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2020
Urbanomic has received a number of incomplete transmissions from a group in Korea whose work combines study of the work of eccentric thinker Nak Jin Paik with original research on sonic phenomena and digital technologies. The ‘Systematic Irregularity Study Unit’ claims to be on the verge of developing techniques which, if fully realised, could significantly supplement those discovered in the twentieth century by CCRU. After some negotiation, SISU have agreed to Urbanomic publishing some internal documents charting their research in progress: current philosophy for geotraumatised soundheads
Documents originally published in Boryeon Choi (ed.), K-OS (Seoul: Mediabus, 2020).
SISU (Systematic Irregularity Study Unit) studies the coercive mechanisms of historically accreted technologies through intuitive ‘conspiracy theories’ concerning digital culture, and develops methods of reversing these mechanisms through the use of sound, i.e. by amplifying the palpability of uncertain and irregular elements.
[−1] − [0] − [+1]
The everyday life of humans has undergone rapid change since the discovery of electricity and the War of the Currents between alternating current (AC: –1 to 1) and direct current (DC: 0 to 1). Immense power sources sending AC to the ground (Earth: 0) mean that, as Earthlings, we remain subject to intrinsic Earth-perception while, as individuals in a society, we use DC digital devices charged by converting AC to DC. This has created a modern digital culture that enables a global network, on condition that it is charged without being directly connected to the power source. Although digital culture is of course the result of remarkable scientific developments, it is charged with only as much energy as necessary through the Earth, which is a vast ground as well as a source of energy (Ground: GND: 0), before leaving its surface. Digital culture has been capitalised rapidly at the radical speed of the extrinsic effects (0 to 1) visualised by DC charging, and this mechanism of Capital makes us forget the intrinsic conditions (–1 to 0) furnished by the Earth, the fundamental source of energy.
The world of DC, translated into 0s and 1s, or bits and bytes, has replaced the natural composition of sound with bundles of artificial signals directly connected to a culture geared toward the maximisation of Capital efficiency
[0] – [+1]
SISU began with an interest in generating conspiracy theories about modern Capital-friendly digital culture, which develops as an efficient mode of control using the systematicity of nature, the Earth. The world of DC, translated into 0s and 1s, or bits and bytes, has replaced the natural composition of sound with bundles of artificial signals directly connected to a culture geared toward the maximisation of Capital efficiency. We have overcome distance through a global signalling system, i.e. a network, but this has also led to the expansion of the mechanism of Capital. Now, to envisage the maximisation of extrinsic possibility is to anticipate the removal of the human mind from the Earth. SISU considers space colonisation to be concrete proof of this, as its shift from fiction to real possibility seems to have been enabled by the desire that drives Capital and makes the extrinsic effects of DC resonate with the economy. The romantic fantasy of Space Opera, a domain of pure imagination, is unrealisable without the logic circuit of this inexorable mechanism, and the fact that our perceptions, filtered by the aforementioned desire, makes us see everything as temporary or one-off.
– [0] –
Through its seamless imitation of the Earth, digital culture manifests itself as a concrete device that constantly feeds back and reinforces the correlation between filtered perception and blind belief in capitalist rationality. Just as the universe needs to describe Earth in order to describe earthlings, without its imitation of the Earth digital culture itself would be no more than a world full of darkness and noise, ignorant of its origin. However, although this correlation acts as a kind of cognitive prison, a constantly expanding but thoroughly concealed governance system—since we cannot live modern lives in defiance of digital culture—paradoxically, it is possible in digital culture not to imitate the Earth or nature. Efforts to approach the darkness and noise that modern technology, in its imitation of the Earth, fails to acknowledge are fundamental to the desire that constitutes SISU.
The imaginary has become real, and reality has been exiled below the surface of this fully realised but imaginary reality.
