Thesis

 In 2020, the challenges of COVID-19 have reasserted governmental strategies the world over in surveilling their population (Tidy 2020). The ubiquity of modern technology and its multifaceted approach to recording our every move is being leveraged by those in power at an unprecedented scale. ‘Politicians are using the pandemic to, in some cases radically, redistribute power to serve their interests.’ (McDonald 2020). New laws and track and trace technologies are being rushed onto an unsuspecting but panicked public. This speed reveals an unpreparedness with no time to reflect on each technology's effectiveness or openness. Unfortunately as Harari (2020) notes ‘Temporary measures have a nasty habit of outlasting emergencies’. 

To understand surveillance’s pervasiveness in contemporary culture we need to understand its technological evolution. Analysing new surveillance mechanisms through Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theories of the rhizome allows us to understand how these new technologies are creating connected data streams that measure our bodies and words - creating digital doppelgangers of ourselves that are harvested and manipulated for gain and power. 

This paper looks at the possibility of sound as a way to form a political resistance to surveillance. It also looks at artists who are utilising sound and designing sonic instruments as a response to ubiquitous surveillance technology. It looks at an array of works that challenge the silent observers of our new digital era in order to understand and reveal the aesthetics of the secret. These artists reside in the hacker community of the post-internet culture and create their own software designed instruments. Instruments to reveal, resist and educate an audience in the artefacts of modern surveillance. 

Social, performative, improvisational and collaborative aspects are activated within these reactionary works. A digital aesthetic emerges that utilises data as its palette and surveillance algorithms as inspiration for new compositions. I look at how the structure of these compositions can reveal how data is heard, restoring listening as a resistance against the binary fixity opinions of digital agents. Performance, and audience interaction of these systems are revealed as improvisations, and the intent of these actions analysed through a lens of political action.