PLATFORMING VIBES: TECHNICAL, INTIMATE AND POLITICAL PRACTICES OF THE EVERYDAY

Abstract

In this panel, we offer four papers on some of the complex ways in which sound, sensation, affect, and embodiment shape, and are shaped by, digital platforms. This approach does not eschew questions of power as a key concern, but rather foregoes broad dystopian (or utopian) generalizations, pointing instead to specific instances of platformized and platform-adjacent cultural production to see how power manifests in complex contextually specific ways. “Anti-Caste Reverberations of Haryana’s DJs and their Trucks” deploys site-specific physical and digital ethnographic methods in Haryana, to understand the affective interplay between DJ trucks’ anti-caste space-making techniques on Indian streets and its aesthetic and political extensions enabled through platform-based circulations. “Monstrous Toys and Sensory Play” considers the repurposing of children's toys in the creation of sensorially stimulating videos for adults on TikTok as tied to the (typically white, male) Western liberal-humanist orientation to bodily-sensation, while at the same time suggesting a more radically posthuman model of complex techno-ecologies. “AI.Go.Rhythms: Technology, Race, & Culture in the Mix” explores the interplay of bodies and material technologies, by observing a multimedia DJ event, shifting attention from technical sonic practices towards embodied aspects of race and culture, community building, remixing, and algorithmic self-styling: a 'platform' honoring Black/Brown bodies, aesthetics, and world-making practices. “Producing Intimacy in Virtual Reality” applies an autoethnographic approach to examine the presenter’s dates in virtual reality, explaining how intimacy was produced and maintained through specific embodied experiences (sound, interaction, shared space), while also being shaped by the politics of platforms and infrastructures. As each of these papers demonstrate, this broader approach does not forego the possibility of insights which might achieve a broader scale of applicability, but merely acknowledges the micro- as a crucial site for approaching and, to whatever degree necessary, revising prior understandings of the macro-.