2017 GENERATIVE SOUND INSTALLATION

Dictyoptera is an insect superorder that includes two orders of polyneopterous insects: the termites and cockroaches along with the mantids. Dictyoptera is also a multi-channel generative sound installation. It is a descriptive experience of my time as a privately sanctioned scribe for Select Committee meetings in Wellington, New Zealand.

The audio content is mainly comprised of discreet moments from presentations by Chief Executive Officers at Select Committee meetings. The structure of the audio content is algorithmically generated from the cladogram of the insect superorder. Each discreet moment is subsequently processed and spatialised. The sound installation Dictyoptera is accompanied with the following text (now being developed into a book):

*

There is an exclusive restaurant that serves a single item of food. It is not that they offer a single choice of food that comprises many facsimiles of that choice; it is a single item. And in this restaurant, that item is a piece of pink salmon. Patrons suck on the piece of salmon, passing it round the tables, until eventually the flavour has left the flesh and the experience is akin to sucking on a cube of chalk. And do you know what happens to the person who experiences this? The exclusive restaurant gives that person their money back.

*

Scientists have announced that they discovered multicellular photosynthetic forms of life on an Earth-like planet. I am so happy that I am not alone any more. The company has selected me from a suite of volunteers to occupy the first wave of colonisation. This is how James Cook must have felt. I am selected for my scientific qualities as a control. “Agency has always been a big part of my life,” I say to the workers as they load me in. “Tell them that’s what I said.”

*

Baby Boomers line the docks, kicking sand-covered corpses into the harbour from reclaimed land. They have come to attend a political speech written by an eminent team of alt-right writers on the merits of eugenics. Meanwhile, Generation X has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Millennials, who have burned their passports and are marching this way with a range of blunt instruments. Two small police units will escort the writers during the remainder of their tour.

*

A largely presbyterian population was left unimpressed with a raft of immigrants self-immolating in front of an innovative new feature emerging from the Wellington waterfront. The feature, which resembles a stone sphinx, was submerged until yesterday when it defied gravity and began to hover over the central city. Chief Firefighter Richie Macaw labelled the immigrants’ behaviour as “disappointing.”

*

Two brown marmorated stink bugs started arguing in an oppressively hot elevator. They looked into each other’s eyes. Each gesture was a calculation. This rapidly evolved into a situation where the bugs were barely breathing. Each motion confuddled them. Eventually, they laughed. And with that laughter, came the greatest terror attack the world had ever seen.

*

Doctor Quasi-Parsonical calmly closed his tablet, and proceeded to give his testimony to an empty room. The air conditioner coated the walls with a sticky, translucent cytoplasm, producing what was later described by Quasi-Parsonical as “a chilling effect.” Unfortunately the statement was his only elaboration on the circumstances surrounding the testimony. The Doctor was struck by an autonomous car as he exited the building, prompting a ban on all such vehicles until the technology was considered sufficiently safe. His statement was used in passing by local media.

*

When she turned on the shower, nails burst out from the shower head and clattered onto the cubicle floor. When she poured the contents of her kettle into a cup, nails rattled into the factory ceramic, cracking the inside. She batted her eyelids, tired or in flirtation, in the late afternoon. When she finally fell into bed that night, she fell into a deep sleep upon a bed of nails.

*

The cellphone doesn’t ring, but it does rumble. Like an appendix that is about to burst. The operator is busy, and I am shaking my head. The medical staff are friendly as always, while they scour the plastic coating, unscrew the corners and replace the CPU. I make a derogative comment on their lack of upward mobility within the open class system. Still, they are remarkably chirpy for people who have been working 14 hour shifts.

*

Some time ago we realised that our islands were granules of dust on a terrestrial forearm. A phenomenal mode of transport that only deepened our appreciation of mythology. However, on one of the granules of dust on one of the forearms, there were two cyclopes, and all they desired was to see binocularly. Their respective eyes were reacting, “how do I determine polarity?” So they put their heads together. And what they saw was everything that stares at me when I see them through the screen.

*

The Honourable Jenny Grace’s meetings were immaculately run. However, her face was inscrutable, like that of a randomly turning analog clock. An expression intended to convey rapport would be delivered in a rictus of confusion. People would bubble and swell up in astonishment after being asked to leave, albeit in the most the hospitable manner they had ever encountered. Consequently, her meetings were always termed as broadly successful.

*

The Fat Man was consumed by the Thin Man in a single sitting. Understandably, there were several subsequent tests conducted in confidence on the Thin Man’s bowel movements. One of the more explosive movements was rumoured to be capable of reaching the shores of New Zealand. Fortunately for the small island nation, the Thin Man was unable to locate New Zealand on a world map.

*

An act of subterfuge was not left undetected by several molluscs attached to the chamber wall. Garbled tongues licked themselves over, forming a grand trapezium of soliloquies. The molluscs, famed for their fondness of puzzles, conspired to form a theory relating to unrelated matters. While proving unpopularist at the time, the soliloquies were later used to decrypt the democratic bible into plaintext.

