover: Synthesized by Ed Keller using VQGAN/Clip AI/ML.

ÆTHER PENDULUM ECLIPTIC

Excerpt from a live concert featuring one singing nightingale plus Cymin Samawathie, Korhan Erel, Alexandra Duvekot and David Rothenberg

Live With Nightingales in Berlin

Experiment using programmed FM8 patch, utilizing changes to global envelope and filter (operator z) parameters along with a granulated sample sliced from the same track.

Creep Continuant

I use noise / experimental / ambient composition as a way to deal with things that stress me out or upset me. Therefore, here is a track filtering my C19 experience through that medium.

Vinny Golia - tenor, soprano & baritone saxdes
John Hanrahan - drums
 Henry Kaiser - guitar
Wayne Peet - Hammond B3 & Yamaha YC-45D organs
Mike Watt - bass

A LOVE SUPREME ELECTRIC "Acknowledgement" from "A Love Supreme and Meditations" (Cuneiform Records)

The composer/multi-instrumentalist whose output ranges from noise to blues and from electronic to orchestral works discusses improvisations and compositions recorded at Roulette between 1987-2018, illustrated with projects featuring CK Noyes, Orchestra Carbon, SysOrk, The Veni Academy, and solo flights including The Velocity of Hue.

Roulette Intermedium / roulette.org

Elliott Sharp: Counting Fingers

Finding the forecast mistaken and getting caught in a downpour may be unpleasant but it’s hardly uncommon. Meteorology, the science which works to systematise the weather, is constantly improving and yet will never be perfect. Weather events that were once understood as isolated came later to be understood as expressions of integrated complex systems. An event which may have once been understood as a miracle or omen came to be seen as information; from the noise we learned to read signals, or so we thought. This audio mix is a work of fiction set in the near future, which takes the form of a report "special" on eclipses. In it, different eclipse readings are counterposed to produce a meditation on the inalienable desire to order, and our fraught attempts to render meaning from indeterminacy.

Tracklist:
Studie I (1953), Karlheinz Stockhausen
Earth Seen from Above (1987), Meredith Monk
Aion (1988), Giancinto Scelsi
Weed in the Freezer (2000), Simo Cell & Abdullah Miniawy 
Kontakte (1958-60), Karlheinz Stockhausen
Living Room Music (1940), John Cage
13 Angels Standing Guard... (2000), ASMZ

Produced on the occasion of Summa Technologaie, E-flux

Special Report: Eclipse

Designer, professor, writer, musician and multimedia artist. 
Lecturer, RPI Architecture 2022-25; Mentor: LAB#03 Synthetic Minds 2023-24 MADRID MEDIALAB MATADERO.
2022-23: consulting Creative Director, SingularityNET. 
Creative Director, Venice Virtual Pavilion, 18th Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. 

With Carla Leitão, Ed is co-founder of Spec.AE, a speculative design practice, and AUM Studio, an architecture and new media firm with residential projects, competitions, and installations in Europe [Venice Architecture Biennale 2018/2021] and the US. They have convened more than 20 international conferences and lecture series.

He has taught architecture + film/media + technology since 1996; his research and practice explores the structures of feeling which link cultural, infrastructural, ecological, and technosocial systems, revealing emergent terrestrial and cosmopolitical potential. He has spoken on artificial intelligence, architecture, film, technology and ecology internationally; current research explores the relationship between philosophy, cosmopolitics, sound design and music in lectures and solo performances. His work and writing has appeared in Volume, &&&, SCHISM, EVOLO, Punctum, Praxis, A+U,  AD,  Arquine,  Leonardo Electronic Almanac, Wired,  Metropolis,  Assemblage, and Ottagono. 

From 2021-23, Keller co-directed the Post Planetary Universal Design program at The New Centre. In 2022, he was a visiting design Faculty at Rensselaer School of Architecture [RPI]. He served as a Creative Director, Italian Pavilion, 17th Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.  From 2012-2020, he was Director of the Center for Transformative Media [CTM] at The New School; from 2009-2020, Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design and Associate Dean [2010-12]. In a prior arc, he taught advanced architectural design studios, theory, and digital techniques at Columbia University GSAPP, SCIArc, UPenn, Pratt, FIU, and RPI, from 1998-2010.
Ed has been an avid rockclimber for over 40 years.

ÆTHER PENDULUM ECLIPTIC

Ed Keller

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