SISU is not concerned with environmentalism or anthropocentrism. Modern life, already subordinated to digital culture, is just given to us, like a bank loan we never applied for. SISU’s efforts are more like a sceptical reaction to the idea that we cannot do anything about this situation. The imaginary has become real, and reality has been exiled below the surface of this fully realised but imaginary reality. SISU has grave doubts about the governance system that calls this observation a ‘conspiracy theory’, and is concerned with processes and practical methods for tracing its roots.
[–1] – [0]
SISU assumes that electrically converted signals are never identical to their source—just as when one language is translated into another, errors inevitably occur—and that there is always some irregular noise beneath these microscopic tensions of energy. Noise is something that Capital-centred digital culture constantly tries to eliminate by technological means. Considering that many sound synthesis technologies not only contribute a great deal to digital culture but also filter out intrinsic perceptions, maybe it is also possible to exploit their efficiency to restore those aspects that digital technology tries to eliminate.
This possibility raises the following questions: What would we experience if we could feed back and amplify the irregular noise that Capital-friendly digital culture removes, but with the kind of systematic efficiency enabled by digital technology? What technologies for sound synthesis could enable us to clearly recognise that technologies filter out our intrinsic perceptions? Can we think of this as an attempt to deploy a phase inversion against digital culture?
What technologies for sound synthesis could enable us to clearly recognise that technologies filter out our intrinsic perceptions? Can we think of this as an attempt to deploy a phase inversion against digital culture?
[ – (0 + 1)]
These questions having been posed, what remains now is to experiment. SISU’s agents preserve their autonomy throughout the project so as to not invade one another’s frequency bands, while maintaining their individual approaches to sound synthesis and time control. Each individual’s sound oscillations along the time axis depend on that agent’s own sense of improvisation. However, when adjacent frequencies simultaneously oscillate or collide at the same time, specific tones, neither natural nor unnatural, may be discovered in the noise. The results of our experiments may be fully anticipable within the context of digital technology (which we believe we have mapped out to some extent), but our purpose is to bring about the unexpected result beyond the expected one. Our senses are intuitive rather than analytical, and operate in a temporality different from that of digital analysis. SISU aims to explore the cultural possibility that the phase can be reversed through attempts to amplify such unpredictability in sound, and to study how we can respond to an incipient systematicity which adapts just as quickly as we deviate from it.
This document has been prepared to provide background information to agents conducting SISU’s research.
The information presented in this document can be applied to basic technologies in many fields and used to detect the history and mythology concealed in these technologies.
The information provided in this document was derived during research into Nak Jin Paik’s fragmented texts.
Technology is an interface for humans, a redesigned form of the action of energy on the Earth, whose fundamental reality cannot be fully and accurately grasped.
Technology is not simply given, but always exchanged.
Technology is not invented, but is discovered by way of events that take place between humans with limiters and an environment without limiters.
Once accreted, technology leads the trajectory of human thinking in a specific direction.
The process of the synthesis of a multifunctional technology from multiple technologies distinguished by different uses is the same as the process of the birth and evolution of life.
The human is a product consisting of humanoid hardware produced by the synthesis of carbon compounds and the Human Operating System installed therein; individuals are identified by different serial numbers.
Technology discriminates against humans and humans discriminate against technology.
The heart, origin of all operations
The information processing speed of a central processing unit (CPU) depends on the periodicity of a clock generator that repeats ON (1) and OFF (0) when an electric current flows through it, and this periodicity is expressed as a frequency.
A pulse generator has the same function as the electrical effect that occurs when this happens. The pulse generator is essential to the operation of all digital devices.
The electrical effect is technically the same as the effect of waves produced by water droplets falling on the surface of water.
If the water droplets fall regularly, the waves also exhibit regularity. If the water droplets fall irregularly, the shape and periodicity of the waves changes.
The area across which the waves are propagated depends upon the energy of the water droplets.
Therefore, the amount of energy generated by the impact of a water droplet falling on the surface of the water is very important. The Big Bang, which is presumed to be the starting point of the universe, has basically the same principle.
