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17 mins read 🤓

The Ontological Primacy of Parasitism: Re-thinking the Digital/Analogue Divide in Contemporary Music and Art. An essay in Speculative Parasitology (i).
Paper based upon Rébus/Har$ presentation at the PoM (Politics of the Machines) 2024 conference in Aachen, Germany, on April 25 2024 ]

february 5, 2025

Abstract
We analyse the re-evaluation of parasitism in art and contemporary music as a crucial catalyst for creativity and evolution, emphasizing ideas on the ontological anteriority of the continuous over the discrete, as articulated e.g. in mathematics by René Thom. A deeper understanding of the mechanisms that drive such parasitism may eventually lead to more robust and adaptable AI systems and artistic approaches.

The parasite makes possible
what norm-ally is deemed to be im-possible.
The parasite is a noise that opens doors.

1. Introduction

The multiple and often seemingly counteracting mechanisms of parasitism, viewed from both a host's and a guest's perspective, form a central theme in Michel Serres' Le Parasite (1980), a work that rightly gained increased attention in our era, where parasitism in a manifold of shapes and forms and within numerous world-shaping institutions, is more than merely metaphor. Consider, for example, major social media platforms: we, as users (acting as 'guest-parasites'), access and abundantly use these platforms for free, largely ignoring the fact that simultaneously and knowingly we are being exploited by the platforms' owners and operators ('host-parasites') for purposes that are largely beyond both our awareness and control. [ * ] With such global parasitic mechanisms in mind, so pervasive in today's socio-political landscape, this note focuses on the ontological primacy of parasitism over what is considered 'normal' and 'computable' in contemporary music and art. We illustrate this perspective by highlighting parasitism as an analytical tool capable of dissecting the symbiotic relationships that shape various aspects of the dynamics within experimental (or, as we prefer to term it, 'speculative') fringe music.

2. Parasitism as a Creative and Evolutionary Force

The otherness of a parasitic element entering and then settling, sans invitation, in an environment arranged and shaped by convention, acts as an equaliser. Parasites provide opportunities for other voices to be heard, other perspectives to be seen, by disrupting and questioning (some, and sometimes all, of) the prevailing structures of power. Think e.g. of live coders and hackers 'cracking' the black boxes that multinational industries sell as instruments and tools. Parasites here become agents of inclusivity, fostering more egalitarian environments for musicians and audiences alike.

The idea of parasitism as a creative and evolutionary force resonates with the thought of mathematician René Thom, who prioritizes the continuous (the living) over the discrete (the digital), when he writes [Thom, R., 1975] :

"We could relate all vital phenomena to the manifestation of a geometric being that we would call the vital field (just like the gravitational field or the electromagnetic field); living beings would be the structurally stable particles or singularities of this field; the phenomena of symbiosis, predation, parasitism and sexuality would all be forms of interaction and coupling between these particles."

The conception of the world through the prism of the digital (the discrete) will always hit a barrier, as recently e.g. also the logician and epistemologist Giuseppe Longo again pointed out in his Le Cauchemar de Promethée (The Nightmare of Prometheus: Sciences and Their Limits). Longo reminds us that formal systems (whatever their computational power) will always be incomplete. In their foundational works from the 1930's, Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, and Alan Turing lay bare the limitations of mechanization and computability, as they show that formal systems for mathematics and formal mathematical proofs (and therefore, as an immediate corollary, our programming languages and algorithms) cannot account for all of reality's complexity. They are are intrinsically incomplete.

In formal mathematics as it was circumscribed by David Hilbert and other mathematicians around the turn of the 19th century, there were basically two such formal 'systems.' The one that we will denote by 𝒮 consists of finite meaningful statements and methods of proofs (like a programming language and programs that run on your digital laptop).

𝒮 involves all that can be done discretely: all thinkable ways in which, with a pencil and a gum, we can - according to mechanically executable rules - scribble down and erase symbols on pieces of paper (i.e., be a 'Turing machine').

The second one, denoted by 𝒯, allows idealised and transfinite (involving 'more than the mere finite') statements and methods, like that of continuity, infinite sums and limits, Georg Cantor's transfinite numbers, that extend our counting beyond the countable infinity 𝝎 of the natural numbers, on with 𝝎 + 1, 𝝎 + 2, 𝝎 + 3, …, things that do not seem to correspond directly to some finite pattern on your paper piece.

Hilbert suggested that, by means of formalisation, one could show that there was a way to make these correspond to 'finite patterns', so as to surpass the 'transfinite character' of 𝒯 in the formalism, manipulating signs and symbols in concrete manners: 'just the sort of finite activity that one wants 𝒮 to reason about'.

