The Sonic Interface to Precarity

This is the transcript of a talk I gave at the Border Control symposium hosted by the New Media Caucus in fall 2019. Apologies for any messy/missing citations…

Music functions as an interface of sorts. It is where we meet parts of our inner lives and parts of the world (both metaphorically and literally) to which we wouldn’t otherwise have access. It is also a coping mechanism as well as a border, helping us hear certain things and keeping out other things. This paper will examine how music mediates our relationship to the world and to our own subjectivities. In particular, it will consider the relationship between music, affect, and political economy, as well as the role of music in modulating the metabolic processes of humans and societies alike.

Sound, Music, and Metabolic Modulation

In 1967, Alfred Tomatis, a renowned French physician, went to visit a very tired and seemingly sick group of monks at a monastery in France.

“As he described it, “seventy of the ninety monks were slumping in their cells like wet dishrags.” After examining the men and taking their histories, he discovered what he believed to be the source of the problem. In the wake of the Vatican II reforms authorized by the Catholic Church in the mid-’60s, a young abbot, newly arrived at the monastery, had decreed that the brothers should abandon their traditional practice of singing Gregorian chants six to eight hours each day and instead use the time for more meaningful pursuits. Tomatis… immediately surmised that the chanting had functioned as a way to energize the monks by “awakening the field of [their] consciousness.” He suggested that they recommence chanting; within five months the brothers were fully recovered from their lassitude and had resumed their regular routine, which included only a very few hours of sleep.” [1]

This account is reminiscent of many similar stories about what some have referred to as the metabolic power of sound — the way in which sound actually may participate in the sustainment of life and in the modulation of particular psychological and physiological aspects of human existence.

In 1962, Andrew Neher published a now classic study, “A Physiological Explanation of Unusual Behavior in Ceremonies Involving Drums,” which examined “specific beats and pulsations of the sounds intrinsic to certain cultural rituals in an attempt to understand the corresponding ritual responses.” Neher tried to reproduce the conditions of drum ceremonies he had studied as an anthropologist, but in the lab.

“Neher hypothesized that the spontaneous firing rate of certain nerve cells in the brain can be reinforced or increased in frequency through a phenomenon he called driving. He also revealed that secondary rhythms, supporting the main rhythm, have a greater and more varied effect in eliciting a response. During experiments, subjects hallucinated vividly.” [2].

There is a long history of the use of sound to engage and alter the physical and psychological metabolic processes of both individuals and groups. These date back to the earliest days of human civilization, and include Tibetan Singing Bowls, Sacred Flutes from New Guinea, Bija mantras, and countless other examples (none of which I claim to be an expert in).

By the 1960s, attempts to subject the healing powers of sound to western scientific inquiry had begun. And, by the 2000s, highly regarded physicians, such as Andrew Weil, M.D., Director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, openly began practicing sound healing (Caballero 2014, p.135). In 1999, Dr. Mitchell Gaynor, who was Director of Medical Oncology at Strang Cancer Prevention Center and Professor of Medicine at Cornell’s New York Hospital, published The Healing Power of Sound, which chronicles his integrative cancer treatment practice and contextualizes his techniques within their roots in Tibetan, Native American, Hindu, Sufi, and Kabbalistic cultural practices.

Listening to Taylorism: the Muzak Corporation and its Stimulus Progression

But in the 1930s, researchers were studying another kind of metabolic sound. Jones and Schumacher call it “functional music” (1992), which works as “an agent of cultural reproduction.” [3]

Functional music is epitomized by the output of the Muzak corporation, which, through the power of music to affect workers’ psycho-physiological states, presented itself as the perfect companion to the Taylorist management systems of early and mid 20th century America.

Frederick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911) changed the way American industry would operate in the early-to-mid 20th century, demonstrating how productivity could be radically increased through “a more rational organization of factory time and space, and through control of each step of the labor process.” Taylorism transferred knowledge from the factory floor to management, and then applied this knowledge to the bodies of the labor force through various cultural and technological changes [4], including sonic ones.

By the end of World War II, millions of British and American workers were listening to music in their places of work — and the Muzak corporation had developed different musical programs that were piped into workplaces in various industries, from hospitality, to corporate offices, to heavy industry. Then, the Muzak corporation created its most famous innovation, the Stimulus Progression.