The graph of the sinc function in Figure 1 below shows a waveform that spreads out in all directions owing to a sudden increase in energy at the centre. Acoustically, an overtone structure is formed depending on the number of spreading waves. Falling droplets manifest a similar waveform to a nuclear explosion, despite the difference in energy scale.
When a specific amount of energy is released in an impact, a wave is inevitably generated. Such an impact selects a certain direction from among a nearly infinite set of possibilities.
Figure 1. Typical graph of sinc function
A wave caused by an unimaginably huge energy explosion has spread throughout the universe. As far as we know, the universe is still expanding owing to this wave, and someday it may reverse into a process of energy compression when it reaches the end of the wave.
This wave created the solar system and the rotation of the Earth, a high-density giant magnet, around the sun. The First System of countless stars scattered across the universe is made by this wave, and the rotation of the giant magnet induces a spiral energy flow. The spiral energy constitutes a Second System wherein the same ratio, expressible as the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio in mathematics, is applied to the Earth.
Nak Jin Paik mentions the constitution of a Third System along with the Second System, a by-product of the creation of the universe.
The creation of the universe is inherently indifferent to human life, and thus appears to humans as cosmic horror. Nak Jin Paik mentions the constitution of a Third System along with the Second System, a by-product of the creation of the universe. The Third System comprises the conditions for the birth, evolution, and maintenance of life (which has formed on the surface of the planet ever since the war between the Sun and the Earth reached a balance of power). The synthesis of life was made possible by the spiral energy emanating from the Earth’s core and the photons transmitted from the Sun.
According to Nak Jin Paik, humans looked to the Sun as a Creator because it provided more stable conditions for their evolution and survival. Which is to say that humans, like all surface-dwelling life, are the result of an armistice between the underlying darkness below the Earth’s surface and the light from the Sun above it. He also thought that human civilisation had progressed in the way that it has—with humans exploiting the material that lies below the Earth’s surface—because auditory perception, a connection between humans and the Second System, was vanquished in its competition with visual perception, a connection between humans and the Third System. However, the fact that modern computers have their own clock generator integrated into a graphic interface that processes visual information together with a CPU demonstrates how the antagonism between auditory perception and visual perception is still ongoing.
While a periodic and continuous signal is called a pulse, a discontinuous, single packet of energy is called an impulse. Pulse also means ‘heartbeat’, and impulse means ‘drive’ or ‘stimulus’. Further, impulse is linguistically linked to the word ‘imp’, a little devil, and is the abbreviation for Indeterminate Mass Particle.
Impulse response, which is used in various techniques of analysis, refers to the degree to which input values in the past contribute to a system’s output in the present. Living human tissue, as hardware that is strongly affected by the Second System, manifests an internal negativity forces from outside when an impending impact threatens to push it beyond a certain stable state.
Nak Jin Paik believed that when technological evolution reached a stage beyond human perception and biological conditions, the humanoid hardware, which had maintained its human form, would no longer function and would be disassembled.
Since the War of the Currents triggered by Edison and Tesla, pulse generators that use quartz as their raw material have increased their performance to over 5 GHz, thanks to the high-density processing of quartz (the cause of the global mineral war). All technologies move toward this same principle, directly or indirectly, in consonance and dissonance with human politics, society, culture, and even biology. Nak Jin Paik believed that when technological evolution reached a stage beyond human perception and biological conditions, the humanoid hardware, which had maintained its human form, would no longer function and would be disassembled.
The reason why all implementations of SISU are audiocentric is in order to ensure they are in consonance with the Second System, before its antagonism with the Third System began.
The origin of branching, myocardial conduction, phylogenetic differentiation and nutrient-providing environments
When the periodicity of the pulse generator is shortened, a specific overtone structure is created following the shape of a single waveform of the repeated pulses. For example, a pulse generator with one particular frequency generates an overtone structure with a specific ratio. Using the generator to generate pulses with different frequencies has the effect of concentrating and dispersing specific overtones, as shown in Figure 2 below. A divider is necessary for a computer because each component inside the computer requires a different frequency for optimal performance. In other words, the divider performs the function of dividing the frequency so that other components can operate optimally by using the overtone structure calculated from the maximum speed of the pulse generator.
