tekhnē

This artistic research is a sound and interdisciplinary study which considers the algorithmic mode of herd behaviour in nature and surveillance. It elaborates on the concept of data aesthetics (used interchangeably here with the term artistic sonification) explored in Abigail Toll’s longform composition Matrices of Vision (rel. Shelter Press, 2023). Data aesthetics and music composition provide an effective lens in which to critically perceive data and map a discursive cosmos of structural systems of power that impact our lives. This new project is an intuitive expansion of the knowledge that was generated from the previous study and investigates planetary relationships through the lens of data aesthetics and pastoral music traditions. In doing so, it proposes that such interdisciplinary artistic methods can reveal the psychic and practical impact of power structures on lived experiences and form the basis for social de-conditioning. The preliminary archival research was conducted in the Archives Départementales du Tarn during the tekhnē residency at GMEA in July 2024.

We arrived at dusk, high up on the backbone of Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountain range. Whilst wandering down an ancient rural path, I heard a soft percussive clatter – a sound I perceived to be wind chimes. Though as we descended further, a flock of sheep wearing bells emerged from the darkness. The soothing percussion affected me. At first, I interpreted the feeling as a tranquilised passivity. It was only much later that I perceived it as an awakening throughout which I was fully conscious. I have obsessively reflected on this moment ever since. Shortly before this encounter, I spent three years composing and rehearsing Matrices of Vision (Shelter press, 2023), an artistic sonification of a Swedish higher education dataset. I chose this theme as a way to investigate my experience of alienation within an institutional context. Artistic sonification (also known as data aesthetics) is the act of translating data into sound and can be used for scientific purposes, or as the basis for musical composition. Composer Margaret Schedel says it can offer “an alternative kind of understanding of data which would not be possible using eyes alone”.¹

Sonification follows a set of guidelines and rules in order to produce audio that represents relationships in data. It also mirrors the aesthetic rule-based music-making lineage of Edgard Varèse’s organised sound, which proposes to use new acoustic phenomena and conceptual approaches to music composition. Electroacoustic music is closely connected to science and computation and can help us to process information in more embodied ways (i.e. through sensory experience, intuition and deep listening). Matrices of Vision draws heavily on these themes, as a 40-minute long form ensemble piece composed of stable tones tuned to Just Intonation: a very precise tuning standard based on tonalintervals, as opposed to the 12 tone Pythagorean scale. As one of the ensemble players, I learned from the others who were classically trained to build meditation and deep breathing into my daily flute practice to develop focus and stamina which, as a result, also cultivated a greater sensory and collective awareness. This, in combination with the data aesthetics research I conducted for the piece, trained my critical awareness of my relationship to the world and other living beings.

A year after the encounter with the sheep, I realised my first analysis of this moment was anchored in civilised harmony – a socially constructed myth which could be considered to formulate life as death, mortality and time: a mechanism that influences a widespread spiritual acceptance of categorisation. Here I am speaking to Layla Abdel Rahim’s analysis of civilised society in her book Wild Children – Domesticated Dreams² as a culture that disconnects the self from the outside world, through the categories of domestication, education and exploitation. The bells had not pacified me, they had enacted a sonic intervention. The sound destabilised the alienated ecologies of sheep and humans: it also destabilised the possibility of becoming a passive witness. Rather, the sound ruptured the modes used to herd the sheep. From its destabilisation emerged a mirroring between the self and the sheep, breaking down the categories of alienation. What made this moment so profound, is that it was enacted through a sensory awareness as opposed to a verbal exchange. Words were not sufficient, yet sound was. In acknowledging the complex relationship between the sheep and their surroundings, I as the witness was confronted with their subject position, as well as the social codes that also herd humans.

Humans share similar social tendencies to sheep: they form intense bonds with others in their flock and demonstrate distinctive examples of collectivity when threatened by a predator. When in a flock, the individual sheep move towards the centre of the group in rhizomatic motion to protect themselves. In his article titled Geometry for the Selfish Herd British evolutionary biologist William Donald Hamilton termed this behaviour “selfish herd theory”.³ We see this rhizomatic collectivity among humans play out in protests, whereby autonomous agents become a collective of sounding bodies rotating away from the predator towards the centre. In this sense, the selfish herd theory is applied as a form of protest protection. Such herd behaviour plays out most emblematically during transhumance – the nomadic seasonal movement of livestock between summer and winter pastures. For millennia, shepherds have developed traditions such as transhumance that are attuned to the rhythm of ecological time, rather than within the temporal limitations of civilised harmony. In 2014, Authors of the Journal of The Royal Society Interface published an article titled Solving the shepherding problem: heuristics for herding autonomous, interacting agents. Their shepherding algorithm, they say “reproduces key features of empirical data collected from sheep–dog interactions and suggests new ways in which robots can be designed to influence movements of living and artificial agents”.⁴ In civilised societies, guardians of civilised harmony who are employed to surveil the population, adopt herding techniques to control the movement of crowds and autonomous agents. For example, police control protests by gathering and apprehending those who drift towards the fringes — where civilised harmony becomes less of a certainty.

I began my research in the Archives Départementales du Tarn during the Tekhne residency at GMEA in July 2024 where I gained insights into the traditions, mythologies and economy surrounding shepherding in Albi and the Occitane region. The key words “mouton”, “pastoralisme” and “transhumance” pulled up an endless registry of documents. They included: regulations for the prevention of disease among herds and financial ledgers detailing the global wool import trade operating between France and European colonies such as Australia, New Zealand, Morocco, Algeria, Buenos Aires, and South Africa between 1911 and 1927. A drawing Recherche de la pureté by Jean Giono also rested in one of the boxes. It documents the artist’s first hand observations of the Moroccan and Algerian fronts in the Battle of Verdun ⁵ and depicts sheep as a symbol of the pacifism pervasive among the soldiers as well as his comrades who were herded to their deaths. The term “sheep” is commonly used as a pejorative for those who are perceived to follow; it also appears in Biblical iconography to represent pastoralism and Western European notions of “purity.” Yet Giono shows us the tragic paradox that exists within civilised harmony as the soldier becomes a domesticated agent heeding orders whilst herded towards their own demise.The sheep/shepherd dynamic is one based on a complex set of hierarchical relations where the shepherd performs the role of both guardian and captor. The shepherd is a dynamic class actor whose role and subject position changes across geographies, as: land defenders, first responders to ecological crises, upholders of ancient pastoral traditions and participants in the global meat trade. The shepherd's connection to the natural, economic and political world is significant. From what it seems, their relationship with the earth, nature and economy cannot truly be defined or categorised. However one thing that remains consistent throughout shepherding practices, is the use of sound.

In the future, I plan to gather field recordings, spend time with shepherds, collaborate with researchers in pastoralism and residents from different regions across the world. By learning about music from pastoral traditions, my hope is to explore how sheep and humans – these different ecologies – may resonate with one another on an embodied level, where words fail to support such an encounter. By applying the sonic and visual principles of data aesthetics to the shepherding algorithm in tandem with this field research, I’m curious to know if it is possible to destabilise how data from inter-herd relationships is gathered, analysed and executed for surveillance as seen in the Royal Society Interface’s herding studies. Through this research, I want to find out what is beyond their predictive algorithm and therefore beyond civilised harmony. In translating these questions and data into sound, we can begin to perceive the many dimensions of our social structures and their psychic and practical impact on our lives.