1Hz and the Rest is Noise
A conversation with my computer
2025

Language is communication
Listening
Speaking
Understanding

Language(s) are spoken, written, read, learned and forgotten (les langues, de Talen, die Sprachen, toliki broj jezika)

I don’t know how many exist in the world, but with enough determination and help, I would guess I could count them.
Countable, they may be, but that seems to me to be missing the point.

Language, curiously enough, exists in English as an uncountable noun as well. Not a language, not the language, but simply language. This language is imperfect. What I say may not be what you hear. 

In the act of saying, an idea leaves the nebulous realm of thought, becomes a thing in the world - resting for a moment on the molecules of air through which it propagates through a room - like it is now. And yet it only comes into being insofar as another is there to hear it. Otherwise, having ridden its wave through time, lingering perhaps for a moment as an echo or reverberation, from the source of the river of sound it gushes into an ocean in which the idea is mixed with all else that has been said, done, felt, and ignored; sinking into depths beyond recollection, the crushing weight of a thousand atmospheres and centuries bearing down upon it.

Music is a language, we can all agree on that I think. We listen to music, hear it, and yet we can also write it down.

In this case I’m not writing my music down on staff paper, but as instructions for a machine. After seeding the conversation with a 1Hz impulse - well below the threshold of human hearing - the shifting, unpredictable network takes on a life of its own.

I cannot tell how this machine will react to the instructions, commands, to the code I send it. At best I can make an educated guess. But most of all, I listen for its response, and adapt my own actions and path through the piece accordingly. 

So does language require agency? Is the machine talking back to me, or is it just a roundabout way of talking to myself? I’ll let you be the judge of that.

1Hz and the Rest is Noise
A conversation with my computer
2025

Language is communication
Listening
Speaking
Understanding

Language(s) are spoken, written, read, learned and forgotten (les langues, de Talen, die Sprachen, toliki broj jezika)

I don’t know how many exist in the world, but with enough determination and help, I would guess I could count them.
Countable, they may be, but that seems to me to be missing the point.

Language, curiously enough, exists in English as an uncountable noun as well. Not a language, not the language, but simply language. This language is imperfect. What I say may not be what you hear. 

In the act of saying, an idea leaves the nebulous realm of thought, becomes a thing in the world - resting for a moment on the molecules of air through which it propagates through a room - like it is now. And yet it only comes into being insofar as another is there to hear it. Otherwise, having ridden its wave through time, lingering perhaps for a moment as an echo or reverberation, from the source of the river of sound it gushes into an ocean in which the idea is mixed with all else that has been said, done, felt, and ignored; sinking into depths beyond recollection, the crushing weight of a thousand atmospheres and centuries bearing down upon it.

Music is a language, we can all agree on that I think. We listen to music, hear it, and yet we can also write it down.

In this case I’m not writing my music down on staff paper, but as instructions for a machine. After seeding the conversation with a 1Hz impulse - well below the threshold of human hearing - the shifting, unpredictable network takes on a life of its own.

I cannot tell how this machine will react to the instructions, commands, to the code I send it. At best I can make an educated guess. But most of all, I listen for its response, and adapt my own actions and path through the piece accordingly. 

So does language require agency? Is the machine talking back to me, or is it just a roundabout way of talking to myself? I’ll let you be the judge of that.