Figure 2. Distribution of overtones according to frequency of pulse generator. Frequency: 500 Hz (left), 2000 Hz (centre) and 8000 Hz (right).
SISU believes that certain high-density frequency bands may bands may be involved in all earthly phenomena.
As the interval between the pulses becomes shorter, the overtone structure that is generated starts to have a higher density in specific frequency bands, rather than being distributed uniformly and evenly throughout the bands. The human spine has a different resonant frequency for each vertebra, categorised into three groups of specific frequency bands. Each vertebra of the spine has a different function in relation to the rest of the body. All devices also need different frequency distributions depending on their role and function. In the case of a motor whose maximum rotational speed is physically constrained, only the amount of electric current required for the maximum speed is needed for it to operate. If the amount of current was more than that required for the maximum speed, the motor would still not run any faster than its maximum speed. In the same way, even a person with remarkable abilities, especially superior auditory ability, cannot have the auditory ability of a bat, owing to the structure of the human body.
SISU believes that certain high-density frequency bands may bands may be involved in all earthly phenomena. Expanding upon this assumption would allow us to hypothesise a certain range of specific frequency bands that describe a normalisation curve which conditions all humans.
The repeated contraction of the heart circulates blood to all parts of the body. This blood flow throughout the body may seem to be temporally synchronised, but in reality the flow proceeds sequentially from the inside of the heart. SISU believes that the time delay resulting from this sequentiality is one of the causes of the overtone structure and of sequential events (i.e., impact–dispersion of impact–consonance and dissonance–determination of response). In addition, evolutionary studies demonstrate that various changes that have occurred up to the present can be identified as characteristics of phylogenetic differentiation. A synchronised operation perceived by the human senses is actually a very rapid sequence of unsynchronised events. This suggests that there are always discarded frequencies which do not belong to the overtone structure produced by averaging the frequency bands normalised by the armistice between darkness and light. What humans can grasp is only the effect of the multiple accords between the density of specific frequency bands normalised through these unsynchronised events and the frequency bands within the cognitive and sensory range of humans. Humans cannot distinguish the energy of each and every frequency.
Armistice agreement, demilitarised zone or border, and censorship or discrimination machine
When it comes to the operation of pulse dividers and filters, there is still much controversy as to which one works first. This is because it is unclear whether the filter operates in the Second System or the Third System. The following argument put forward by Nak Jin Paik shows that he does not distinguish between the operation of the Second System and the Third System. However, it is possible to figure out the function of the filter based on his argument, which also provides SISU with a speculative advantage in revealing the underlying context.
In Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, when the God of heaven stretched out his right hand and the human of Earth stretched out his left hand, the expanding darkness met with light as an external signal, and thereby darkness quickly became non-darkness. This contact explains the generation of photocuring agents, the activation of optical fibres, and the birth of the first filter in the relationship between the Earth and the universe.
The first filter allowed only a portion of the darkness to pass through. The rest was blocked from contact with light, or refracted. The darkness that passed through the polarising filter met light again, and subsequently a denser filter was born. The repetition of this filtering process caused a chain reaction in the infinite expansion of darkness and the infinite contraction of light. The Earth’s inner core, outer core, and mantle, the atmosphere and the sea, the birth of single-celled life and the migration onto land are all effects of filtering, created through the chain reaction of darkness and light, unfolding over numerous stages right up to the present moment.
Humans, which are essentially carbon composites produced by finely filtered darkness and light, along with some suspicious artificial manipulations, incorporate specific filters for visual reaction time and for audible frequencies, as well as the filter of a life span. The expanding component of darkness that remains inside humans induces cell division, which promotes unlimited human growth. However, filters produced by the action of light inhibit cell division at a certain point. This inhibition causes aging and corrosion through deterioration, which leads to death. The death of life results in a return to the deep inside of the Earth and to the accretion of darkness, which again increases the expansion of darkness. What we see from this is that the limited life expectancy of humans is determined by light, not by darkness.
