NewsOund (2014, 2024)
Speakers, amplifiers, LEDs, acrylic, metal, electronics, software.
Dimensions variable.
WORK IN PROGRESS.
Finding new ways to artistically address our divided political landscape is more thorny and salient now than ever. The hegemonic news media of the past that once projected neutrality (false or otherwise) is now splintered, and feeds conflict rather than unifies. In this time of extreme polarization, listening has become a lost art: in some ways, we cannot hear the other any more. Yet music remains one of the most universal forms of communication.
What happens when we transform language into music? Might a new kind of sound give us a way to un-listen and thus re-hear the fears and hopes beneath all speaking?
“NewsOund” is a spatial sound installation that investigates the subconscious music hidden inside newscasting voices and other political rhetoric. It does not aim to analyze or even reveal the content of news, but instead transform it into an artistic interpretation that asks the listener to hear in a new way. In collaboration with the public, we will look together into the philosopher’s realms of truth and falsehood, and into the technologist’s world of information warfare and social media.
Using unprecedented sonic analysis and technology, this project will investigate the essences of the voices of informational authority, stripping language away to create a new form of sound between words and music. Newscasters have certain patterns of cadence and pitch, and often sound like others within their own networks. Do political leanings, including supposed neutrality, have their own melodies? Do voices trying to project authority sing a certain way? How do the rhythm and vocal pitch of the political margins compare to or adopt the tones of the center, and vice versa? When we remove linguistic signifiers — no words, accents, appearances — is there a more universal sound essence that transmits across cultures?
Consisting of suspended translucent sculptural objects with speakers and LEDs inside them, the installation will create an interactive sonic environment of the almost-recognizable. Using machine learning, custom software will extract melody and timbre from contemporary news broadcasts and political discourse across the ideological spectrum. It will remove linguistic signifiers, stripping them of conventional meaning — but revealing others in the process. The video component of each source (e.g. broadcasts from liberal, center, and conservative outlets) will be abstracted to produce an associated, but unidentifiable, relation between the sound and the light patterns. Interactivity will be integral to the work, allowing the visitor to hear, move through, and overlap different sources.
In the United States, news networks are distinguished by marked political leanings, producing a stark contrast in how events are portrayed and often reinforcing existing beliefs and biases. Social media both complicates and empowers individuals in the delivery of information and promotion of political views. Many of us now curate own news feeds, following sources that align with our existing perspectives. Citizens therefore have polarized perceptions of the news outlets themselves, viewing those that align with their beliefs as credible and others as unreliable. Thus, another axis of investigation: What harmonies do the increasingly powerful voices online add to this cacophony of information and opinion?
This artwork will not reveal left-leaning from right, liberal from conservative, but leave it for the audience to interpret. It is, in essence, a philosophical and poetic deconstruction of language, a new form of syntax and semantics. Strange harmonies and dissonances may result from the spatial organization and "conversation" between the objects. What aspects of content and agenda will come through in (quasi)musical form? Will viewers be able to distinguish the source of the sound-objects? Do certain melodies influence our emotional reactions, because we are subconsciously aligned with their source? What happens when we move through them one by one and also again between them, in chorus?
Crucially, “NewsOund” posits possibilities beyond polarization, to new forms of convergence whose humanity we must confront. In this collaborative journey, diverse populations will engage with an immersive artistic experience that transcends traditional boundaries, offering a profound reflection on the intersection of art, media, and the sensorial nature of information dissemination.
Installation and Background
Research and conversations will be conducted with the local community in each city the piece travels to, to hear from people of different backgrounds, where they prefer to get their news, and how they feel when instead they hear from other voices. The artwork can be installed inside in a gallery context or outside, as a public artwork. An artist talk and demonstration will accompany each exhibition in a new location.
This project was begun in 2014, but put on hold due to technological limitations at the time. A prototype of the speech-to-music interpretation has been completed using pitch mapping to MIDI, but new AI and Machine Learning models now allow far more sophisticated artistic interventions. The software will be based in Max/MSP as well as extensions of AI/ML models such as Torch Recurrent Neural Networks and Wavenet. Currently those models can only simulate speech in the style of certain speech, or music in the style of certain music. This project will twist them together to create an unprecedented new hybrid application of this technology.
