SOUNDS OF A WALL

HEADLINE

Can we predict war through sounds? Everyday we encounter words, definitions that become sounds. We call this new world »post-truth«, how will we call it next? Can the analysis of our virtual soundscape tell us what will happen next?

CONCEPT TEXT

Can we predict war through sounds? Based on an idea presented by Herman Hesse in Der Glasperlenspiel, R. Murray Schafer mentions in Chapter 10, The Soundscape:

»For some time I have also believed that the general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it and may tell us much about the trending and evolution of that society.«

According to the Oxford dictionary, last year’s most used word was »post-truth,« a concept that very much exemplifies what our society was experiencing world-wide. A lost of faith in truth, a world, where we can easily found more information and points of view regarding myriad subjects, but also a world where we can get easily lost in the media. Our soundscape is now becoming a virtual environment composed of sounds but we most keep in mind that words are also sounds.

The post-truth is now becoming a truth in the border between Mexico and USA, for some time now, Mexico has been in a drug war in collaboration with USA. We export drugs but they give us guns. These environment could be easily translated into a soundscape which I wish to hack. The piece is going to attempt to predict what will happen in this year through the sounds of music, media, demonstrations, etc. with an everyday analysis of sounds related to Mexico and USA. The results will be daily published in a website. We will be able to listen to the post-truth before it has happened, like we attempt to do it in the 2016. Our virtually environment needs to be hacked, in order to understand our present and change our future, the world is moving too fast so we need to get ahead of it.