“The basic rationale for stimulus progression was derived from military research conducted in the early 1960s, the findings of which suggested that background music improved performance in ‘vigilance tasks’ such as keeping track of targets on radar screens… It was found that music selections programmed in ascending order of ‘stimulation’ made workers more consistently alert and attentive. This was subsequently confirmed by Muzak’s own research, which suggested that music played in a planned sequence, progressing from less to increasingly more stimulating songs, had a much greater effect on worker efficiency than did a randomly programmed sequence.” [5]

The Stimulus Progression draws on a “fundamental observation of modern industrial psychology, the Yerkes-Dodson Law,” according to which “optimal performance is attained with a median level of arousal. Too much arousal distracts the worker, while too little leads to inertia” [6]. The idea was to offset the standard level of arousal in any given workplace situation such that median arousal could be maintained, and the Muzak corporation knew that, strategically combined with periods of silence, music was the perfect way to do this. Observing that levels of arousal change throughout the day, Muzak created the “Stimulus Progression,” “varying musical energy levels over fifteen-minute segments followed by either thirty-second or fifteen-minute long periods of silence.” [7]

Muzak created a “stimulus value” for every song in their catalog based on an analysis of instrumentation, tempo, genre. They would then “modulate [the] level of stimulus during the day to offset decreases in worker efficiency during mid-morning and mid-afternoon slumps. The order of the Stimulus Progression was crucial: studies showed that played backwards, it would put listeners to sleep.” [8]

“The Stimulus Progression was based on the human heartbeat, an average of 72 beats per minute at rest. Playing music faster stimulated listeners, but constantly doing so would make them nervous. Thus, the Stimulus Progression started below 72 bpm, rising during the course of the program.” [9]

But as Taylorism gave way to a more flexible post-Fordism and precarious neoliberalism, Muzak’s Stimulus Progression seemed out-of-step with the increasing individualism and personalization of both labor and commerce. It seemed even further behind within the rise of postmodernism, Reagan-era privatization of just about everything, and the realization that, of course, all laboring bodies are not the same.

Freedom and Coping through Neoliberal Vibrations

In his influential book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Fred Turner chronicles how the 1960s countercultural emphasis on freedom and the pursuit of one’s own “enlightened self-interest” (John Perry Barlow) formed a harmonious bond with the horizontalism of cybernetically-infused computing research that emphasized self-organizing systems [10]. Originally a move against the gray-suit conformity of American culture at the time, the individualist bent of the Counterculture (and its anti-politics after its split from the New Left), was recuperated by neoliberalism via consumer diversification, the merging of leisure time with work time and the flexibilization of labor, increased personalization and the attendant surveillance and data capture that it required, and so on. The countercultural mantra of “being oneself” played perfectly into the ongoing privatization of risk and the erosion of the welfare state, emphasizing the optimization of the self and the metrics systems required to do so.

In many ways, the Counterculture sowed the seeds for the Silicon Valley libertarianism that has wreaked so much havoc on everyday life today. This techno-libertarian anti-politics has always operated under the guise of liberating the individual, freeing us to be heroic entrepreneurs of ourselves. (See, for ex., Nadesan, the Neoliberal Governmentality)

The counterculture’s individualist anti-politics can also be found in the approach to music adopted by William S. Burroughs. His use of recordings of Joujouka music — trance-inducing music believed to have healing powers from the “foothills of the Ahl Srif mountain range in northern Morocco” — to achieve altered psychic states similar to that which he experienced when on ayahuasca echoes the approach of today’s practitioners of integrative medicine.

Here, any aspiration of social transformation is secondary to (or an effect of) the liberation of the individual. Genesis P-Orridge (RIP!), whose founding of the genre of industrial music was influenced by Brion Gysin and Burroughs, wrote in 1988 that “we should eventually like to invent an anti-muzak” that uses industrial sounds “to create rhythmic patterns and structures” that incorporate the “liberating effects of music by unexpected means.” In other words, “[a] distorted mirror reflecting [M]uzak back on itself.”

Decoder, a German film inspired by the cut-up techniques of Burroughs and Gysin, presents the viewer with a near-future in which a restaurant chain has figured out a perfect music (muzak) to create docile and obedient customers. The main character identifies the modulatory power of this music and decides to create sounds that subvert it, eventually creating an anti-muzak that incites riots across Germany. The primary concern in these projects remains liberation of the individual, and the potential for societal change that might stem from it.

The aspirations for a violence-inducing “anti-Muzak” and books like The Healing Power of Sound speak to the different ends towards which the psychophysical modulatulatory power of sound can be put, though both endeavor to liberate the individual. While Decoder has wallowed in semi-obscurity, however, the new-age-y techniques of vibrational healing have been folded into the hegemonic (and very profitable) mindfulness industry. Now more than ever, the metabolic power of sound is aligned with the privatization of risk and it is used to support the individual as the primary actor in neoliberal capitalism.