Hence Hilbert's goal (or more correctly, the goals of what became known as 'Hilbert's program') was to prove the following conservation result, and proof it within the system 𝒮: if in 𝒯 we can establish a meaningful assertion in the language of 𝒮, then we can also establish that assertion within the system 𝒮 itself.

Now of course we must agree on what it means for an assertion to be 'meaningful' but given a narrow enough construction of 'meaningful', it was assumed that the conservation of 𝒯 over 𝒮 would follow from a proof in 𝒮 that 𝒯 is consistent.

Kurt Gödel's first incompleteness theorem however showed that Hilbert's hope is illusory. Gödel constructed a sentence that satisfied a very reasonably narrow criterion of meaningfulness, and was readily recognised as true, hence a theorem in the formal system 𝒯, but not provable in 𝒮.

Formal incompleteness becomes even more striking when we try to model the living. In Le Cauchemar de Promethée, Longo convincingly argues that the idea of modelling the living through machines that represent and manipulate formal systems (like the computing machines that surround us today, all of which are Turing machines, including the ones that generate current forms of Artificial Intelligence) is futile.

Digital modelling, by its discrete nature, struggles to capture the continuity and richness of the living, as it faces a gap comparable to the one formally established by Gödel between 𝒯 and 𝒮, and that between the continuity of geometry (the uncountably infinite) and the always countable discreteness of arithmetic. As said, this echoes the viewpoint of mathematician René Thom (Field Medal 1958). The ontological primacy of the continuous over the discrete is a central idea for understanding parasitism as a manifestation of the living, irreducible to simple discrete, digital data. In this context it is also important to note that living systems are marked by chaos and uncertainty, as established in chaos theory, following the works of Poincaré, Hadamard and Lorenz. Unlike the stability of digital systems, uncertainty and unpredictability are essential characteristics of living systems and creative processes.

We note that, remarkably, Alan Turing connected such ideas with digital stability already in his seminal paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence [Turing, A., 1950]:

"The system of the 'universe as a whole' is such that quite small errors in the initial conditions can have an overwhelming effect at a later time. The displacement of a single electron by a billionth of a centimetre at one moment might make the difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later, or escaping. It is an essential property of the mechanical systems which we have called 'discrete-state machines' that this phenomenon does not occur."

3. Parasitism in Techno-critical music and sound art. A Case Study

As a concrete example, we will try to confront our sensitivity to Thom's work and ideas on the gaping gap that separates the continuous from the discrete, with our own practice in the creation of technocritical music and sound art [Schellinx & Ferrand, 2020], rooted in the (human) hijacking of both analogue and digital machines and flows. The ontological precedence of the analogue over the digital actually is almost self-evident: analogue circuits predate their digital cousins, and quantum mechanics manipulates wave functions that are continuous representations of the world: it is from this continuous soup that quantification emerges. And, indeed, probably no one will deny the ontological primacy of noise over music. We see this primacy resurface in a vast range of contemporary sonic art forms, where creators embrace the analogue's living imperfections, deviating from traditional tonalities and rhythmic patterns, and thus aligning with the idea of the continuous, akin to the organic and unpredictable nature of the living, parasitically infiltrating established orders of musical composition. The sonic parasite thrives on the host of tradition, ready to inject a vitality that transcends the boundary of discrete musical elements. It embodies the living essence of sound and continues to resist confinement within algorithmic constraints.

Navigating through the diverse sonic territories inhabited by musicians, where unconventional sounds and unconventional collaborations flourish, we readily identify parasites being far more than just a nuisance, than mere entities of disruption. Parasites, inherent in the analog transmission of a signal and crucial in our artistic approach, are not simply reducible to random noise: these parasites are catalysts for creative interaction and mutual evolution. They crucially contribute to the very essence of artistic performance, much like living and social processes cannot be conceived without the unforeseen, without a parasitic dynamics. Parasitism is a necessary ingredient of evolution. (As an example, consider the emergence of a virus within the well-oiled machinery of neoliberal globalisation and the (discrete) governance by numbers. Also it is fascinating to note that parasitic agents likely are major evolutionary drivers for biological complexity, cf. [Seoane and Solé, 2023].)

Magnetic tape, and more precisely, the audio compact cassette, developed by the Dutch ir. Lou Ottens and his Philips R&D team in Hasselt, Belgium, in the early 1960s (cf. [Schellinx, 2013], the same team, b.t.w. somewhat later also was largely responsible for the development of the digital CD format), provides us with an evident example of a parasitic medium.