Death, referring to the cessation of cell division—that is, the process by which the telomere filter blocks the expansion of darkness inside humans—operates. Stabilisation through constant division and replication, and the balance thus achieved, are the basic conditions for maintaining all organic and non-organic life. This is a DNA program encoded into human prototype cells. A more fundamental problem is the fact that this balance is asymmetrical. What does it mean that the God in The Creation of Adam stretched out his right hand, and that human DNA generally twists to the right?
SISU understands that the filter is an armistice between the Second System and the Third System by way of the war between the Earth and the Sun. It is a kind of tension in the Demilitarised Zone, as well as a censorship device that allows to pass through it only what is permitted by the antagonism between light and darkness.
The filter is an armistice between the Second System and the Third System by way of the war between the Earth and the Sun. It is a kind of tension in the Demilitarised Zone
Since ancient times, the structure of this filter has been described through pandæmonium and pantheon, and the characters, abilities, characteristics, and arrangements of various gods and demons are deeply related to the functions of the filter. Modern science has predicted that this filter is woven by strings that vibrate in response to all energies.
These strings run both inside and outside the range of human cognitive abilities, but they are not accurately identified with the reactions of the brain and the body. Rather, they are naturally connected to reference points among phenomena in the natural world, and present a kind of technical version of the filter structure, such as a net or web.
The pulse divider must distribute energy appropriately to all the components of a machine for it to be fully operational. This is because a signal with correct frequencies needs to be transmitted in order to ensure the stable operation of all sub-devices. The frequency distribution of overtones by a pulse divider of the Second System has a bandwidth with a high sampling rate that lies beyond human cognitive abilities. Thus, the filter needs to operate through the Third System in order to obtain accurate signals with stable frequencies that can be distributed to living things.
The characters, abilities, characteristics, and arrangements of various gods and demons are deeply related to the functions of the filter
The filter has a desired frequency, a value that amplifies the frequency, and a variable called a Q factor—a quality factor—which is a numerical value of the pressure applied to a frequency adjacent to the frequency to be extracted. The higher the Q factor, the more precisely the required frequency can be extracted. In this way, the periphery is removed as a kind of noise, and beings are treated as non-beings. This is the same method by which expected value is amplified by ignoring the difference between exact value and approximate value in engineering mathematics. SISU is concerned by this process of ‘pressuring the periphery in order to obtain what is aimed for’, ‘making the periphery worthless’, and ‘the fact that Q means quality’.
For humans, the specific experience of the world is one filtered through a Q factor of the filter normalised to the human cognitive domain from a wide range of overtones by the pulse divider. Humans, who constantly think about which experience can be consumed as high quality at which moment, have no choice but to continuously engage in selective discrimination, and the direction of movement of mass via this selective discrimination is linked to that of the flow of civilisation and Capital.
Nak Jin Paik identified the originary equality of all the beings on the Earth with white noise, which was emitted from the interior of the Earth without passing through a filter. In opposition to this, he saw ancient music as a device for glorifying discrimination against the world, initiated by Pythagoras, a faithful slave of the Sun.
The flow of everything via waves propagating from the pulse generator, blood flow, sine wave, circular motion, and time circuit
The circular model in Figure 3 below is based on the continuous flow of a wave—an electric current and electromagnetic force. Just as an electric current is the power that enables the operation of machinery, the flow of blood through the heart to all organs is the power that enables the operation of the body. Furthermore, it is also a time circuit, in that it is a model that operates in the same manner on the past, the present, and the future.
Figure 3
Based on the Third System’s schema of visual perception, the area designated by [+1] corresponds to what we see while facing forward, while that of [–1] is what we cannot see unless we turn back. Physically, the limited rotational ability of approximately 90 degrees to the left and right from the front is given because visual perception is used as a standard for overall physical ability. However, the range of auditory perception (corresponding to the Second System) is wider than the limited range of visual perception. In addition, [+1] has an integrating force as the right rotational force, while [–1] has a disintegrating force as the left rotational force. The same principle applies to the effects of DNA replication and the direction of screw rotation. Likewise, the conservatism that seeks stabilisation and the progressivism that seeks change are expressed as right wing and left wing, respectively.
