Samuel Hertz: "Toxic Aurality"

TOXIC AURALITY – AAG 2017 :: Ecologies of Toxicity Samuel Hertz :: Artist/University of Leeds PART I: TOXIC POLYPHONY To speak of ‘toxic aurality’ is perhaps not an immediately intelligible turn of phrase. As a way of introduction, I want to define how I’m... More

TOXIC AURALITY – AAG 2017 :: Ecologies of Toxicity Samuel Hertz :: Artist/University of Leeds PART I: TOXIC POLYPHONY To speak of ‘toxic aurality’ is perhaps not an immediately intelligible turn of phrase. As a way of introduction, I want to define how I’m using the terms ‘toxic’ and ‘intoxication’ in this paper, and elsewhere in my work. Here, I take the idea of a toxin to be a disturbance lacking any innate positive or negative valuation. It is simply that which disturbs and causes either simple displacement, or complex reactions. Intoxication, therefore, is a state of displacement and expansion – the possibility of an elsewhere and alternative positions. Of course there is an understanding of a toxin as a deadly poison, but I would like to suggest for us here to consider toxicity instead as a catalyst making possible of a range of reactive states – some causing deadly stasis, and some causing 'polyphonic transversality,' the latter being the focus at hand. In the realm of sound, tox Less