Recall that in biology parasitism is defined as an opportunistic form of symbiosis, beneficial to one symbiont, detrimental to another. The audio cassette tape gave the general music lover - maker and consumer alike - an affordable means, an easy to use and readily available tool, with which to penetrate and parasitise the music industry, in all of its guises: that of producer and manufacturer, as well as that of distributor and seller.

Also the act that is more commonly called 'piracy' (the evasion by consumers of paying the price imposed by the industry for the right to listen and/or to watch, including authors' rights and mechanical reproduction rights of music, images, words, by copying works without permission) is better seen as a form of parasitism. And as it is rather the technology, in casu the analogue cassette tape medium and the cassette recorder / player, that parasitises (enables one to enter into a parasitic relation), we may also deem the medium, in a pars-pro-toto manner, to be parasitic, and its user to be a parasite. An analogue one.

In a quite similar, even more large-scale, manner, emerging digital formats in the late 20th century and especially heavily compressing ones like Fraunhofer's .mp3 (cf. 'Napster days'), acted parasitically, and allowed its users to become (digital) parasites.

Yes, we all are parasites. Note however that the obvious major beneficiaries of the technological enabling of the 'everybody is a writer, a musician, an artist' illusion (that we have been witnessing over the past fifty years or so, and still is ongoing) are 'the makers, owners, sellers and/or exploiters of the tools needed to mediate such activities', as observed at least already in [Zicarelli, 1992]:

"[W]hile the musician's 'use' of technology may be couched in terms of 'greater control', whatever control he has left at the end is perhaps less than he had before employing technology."

Our (parasitic) counters against the prevailing global technologists' parasitism that we are facing, consists in the re-, mis- and ab-use, the h[ij]acking, diversion, perversion (in French very nicely all together named détournement—the turning away, around, the bending in another direction) of both current and obsolete, of consumer- and professional tools. The core and context of our own musical endeavours - that in earlier writings we identified as 'urban folk' [Schellinx & Ferrand, 2019] - would be unthinkable and pretty much non-existing without (a series of diverse mutations of) these counter-technological parasites. It indeed is fully enabled by an ensemble of parasitic acts, providing a powerful example and clear picture / scheme of some of the mechanisms through which the artists/parasites [para{RT}sites] 'open doors, and make possible what norm-ally is deemed to be im-possible.'

Parasitism thus itself becomes a - not just metaphorical - tool, enabling us to dissect the symbiotic relationships that define the dynamics of speculative fringe music, of this urban folk.

It acts through four channels, that are the supporting pillars on which rests the ontological anteriority of parasitism over 'the normal and computable' in the field of our sonic practice:

* parasitism of MEANS, in this case specifically the parasitic use of technology; this revolves around resourcefulness, the use of whatever is available to get 'a job done;

* parasitism of IDEAS, here often ideas taken from avant-garde science and art, acting like memes; it is these ideas that we PARA-CITE, and mould at will, in our own fashion, in acts of intellectual crosspollineation (that we actually find to be acting in both directions (see e.g. [Schellinx & Ferrand, 2019]);

* parasitism of SOUNDS, parasitic sounds. Noise [Attali, 1985], other than mere nuisance, may very well count as the ultimate parasite. It makes a noise when we open a door (literally, but also in a figurative sens), and it is noise that will open doors (cf. [Serres, 1980]). Musically we feel and are free to put to our use any sound we can imagine. Parasitism of sound will include acts of sampling, of glitch, relatively recent practices like 'live coding' with digital sound- and image generating scripts being written and hacked - jammed with - by the artist in real-time [Blackwell et al., 2022], of found sounds, of accidents and errors, covering the full spectrum of audio works and musical compositions in all current genres and styles, including those by composers like Conlon Nancarrow and Tom Johnson. (For this particular channel of parasitism in musical creation, we envision a far more detailed and in-depth study, one that, it will be clear, far exceeds the scope of this first brief note);

* parasitism of SITES. Think here of the creation of one's own space, one's own platform, outside of the usual structures, with the 1970's and 1980's independent art and squat culture as its paradigm. Parasitic sites, para-sites, like, to name one example, La Générale Nord-Est in Paris are living artistic, social and political para-sites fostering artistic experimentation outside the structures of the conventional art-world, places where artists can explore, embrace and celebrate the unexpected without constraints.

'Parasite logic', as the British psychologist Steven Brown calls it in his study of Michel Serres' work [Brown, S. 2002] - we prefer to speak of 'parasite dynamics' - then is what lifts our practices out of the 'manufactured normalcy field' [Rao, V., 2012].

The parasite provokes a new form of complexity through a triplet of meanings that coincide in the engineering of a difference, by the intercepting relations:

* analyse (take but do not give)

* paralyse (interrupt the usual functioning)

* catalyse (force the host to act differently).

