Transients is a series of performances that simultaneously work with and against the possibility of a form of media-archaeological listening. They activate a historical object, the Subharchord II synthesiser built by the GDR in East Berlin in 1964. The piece listens to the ways in which its material-technical composition resonates in the present and, more specifically, how its filter design reappears as a constitutive component for the algorithm of the so-called “dialect recognition software,” a proprietary machine learning solution used in Germany since 2017 for cases of undocumented asylum seekers since 2017. Because we cannot listen to how this software listens, engaging with the filter in the Subharchord II allows for sonic and historical juxtapositions at the limits of history, offering a “para-genealogy” of machine listening and its connections with the building of a nation, its people, and, more importantly, its others.
