Notes on Mad Listening
An Audio EssayFor a full transcript, please visit:
Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry
The image above was generated by AI using the phrase “Mad Listening.” On an abstract digital background of purple and green swatches, there are glitchy renderings of a warped pair of headphones, with cords trailing out of frame.
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This audio essay is an attempt to illustrate my lifelong experience of non-normative listening, which sometimes takes the form of an active practice (in listening “against the grain” of psychonormativity) and, at other times, comes on suddenly in a moment of disturbance and disorientation. By depathologizing and demedicalizing madness, my goal is to emphasize the persistent ambiguities and slippages of auditory perception that are not so easy to taxonomize.
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Readers
Matthew Tomkinson
Elissa HansonSound Design
Matthew TomkinsonWeb Design
NOML Studios -
This project was completed with the generous support of the Public Scholars Initiative (PSI) at the University of British Columbia.