Digital Culture & AudioVisual Challenges

We start by reading the audio signal as a sign; a signifier - signified construction which allows us to discover analogies between what Jean Baudrillard defines as the ‘orders of appearances’ and what we introduce as ‘the orders of the heard’. Stage by stage through practice and research we study the signal’s ontological metamorphosis as it passes from the sacramental order, to the order of maleficence and the order of sorcery, until it finally crosses the borderline from being a representation to being its own pure simulacrum. With this article we focus on aural simulacra the order of maleficence. In the realm of appearances these have been defined as signs or symbols that mask and denature a profound reality. They are referential and representational, but in a way that they dissimulate the realities behind them like their twisted Doppelgängers. Simulacra of the order of maleficence are perversions of reality. If so, then which are the audio signals of the order of maleficence? The research is initiated by studying historical artworks associated with aural interpretations of bee flight, followed by stochastic observation of the natural acoustic reality. By utilizing these paradigms as references, we continue with experimenting with computer assisted techniques of creating new audible mimicries. Our research focuses on bioacoustics and by developing audio biomimetic techniques, we explore the aesthetic and conceptual potential of aural simulacra of the order of maleficence. Through a set of sonic processes we delve into autogenerative, autopoietic, responsive and algorithmically controlled modes of creation. With this writing we discuss how the original naturally produced audio signal can be transformed into a sonorous caricature and depending on the way it balances between its signifier and its signified aspect, it may re-interpret naturally produced concrete audible events into a musical language which serves both the acousmatic and the non-cochlear prospects of contemporary sound art.