OB-scene, a Live Audio/Visual Performance for Photoplethysmograph and Female Body

Abstract

OB-scene is a performance centred on a live sonification of biological data gathered in real-time with a medical vaginal probe (photoplethysmograph), made by the author. The use of the photoplethysmograph, which takes inspiration from the first medical vaginal probes used for diagnostic purposes by Masters and Johnson (1966) introduces a media-archaeological aspect to this work. Data gathered through the probe is processed and transformed into sound and visuals projected in the exhibition space. OB-scene takes inspiration from Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter (2010) in which she argues that human agency has echoes in non-human nature and vice versa, shifting away from anthropocentrism towards the concept of ‘vital materiality’ that runs across bodies, both humans and unhuman. Furthermore, OB-scene is affiliated with an emerging movement of women and technology called ‘XenoFeminism’ (XF). It introduces the idea of techno-alienation and focuses on the concept of other/diverse desires, new forms of desiring, experiencing something other (Laboria Cuboniks 2015). In this specific work, this takes the form of a technofeminism incorporating the fluid, the non-human and the diverse. In this performance, the body is fused with the technology, rather than empowered or enhanced by technology itself, body and technology become a unique actant (Latour 2009) enabling the audience to experience the sensorial assemblage as a space for communal experience with political implications. OB-scene is as an immersive environmental work where the senses, affect and memory were key features of ‘assemblage thinking’ (Hamilakis 2017).

Sonic Cyberfeminisms, Perceptual Coding and Phonographic Compression

“…Though xenofeminism is not inherently or necessarily concerned with sound and/or music, it has gained some traction in feminist electronic music circles (e.g., when the Twitter account for the women-in-electronic-dance-music collective Female Pressure positively identifies the group as xenofeminist). 5 It has also informed the work of feminist sound artists such as Ana Troisi (2018, p. 270), who describes her performance of her piece ‘ OB-scene [,] a performance centered on a live sonification of biological data gathered in real-time with a medical vaginal probe’, as ‘affiliated with an emerging movement of women and technology called “XenoFeminism” (XF). It introduces the idea of techno-alienation and focuses on the concept of other/diverse desires, new forms of desiring, experiencing something other’.…”