*

The neighbour is coughing away. You hear him from my room, while I navigate around my screen. He sounds as though he swallowed the ocean. Regurgitating chunks of kelp by the breath. Wads of mottled seaweed tumble through his larynx, and he spits. It is a loud spit; all the other neighbours must hear it. The spit has gravitas, has heart, has presence. You hear the railings of the door slide shut behind him as he goes inside. He’ll be back in half an hour.

*

Lord Earnest marched amongst the ulex europaeus, directing sentient ruminant mammal clones where best to machete the invasive plant species. “Go for the base – that’s its throat,” he cried. His voice broke in excitement. He patted down his forehead with a monogrammed handkerchief. Each plant had a mouth, with mustard yellow lips embedded amidst mint green spines, clumsily exposing peaflower teeth typical of the fabaceae. They formed half-words which amounted to what Lord Earnest considered a form of begging. He gazed feverishly into the middle distance, and continued to cultivate.

*

The sex industry is up in arms against a new bill aiming to curb intensified fucking. Lobbyists have failed to gain any traction against the Fucking Bill (No.2), which proposes to limit intensified fucking to designated Fuck Zones. Industry concerns include the economic ramifications of the bill in areas such as tourism, manufacturing and employment.

*

Franz Kafka messaged Slim Shady while eating spaghetti at a mid-range Italian restaurant in Thorndon Quay, off his nut on synthetic cocaine. He and an acquaintance had snorted the drug in a bathroom cubicle, largely because Kafka believed the synthetic product would have no measurable effect. He messaged, “my palms are sweaty,” over and over. Autocorrect altered the text, and upon receipt, Shady determined that the message was merely Kafka Esque.

*

A camera in the corner of the room catches every obsequious display I permit. Its range, direction and resolution is neither excellent, satisfactory nor in need of improvement. I only hope it will successfully document a moment in time that is relative to the wealth of disappointment I feel with our respective functions.

*

It was a debate between politics and pseudo-politics. At the end of the day, politics won.

*

Having written to Inland Revenue and declared my finances contingent upon the circumstances surrounding my own death, I decided to fake it. I drew up all my deeds of debt; the endless debt that constituted the sum total of my physiology. I stuffed the deeds into an envelope. In sniffing, or at least in pretending to sniff, my face became a flint. As my body began to smoulder, I stuffed the envelope into my mouth.

*

Methyl bromide dripped from Busy Bag’s bag. “What’s in a name?” he asked the inspector nervously. “Nothing!” he shot back at his own question, before the inspector had a chance to respond. The inspector sought to double bag Busy Bag’s bag before it leaked onto the conveyor belt. However, the double bag was punctured by the inspector’s car keys, peeking out from behind a flab of fat that separated the contents of his pocket from those personal possessions finding purchase on his gut. The floor was doused in liquid, and staff were evacuated. Busy Bag was given an informal warning via stoning.

*

There was a lively discussion on the Government’s proposal to fund private militia on an equal footing with the New Zealand Defence Force. While some considered security competition as the healthy byproduct of a robust economy, others were concerned that consumers would switch security providers based on branding; most troublingly, branding subsidised by the taxpayer.

*

The Honourable Ronald Toogood is known as a messy eater. He eats a sandwich while he explains his position. Lettuce, tomato, cheese and cold cuts tumble onto the floor from between two limp slices of bread. He does not bat an eyelid, calmly elucidating like the world’s best pilot on the world’s fastest plane. From his apex, a Toogood-shaped silhouette delineates the crumbs and condiments painted across the linoleum. He has mustard smeared along the side of his mouth. He will be seeking re-election next year.

*

It was a birthday party. We danced around a fire. Each dancer focused on an acknowledgement, and a cure. Two were given mud cakes, and I was given a knife. “Cut any way you will,” said one of the elders, “any way will be too thin.” So in that moment I took my cut, headed to the elders, and waited in silence for whose approval I would find.

*

A multitude of sunspots had appeared on the Sun, with the southern auroras observable even in Northland. Lieutenant-General Fuemana knew that the US and Russian kits would now be airborne, prior to the major coronal mass ejection sending Earth into the post-information age. Ruminating on the prospective political instability, high chance of genocide, and possible mass extinction, he settled into a final tweet to the world. “Let them know what he really thinks,” he thought.

*

A young up-and-comer dragged his knuckles up and down the corridors of power. He knocked at every committee door. Apparently the Prime Minister had organised for everybody to take morning tea on Parliament lawns. “But why was I not invited?” He pondered. “Perhaps this is one of those rituals surrounding the parliamentary process?” Processing the thought, and concluding that the ritual was internal, he sat down on the carpet, and proceeded to eat his own fingers.

*