Thus, the mechanism of parasitism encourages us to embrace the unexpected, noise, and error. It also helps us to question dominant digital technologies, based on a mechanistic and linear approach. Parasitism criticizes this dominance and encourages looking for alternatives. The parasite's intentional disruptions are loud commentaries that express a need for adaptability and resilience. Techno-critical sound art engages in interventions into the machinations of machines and digital systems, subverting and repurposing such systems through deliberate acts of appropriation and redirection. E.g., a deeper analysis of the aforementioned practice of 'live coding' as an art form in the digital domain that integrates randomness and the unexpected, may well open doors to a new view on and new approaches to programming and technology.

4. Par-AI-Sitism. A prelude.

In the above paragraphs we took a close look at the mechanisms of parasitic intervention, of parasitic agents as liminal entities residing in the interstitial, mediating between object and subject, and bridging the conceptual and the factual. Parasites are relational, they provide a means to sense, re-search and maybe even bridge the gap that separates the continuous (the world drawn in one single grand geste, one stroke) from its discrete, quantified models - two poles between which our world seems to linger. Acting within and through such oscillations, the parasite reveals an essential role: a force of connection and transformation, of different ways to see.

In forthcoming work we hope to further develop this view of parasites as inter-esse (as in-between a continuous—living—world and its discrete, digital projections where disruption and connection may hit upon a creative essence) in a comparative analysis of two large-scale visual art installations, one - 'Youth' - by Anne Imhof, shown in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 2023, and the other - 'Eternal Flame' - by Thomas Hirschhorn, shown about a decade earlier, in 2014 in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

But also for an overwhelming and quickly evolving field as that of artificial 'intelligence' (AI), it seems crucial to unearth approaches that can take into account the complexity and unpredictability of the living. We feel that a deeper understanding of parasitism could help in creating a more robust AI, one that is able to adapt and evolve, rather than simply being a tool, be it a highly complex one, always still based on mechanical, formal, statistical calculation.
Admittedly, for now, this must remain speculation on our side.

5. Parasitism: A Postscript.

__ The parasite is you, is me, is us. Destroy, and then re-surge the poetry of music. Forge a new poetics. The parasite is meme, a ghost of sound, its memory settling in-side. It feeds us and it feeds on us. The parasite is noise, opens doors, continuous to our left, and discrete to our right. Between them, a fragile line, a thin and tenuous threshold, stuck there in the middle, suspended in its midst. This fulcrum, future, go-between we aspire. This parasite we wannabe __

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6. References

Attali, J. (1985) Noise. The Political Economy of Music. University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota.

Blackwell, A. et al. (2022) Live coding: A User's Manual. MIT, Cambridge MA.

Brown, S.D. (2002) Michel Serres. Science, Translation and the Logic of the Parasite. Theory, Culture & Society, 19:3, 1–27.

Longo, G. (2023) Le cauchemar de Prométhée. Les sciences et leurs limites. PUF, Paris.

Rao, V. (2012) Welcome to the Future Nauseous. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/09/welcome-to-the-future-nauseous/ (retrieved January 3rd 2025).

Schellinx, H. (2013) "Ma première cassette était vierge". Celebrating 50 years of compact cassette. http://www.harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00793.php (retrieved January 3rd 2025).

Schellinx, H. and Ferrand, E. (2019) Freely improvised and non-academic electroacoustic music by urban folks. RE:SOUND 2019–8th International Conference on Media Art, Science, and Technology, Aarhus, Denmark, August 20–23, 2019, DOI: 10.14236/ewic/RESOUND19.26.

Schellinx, H. (2025) Eternal Flaming Youth. Imhof vs. Hirschhorn: the discrete, the continuous and their parasitic inter-esse. An essay in speculative parasitology (ii). (forthcoming)

Seoane, L.F. and Solé, R. (2023) How Turing parasites expand the computational landscape of digital life. Physical Review E, 108, 044407.

Serres, M. (1980) Le Parasite. Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle, Paris.

Thom, R. (1975) Structural Stability and Morphogenesis. An Outline of a General Theory of Models. W.A. Benjamin, Reading, MA

Thom, R. (1999) Prédire n'est pas expliquer. Flammarion, Paris

Turing, A.M. (1950) Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, Vol. LIX, №236, 433–460.

Zicarelli, D. (1992) Music Technology as a Form of Parasite. International Computer Music Conference, San Jose, California, October 14–18. pp. 69–72

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notes __ ::
(*) “The internet was supposed to set us free, but it's been hijacked by monopolies that lock us in, strip us down, and sell us back to ourselves.“ (Cory Doctorow, theinternetiscrack.com, and many others, in similar words) [ ^ ]

tags: parasitism

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