Machinic Paragenesis: Experiments in Handling Noise as an Artistic Material

To speculate upon the nature of artworks that produce noise is to re-approach automation in more open-ended terms by subjecting oneself to that which is unknown. Machinic Paragenesis (2023) is a speculative fieldwork project that attempts to enact this “re-approach.” The exhibition documents a creative fieldwork methodology: a series of guerrilla field trips undertaken during a two month residency in Taiwan, where three automated warehouses that deploy biomimetic swarm technologies (automated swarming robots) were of primary focus. Using specific microphones, spatio-temporal frequencies and radio-waves that emanate outwards as noisy labour byproducts
from these sites were captured, rendered tangible and channelled into a body of work. Constituting the “everywhen” nature of noise, this outcome seeks to chart points of tension and symbiosis, that are at once hyper-localised yet ubiquitous, between swarming and capital - two systems of organising nature and labour. This paper employs the Shannon-Weaver model of communication to discuss the emancipatory potential of noise in automated ecosystems. Reflecting on the successes and shortcomings of art that attempts to wield this impossible material, this paper questions: How can art’s apparent compulsion with aestheticising, decoding or pinning down the phenomenological character of noise possibly be of any use, given that noise is by definition, stuff that is unknown, de-organised, and illogical?