Presented at the Sensotra pre-seminar "Sensory Transformation" at Stara elektrarna, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Sensotra has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No 694893). See http://www.uef.fi/en/web/sensotra. Abstract: In this talk, I will attempt to conceptualise the sensory realm as a ”commons” – as something that is produced, managed, and consumed by multiple actors simultaneously – and as a space where many kinds of seemingly incommensurable interests and valuations converge. Historically, the commons referred to shared natural assets such as grazing lands and community forests. The concept was translated into modern political theory in the 1960s, when ecologist Garrett Hardin described the looming ecological catastrophe as ”a tragedy of the commons”, a situation where practically unlimited access is granted to essentially limited resources. Later, with the emergence of the digital infosphere, the scope of inquiry was extended from natural resources to human-made resources such as knowledge and cultural artefacts. The research on commons has emphasised factors such as the dynamics of social interaction, the institutions of decision-making and the practices of sharing. Now, to depict the sensory as a commons can be seen as a performative that unveils profound ontological and onto-political implications. In particular, it begs questions of the accepted uses of the sensescapes, of the conditions of their sustainability, and of the asymmetrical agencies and power structures in ”appropriating” the sensory.

1. Juhana Venäläinen
PhD, post-doc researcher
University of Eastern Finland
juhana.venalainen@uef.fi
SENSOTRA Pre-seminar "Sensory Transformations", Stara elektrarna, Ljubljana, 3 July 2017

2. What would it imply to understand senses,
sensing, or the sensory as
”common” / ”a commons”?
What kind of methodological, epistemological,
ontological and even ethical consequences
might it carry with?
How and why would it ”make sense”?

3. — ”Common has an
extraordinary range of
meaning in English, and
several of its particular
meanings are inseparable
from a still active social
history.”
(Williams 1983, p. 70)
— Lat. communis: ”shared
by all/many” Jean-François Millet: The Gleaners (1857)

4. Commons =
— Resources shared by a group of people
— A third form of “property” (partially) outside the market
and the state
— However, they do not only constitute a resource system,
but also manifest particular social logics and cultures of
sharing
— Subject to social dilemmas and conflicts – e.g. “tragedy
of the commons”, where unrestricted use of limited
resources open to anyone “brings ruin to all” (Hardin
1968)
(Hess & Ostrom 2007; Barnes 2003; Hardt & Negri 2009)

5. — Traditionally,the commons referredto natural resources such
as grazinglands, forests, and fisheries
— In 1990s, understandingof Internetas a common “infosphere”
(as a space analogous to the natural ecosystem) influenced
commons debates and shiftedthe focus to differentkindsof
“immaterial”commons(social, cultural, intellectual,
affective…)
— Gradually, commons became a methodologicalumbrella term
— Emphasis on social interaction, practices of sharing, distribution of
power relations, institutions of decision-making, rules and norms, and
sources of governance

6. Charlotte Hess (2008):
“Mapping the New
Commons”

7. Sensory
Commons?
Charlotte Hess (2008):
“Mapping the New
Commons”

8. — “the space that we human beings share by dint of our constitutive
embodiment” (Hansen 2006, p. 20)
— The things we can sense; and the things we produce to be
(potentially) sensed
— Profoundly reshapedby the digital transformations
— A hybrid commons – escapes many of the binaryoppositionsin
commons analysis
— Inhabited and shaped by human and non-human actors alike
— Partly ”given”, partly ”constructed”
— Partly limited (wears down in use), partly unlimited (enriched in use)

9. Aural commons
"a life-like acoustic space, where people interact
and on occasion intrude, deliberately and
accidentally, into one another's space”
(Haag 2002, p. 119–120)

10. Helsingin Sanomat 3 March 2016

11. “Once again, a dispute about the
volume of themusic played in a bar
is emerging in Helsinki.[…] During
the two years of its operation,the
restaurant [Bones] has been given
over 200 reclamationsof the nightly
noise disturbances frommusic. The
restaurant keepertalks about
soundproofing,adjustments,and
frequencies,but the problem itself is
not touched’,states the residents’
letterto the municipal
environmentalcommittee.”
Helsingin Sanomat 3 March 2016

12. “According to the restaurant,
the residents’ demand and the
imposition of a penalty payment
would be unreasonable for the
business. ’Thedemand of not
playing music between 22–3.30 is
unreasonable because of the
harm caused to the nightly
sales’, writes the restaurant in its
statement for the environmental
committee.”
Helsingin Sanomat 3 March 2016

