The Drone Machine
January 14 2021
"...what I am trying to achieve is a means for transformation of one media that is manipulative of one’s attention in order to instil dogma, to another that is manipulative of one’s attention in order to encourage introspection."
We are constantly allured to the always on culture of the digital. Virtual worlds that flow seamlessly in and out of our physical states and seek to capitalise on our limited attention. Attention is of course the resource and attention is what we are losing in this current climate. Attention is what we need for understanding, for learning, for feeling, for being… It is our vital source for navigating a forever more complex World. To take our attention elsewhere, to divert it, is to disarm its energy. Such diversions weaken our capacity to be in the present, to hold that vital state of concentration that may unleash thoughts for our advancement, for our liberation, for our active being. To divert, is indeed to be lead astray. One of the consequences, and indeed paradoxes, of this always on culture is that we are more often than not turned off.
The Drone Machine is an artistic work that has taken root directly from thoughts on this particular plight. The Drone Machine is therefore in part a response to contemporary Western society where data flows in a liquid manner and we become submerged in its omnipresence. It is a reply to the present day problems of an always on culture that sucks our attention, our data, our time, our resources, our very being. A culture that is driven increasingly by mass online media and medias washing over us with waves of so called information. +
As explained in an earlier post, this work takes emotional and sentiment analysis data from news articles and transforms this into drone music. From a conceptual standpoint, my choice of the drone is in part to express this constant hum of data that washes over us. A mode of music that appears on the surface to be quite drab and bland, perhaps even irritating to some or even intrusively boring. The intention here is quite clear I feel. Mass media is one long, always on, drone of incessant data that is manifestly intrusive, repetitive and, if one is a follower of one media more than another, can be simply one long monologue of utter sameness.
What is particularly disturbing about this onslaught of so called information, is the fact that they have important ramifications on our emotional states. Indeed, it could quite easily be argued that mass media pursues the instrumental installation and maintenance of emotional states as coercive means for controlling the masses. ++ The power of messages conveyed can of course be quite direct and explicit and serve as a way to grab our attention. Yet, it is rather in their more nuanced and subliminal means that hidden agendas take hold is it not? This is where there is a flip side to my choice in the drone.
While I am attempting to express something of meaning with this work, I am also looking to solicit your attention. In so doing, I am following a similar strategy to that imposed by these very medias. However, with a very different agenda. With active listening to drone music, I have found that there is a meditative state to be found. To fully appreciate this, one does need a good set of headphones whilst listening from a computer. Reducing the mass media then to a mode of sound that is minimal is my attempt - first and foremost on myself - to encourage a deeper sense from active and attentive listening. Drone music is therefore a means for bringing my attention back into focus. It helps, as does meditation, to bring me back to a simple state of rest and centrality which is propitious for self focus. Within this context then, what I am trying to achieve is a means for transformation of one media that is manipulative of one’s attention in order to instil dogma, to another that is manipulative of one’s attention in order to encourage introspection.
Although The Drone Machine is involved in concepts and ideas that are clearly political, pointing out perhaps an old yet persistant bark at technology and mass media at large. There is a more positive perspective to what I want to achieve. In reducing media to this mode, I’m searching to broadcasting back to the masses a tone poem of pleasure. One that is directly a mirror image of one’s own calm that can be found in simply listening to what one has to say to the self.
Listen to my latest drone entitled Deep Mind AI
+ The term of mass media here refers to the Internet and includes social media which amplify for the most part and at worst transforms meaning.
++ This thinking comes in part from various sources but started with Adam Curtis’ documentary series, The Century Of The Self. Other sources include Umberto Eco’s Chronicles of a Liquid Society, Hervé Krief’s Internet ou le retour à la bougie, François Jarrigue’s Techno-Critique and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.