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@@ -105,7 +105,7 @@ Scientifically, machine listening demands enormous volumes of data: exhorted, ex |
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Because machine listening is trained on (more-than) human auditory worlds, it inevitably encodes, invisibilises and reinscribes normative listenings, along with a range of more arbitrary artifacts of the datasets, statistical models and computational systems which are at once its lifeblood and fundamentally opaque.[^McQuillan] This combination means that machine listening is simultaneously an alibi or front for the proliferation and normalisation of specific auditory practices *as* machinic, and, conversely, often irreducible to human apprehension; which is to say the worst of both worlds. |
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Moreover, because machine listening is so deeply bound up with logics of automation and pre-emption, it is also recursive. It feeds its listenings back into the world - (<span class="soundcite" data-id="893380750" data-start="946000" data-end="1390000" data-plays="1">gendered and gendering</span>),(15.46 - 23.10)[^YS] colonial and colonizing, ![raced and racializing](audio:static/audio/halcyon-siri-imperialism.mp3),[^halcyon_audio_1] classed and productive of class relations - as Siri's answer or failure to answer; by alerting the police, denying your [claim for asylum](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956532/germany-refugee-voice-analysis-dialect-speech-software), or continuing to play Autechre - and this incites an auditory response to which it listens in turn. The soundscape is increasingly cybernetic. Confronting machine listening means recognising that common-sense distinctions between human and machine simply fail to hold. We are all machine listeners now. We have been becoming machine listeners for a long time. Indeed, the becoming machinic of listening is a foundational concern for any contemporary politics of listening; not because mechanisation *itself* is a problem, but because it is the condition in which we increasingly find ourselves.[^Abu Hamdan] |
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Moreover, because machine listening is so deeply bound up with logics of automation and pre-emption, it is also recursive. It feeds its listenings back into the world - ![gendered and gendering](audio:https://machinelistening.exposed/library/Yolande%20Strengers,%20Jenny%20Kennedy,%20Ja/Yolande%20Strengers%20and%20Jenny%20Kennedy%20(10)/Yolande%20Strengers%20and%20Jenny%20Ken%20-%20Yolande%20Strengers,%20Jenny%20Kenned.mp3|946000|1390000),[^YS] colonial and colonizing, ![raced and racializing](audio:static/audio/halcyon-siri-imperialism.mp3),[^halcyon_audio_1] classed and productive of class relations - as Siri's answer or failure to answer; by alerting the police, denying your [claim for asylum](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/17/14956532/germany-refugee-voice-analysis-dialect-speech-software), or continuing to play Autechre - and this incites an auditory response to which it listens in turn. The soundscape is increasingly cybernetic. Confronting machine listening means recognising that common-sense distinctions between human and machine simply fail to hold. We are all machine listeners now. We have been becoming machine listeners for a long time. Indeed, the becoming machinic of listening is a foundational concern for any contemporary politics of listening; not because mechanisation *itself* is a problem, but because it is the condition in which we increasingly find ourselves.[^Abu Hamdan] |
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But machine listening isn't exactly listening either. |
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@@ -135,4 +135,5 @@ Another response would be to say that when or if machines listen, they listen ![ |
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[^halcyon_audio_1]: Interview with [Halcyon Lawrence](http://www.halcyonlawrence.com/) on August 31, 2020. |
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[^Virilio]: LIBRARY Paul Virilio, *Sightless Vision* |
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[^Faroki, Paglen]: LIBRARY; Mark Andrejevic, [Operational Listening (Eavesdropping)](https://youtu.be/OxOKlgsc3_M), recorded on August 10, 2018 |
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[^Billy Li]: LIBRARY: Li et al, Adversarial Music: Real world Audio Adversary against Wake-word Detection System (2019). For a good introduction to adversarialism, see LIBRARY Goodfellow |
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[^Billy Li]: LIBRARY: Li et al, Adversarial Music: Real world Audio Adversary against Wake-word Detection System (2019). For a good introduction to adversarialism, see LIBRARY Goodfellow |
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[^YS]: ![](bib:26f7b730-9064-464b-b905-fbe63c5d4e4b) |