The short cycle became shorter, the density of the impact became higher, and the echo began to outperform the source. We don’t know what is real now.
The basic structure, which is continuously differentiated in waves, is a model of the deterministic flows that have followed one another on Earth up to the present day through the First System (space), the Second System (the Earth), and the Third System (nature and life on Earth exposed to sunlight). Nak Jin Paik argues that the process defined by these flows is a derivative of the First System, and that human civilisation is akin to a bad debt arising from . This establishes the hypothesis that the emergence of Capital is essentially a consequence of a state of [+1], or the action of energy from the Sun. Human psychology and perception work with the resulting pattern, which has a long cycle (e.g., the mythical narrative of the war between God and the Devil, the Sun and the Earth, and Good and Evil), by transforming it into the same pattern within a very short cycle that is repeated, as shown in Figure 4. After all, over time, everything only differs in scale. The deterministic pattern itself remains unchanged.
Figure 4. Depending on the length of a cycle, only the density of a pattern differs while its form remains unchanged.
Owing to the accumulation of these processes over time, we are not able to imagine any machines that do not serve Capital, or any technology that does not aim at profit. SISU regards this current situation as an ominous sign that information has been concealed for some unknown reason since ancient times.
The circular model plays the most important role in the implementations of SISU and has also been applied to the SISU Manifesto. Furthermore, this model can be applied to human politics, economy, society, culture, and life. By tracing the historical establishment of humans and human civilisation (which are subordinate to the Third System) back to the First System, one can grasp the one-way flow which otherwise appears only as the predictable values of the visual world, the world of light. Accordingly, the model is valid for identifying what has been abandoned, discarded, and concealed by the normalisation curve induced by the one-way flow.
The most important thing to be aware of in using the circular model is that the factors that occupy a position within it can never be fixed. The factor that once occupied the position of [+1] can be moved to that of [–1] at any time, making it deeply related to questions of time and speed. In the temporal dimension, [+1] moves through [0] to [–1], and constantly moves between [–1] and [+1]. In the carrying out of this movement, the position of [0] is the space where all exploitation occurs and all accumulation takes place, being emptied and refilled, when everything starts and everything stops. Therefore, the change by [+1] yesterday shifts to the change by [–1] today, and this cycle works in units of one year, one hour, one minute, and one second. All information, experience, and consciousness follows a periodic pattern of change in the overall flow rather than remaining in a single, secured position. The overlap of patterns leads to an increase in changing energy, forming different cycles of the same pattern, which in turn extends to the levels of technology, society, and the nation.
Figure 5. L, M, and H refer to the filter in the low, mid, and high frequencies, respectively. C, T and L refer to the cervical spine connected to the neck and head, thoracic spine connected to arms and upper body, and lumbar spine connected to legs and lower body, respectively.
The above can be summarised as shown in Figure 5. What can be seen from the schematic diagram of the pulse generator, the pulse divider, the filters and the circular model flowing therein is that an arrangement similar to a more granular pulse generator is found when a system is analysed anatomically. Just as life has evolved from a single cell, a very short wave will be driven to change in a similar way. In conclusion, the purpose of all implementations of SISU is to create a pattern that deviates from a deterministic pattern on the assumption that the present system is subordinate to the deterministic pattern which is an original waveform. In this way, it is possible to imagine the structure of a pattern that uses auditory perception to correct a trajectory derived from a nondeterministic pattern, or a deterministic pattern that is closer to synchronisation with the Second System.
It is a matter of some controversy whether or not all of the information in this document counts as scientific, but such controversy is itself integral to SISU’s overarching goal of trajectory correction.
This user guide is under continual revision.