Mark Fisher calls this the “therapeutic imaginary.” He describes Britain’s New Labour government and the approach to emotional distress it adopted, which seemed to subvert the reserved personality that was the hallmark of traditional British society. Seemingly radical in its openness about emotion, New Labour also defined the contours of appropriate and healthy responses to stress, and then developed metrics by which those might be assessed. [11]

“The problem” with the therapeutic imaginary, Fisher writes, “is not that it posits subjects as vulnerable, haunted by events in their past lives, and lacking in confidence. Most subjects in capitalism — including those in the ruling class — fit that description. The problem with the therapeutic imaginary… is its claim that these issues can be solved by the individual subject working on him- or herself.” [12]

Coping, vibrationally

Some recent neuroimaging research has shed light on the “science” behind the power of music to help us with affect regulation, to cope with stress, anxiety, depression, and fear — key affective hallmarks of the neoliberal precariat. These studies confirm, to an extent, what the medically-credentialed practitioners of integrative medicine have surmised about the role of sound in therapeutic treatment.

Although “self-directed uses of music in affect regulation are not fully understood,” one study explored “music listening strategies in relation to mental health,” concluding that certain listening habits are healthier while others are “maladaptive.” [13]

In 2016, writing in PLoS ONE, Lepping et. al., using advanced neuroimaging techniques, found that “people with depression may process emotional auditory stimuli differently based on both the type of stimulation and the emotional content of that stimulation. This raises the possibility that music may be useful in retraining anterior cingulate cortex function, potentially leading to more effective and targeted treatments.” [14] Sachs, et. al., working around the same time, found that “white matter connectivity between the sensory processing areas … and social processing areas … explains individual differences in reward sensitivity to music.” In other words, differences in how different parts of our brains are connected are related to our musical aesthetic preferences and affective responses. [15]

Spotify and the musical/political-economic homology

The regulation of emotion is clearly the goal of Spotify’s curated playlists, such as “chill vibes,” which are recommended to users across the globe. While not operating according to a pre-programmed plan for a given sector of industry, Spotify, like Muzak, aspires to its work in the background of everyday life.

“Jorge Espinel, who was Head of Global Business Development at Spotify for five years, once said in an interview: “We love to be a background experience. You’re competing for consumer attention. Everyone is fighting for the foreground. We have the ability to fight for the background. And really no one is there. You’re doing your email, you’re doing your social network, etcetera.” In other words, it is in advertisers’ best interests that Spotify stays a background experience.” [16]

Despite the similarities between Spotify and Muzak, the shift towards sound as a hyper-personalized quasi-therapy administered by individuals to themselves as part of their regimen of neoliberal self-optimization might be best exemplified by their differences. I’d suggest here a homology: Muzak is to Spotify as Taylorism/Fordism is to Neoliberalism/Precarious Labor.

Both Taylorist management techniques and Muzak approached employees as a group — recall that Muzak used the average heart rate as a starting point for its Stimulus Progression. Employees at the apex of Muzak’s influence were not individuated — but they were able to be approximated through averages and managerial measurement techniques. The technologies that enabled Taylorism were not ubiquitous nor were they the kind of technologies that could be deployed at both micro and macro scales, unlike today’s gig economy platforms, quantified self devices, browser histories, and all other manner of data “exhaust” that we emanate.

Muzak’s efforts to modulate the affective states of office laborers was not individuated in the sense that individual workers did not receive customized “stimulus progressions” that were tailored to their own biorhythms, neurological quirks, and genetic musical predispositions. Rather, all the workers within a given space were fed the same sounds.

In contrast, Spotify caters to “your” moods and can modulate your individual experience within whatever labor setting you happen to be in — it allows for the optimization of individual experience, helping that individual to become the ideal “self-controlling self” (in Nikolas Rose’s terms [17]) to “calculate itself” and “work better on itself.” Hence Spotify’s increasing focus on moods as descriptors [18]. During her incredible reporting on Spotify, Liz Pelly tried an experiment: she created a new Spotify account and listened exclusively to the “coping with loss” playlist.

“During my time spent listening exclusively to songs about grieving,” she writes, “Spotify was quick to recommend that I brighten my mood. Under the heading “More like Coping With Loss . . .” it recommended playlists themed for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, and playlists called “Warm Fuzzy Feelings,” “Soundtrack Love Songs,” “90s Love Songs,” “Love Ballads,” and “Acoustic Hits.” Spotify evidently did not want me to sit with my sorrow; it wanted my mood to improve. It wanted me to be happy.” [19]

Indeed, Pelly writes, Spotify gives advertisers an advantage because, when advertising on the platform, they will be affiliated with something that is a “positive enhancer,” something that users “turn to for ‘music to help them get through the less desirable moments in their day, improve the more positive ones and even discover new things about their personality.’” [20]

Unlike Muzak, then, Spotify, like the vibrational healing practitioner’s singing bowls, allows us to “self-medicate” through sound. Whatever we each individually need to deal with the horrors of our streamlined, optimized, neoliberal existence, Spotify seems to be able to provide it. Spotify aims to be, not unlike Muzak, a completely personalized “mood-boosting platform.” [21]

