What is at stake when states use mathematical models of listening to regulate the right to move of migrants and asylum seekers? This lecture starts from the so-called “automated dialect recognition”, a proprietary software in use by the German Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge in asylum cases since 2017. My recent work around it specifically focuses on the "spectralization of voice" in the frequency domain, regarding it as a locus of thinking and a site of struggle and intervention. Because the software is not accessible to the public, in my work I try not only to “reverse engineer” the computational models it uses, but also to ask how it arrives at answers to what an accent or dialect is and how an accent defines a specific nation or of an ethnic identity. It is by understanding this software as a material-discursive space in which a (colonial) model of what defines a dialect is applied, that questions about listening, voice, migration, and “being human” can be articulated.

Pedro Oliveira is a researcher and sound artist working with the colonial articulations of (human and machine) listening and the materiality of sonic violence at the border. He holds a PhD from the Universität der Künste Berlin and in 2021 he was a Postdoctoral fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki.   

Limited seating. To register please send an email to projekt@lothringer13.com, subject: Oliveira
Language: English

The event with Pedro Oliveira will take place on the spot at Lothringer 13 lokal.
The 3G rule (vaccinated/recovered/tested) currently applies to all events. Please show valid proof at the front desk. The number of participants* is limited due to spacing rules.

I Did Not See It Coming is supported by Akademie der Bildenden Künste München.