Spotify’s focus on moods, its connection to advertisers and the emphasis on its ability to have a positive impact on individual affect allows it to function much like the pharmaceutical industry has functioned within the neoliberal therapeutic imaginary. “The propagation of the chemical imbalance theory,” the psychiatric theory that mental disorders arise from “potentially identifiable deviations from ‘normal’ biological functioning,” writes Johanna Moncrieff, “provides a more subtle means of social control, and supports the neoliberal values of competitiveness and consumerism” as well as the offloading of risk and responsibility onto the individual subject. [22]

“Neoliberal economic policies have been accompanied by increasingly authoritarian social policies,” with the social control of various population segments becoming increasingly subtle and incisive, and with their attendant metrics becoming part of a network of “attempts to police the consequences of economic policies by controlling” those who are the victims of the dismantling of the welfare state [23]. And just like psychiatry blames individual biology (“blaming the brain”) and “impedes exploration of social and political issues,” Spotify’s ability to boost our moods in times of stress may seem like a valuable thing but it leaves unquestioned why our moods must be boosted in the first place.

Conclusion

Spotify is part of a millenia-long history of human exploration of affective and metabolic modulation through sound. In some sense, then, its function at an individual level is nothing new. Its function within society, however, not completely unlike Muzak but also not quite the same, is new and strange. The power and scale of Spotify, both at the macro-societal and micro-individual levels are heretofore unseen by a “music” company (and I use that term loosely here). In thinking about Spotify’s mood-boosting impetus, I think that Genesis P-Orridge’s call for an “anti-Muzak” must retain some resonance with us today. A battle for our society must be waged on all fronts, and this includes the sonic.

Individual and collective modulation of psycho-physiological or neurological properties is not itself inherently bad. But instead of helping us build solidarity, commune with the spirit world, or resist the tyranny of capitalist optimization and appropriation, Spotify primes us to utilize the therapeutic imaginary on ourselves. As the sonic interface to everyday life, it allows us to better participate as atomized subjects in a crumbling and ever more precarious neoliberalism. Its ca pacity to help us develop individualized Stimulus Progressions means we will each follow the beats of our very own drummers right off the edge of the cliff that our society is approaching.

Notes

[1] Gaynor, Mitchell L. 2002. The Healing Power of Sound: Recovery from Life-Threatening Illness Using Sound, Voice, and Music.

[2] Lyttle, Thomas, and Michael Montagne. 1992. “Drugs, Music, and Ideology: A Social Pharmacological Interpretation of the Acid House Movement.” International Journal of the Addictions 27 (10): 1171. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826089209047341.

[3] Jones, Simon C., and Thomas G. Schumacher. 1992. “Muzak: On Functional Music and Power.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9 (2): 156–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295039209366822.

[4] Jones and Schumacher, p. 158.

[5] Jones and Schumacher, p. 159.

[6] Sumrell and Varnelis. Blue Monday: Stories of Absurd Realities and Natural Philosophies. AUDC: 2007

[7] ibid.

[8] ibid.

[9] ibid.

[10] Turner, Fred. 2008. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. 1. paperback ed. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Pr.

[11] Fisher, Mark, Darren Ambrose, and Simon Reynolds. 2018. K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016). London, UK: Repeater Books.

[12] ibid.

[13] Carlson, Emily, Suvi Saarikallio, Petri Toiviainen, Brigitte Bogert, Marina Kliuchko, and Elvira Brattico. 2015. “Maladaptive and Adaptive Emotion Regulation through Music: A Behavioral and Neuroimaging Study of Males and Females.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (August). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00466.

[14] Lepping, Rebecca J., Ruth Ann Atchley, Evangelia Chrysikou, Laura E. Martin, Alicia A. Clair, Rick E. Ingram, W. Kyle Simmons, and Cary R. Savage. 2016. “Neural Processing of Emotional Musical and Nonmusical Stimuli in Depression.” Edited by Sonja Kotz. PLOS ONE 11 (6): e0156859. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0156859.

[15] Sachs, Matthew E., Robert J. Ellis, Gottfried Schlaug, and Psyche Loui. 2016. “Brain Connectivity Reflects Human Aesthetic Responses to Music.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11 (6): 884–91. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw009.]

[16] Pelly, Liz. “Big Mood Machine.” The Baffler. 2019. https://thebaffler.com/downstream/big-mood-machine-pelly

[17] Rose, N. “Governing the Enterprising Self.” 1990.

[18] Pelly, 2019.

[19] ibid.

[20] ibid.

[21] ibid.

[22] Moncrieff, Joanna. 2006. “Psychiatric Drug Promotion and the Politics of Neoliberalism.” British Journal of Psychiatry 188 (4): 301–2. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.188.4.301.

[23] ibid.