13. “In the measurements conducted
in three bedrooms of Iso-
Roobertinkatu 13, the average
sound level carried from the
restaurant was 22–27 decibels.
[…] In the two measurements in
the bedrooms of Annankatu 2
the average level was 22–29
decibels. […] Just to compare, the
ticking sound of a watch equals
to about 20 decibels […]”
Helsingin Sanomat 3 March 2016

14. — Conflicting interests (low environmentalnoise
levels vs. high sales of the restaurant)
— Differing valuations (sleeping vs. going out)
— Hierarchic, bureacratic,and externalized
mode of governance (the municipalenvironmental
committee as the communication channel, the
mediator, and the decision-marker)
— Naturalization of the sensory phenomena

15. — Because of their density and heterogenousness of
lifestyles, urban spaces accentuatethe disputes
around the sensory commons
— Questions to consider in the politicaleconomy of
sensescapes might include:
— What is it that makes sensescapes valuable for the people sensing
them?
— What kind of processes add value to sensescapes or remove value
from them?
— To what extent are these valuations converging (or disagreeing)?
— How to negotiate and manage the potentially conflicting uses?

16. ”The twentieth century is, among other things,
the Age of Noise.”
(Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, 1946)
”Noise is any sound signal which interferes.
Noise is the destroyer of things we want to hear.”
(R. Murray Schafer, Ear Cleaning – Notes for an Experimental Music Course, 1969)

17. Making noise ≈ appropriation of the sensory
commons as private property…

18. Making noise ≈ appropriation of the sensory
commons as private property…
…but by what right?

19. Making noise ≈ appropriation of the sensory
commons as private property…
…but by what right?
cf. John Locke (in 1689, in building the philosophical case forprivate property):
if ”God […] has giventhe earth […] to mankind incommon”, ”it seems to some a
very great difficulty, how any one should ever come to have a property in any thing”
(Second Treatiseof Civil Government,§ 25)

20. ”The question of what kindof city we want cannot be divorced
from that of what kindof social ties, relationshiptonature,
lifestyles,technologiesand aesthetic values we desire.
The right to the city is far more than the individualliberty
to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by
changing the city. It is, moreover, a common rather than an
individualright since thistransformation inevitablydepends
upon the exercise of a collectivepower to reshape
the processes of urbanization.”
(David Harvey, “Right to the city”, 2008, p. 23)

21. — Sensescapesas a ”com-munus”,a ”co-duty”: something
that we – as its inhabitants– are obliged to takecare of
— To articulatesensescapes as common can be
understoodas an onto-politicalperformativethat
seeks to deconstruct the dominance of the individualist
social ontologies
— Sensations not as private property that belongs to an already-
established subject, but as something constitutive of the subject
in its “psychic and collective individuation”
(à Simondon 1989; see Combes 2013)

22. — Commonsas a laboriousprocess of coping with our
inevitablecoexistence
— “to common”: a “powerful term of sharing, agency, and
equality” (Linebaugh 2008, p. 279)
— ” Commoning is an activity that develops relations
preoccupied by [the] reproduction and therefore – to use
ecological terms – the ’sustainability’ of the commons
[...].”(De Angelis 2017, p. 122)

23. — Mutual recognition, empathy and ”co-feeling” are guaranteed by
neurophysical capabilities (mirror neurons), not (so much) by any
kind of cultural mediation
— While language is a way of sharing feelings, it also renders possible
the negation of this elementary togetherness
— Language ”destructivelycounteracts” upon the ”’we-centered space’[…]” (Virno
2008, p. 181)
— At the same time, language is the ”antidote to the poison that language
itself pours into the innate sociability of the mind” (p. 176)
— Making sense of our collective sensations through language is a
negation of a negation, constituting an ”unstable result of a tearing-
apart and a patching up of […] intersubjectivity” (p. 176)

24. — Gramsci: common sense [senso comune] as
inherentlyunsystematic – a ”chaotic aggregateof
disparateconceptions[…] ambiguous,
contradictoryand multiform […]” (Gramsci in Hoare & Smith 1971, p.422–423,
quoted in Crehan 2016, loc 1243)
— Common sense can be ”good sense”, i.e. reasonable
judgements, that reflect the innate creativity of collectives,
but it can also be a vehicle that sustains erroneous beliefs and
spurs misunderstandings
à thus, common sense should be continually questioned
(Crehan 2016 à Rosenfeld 2011)

25. ”The fearof wind powerstopped the village’s turbine. The
wind turbine of Jakokoski had been running for the winter
months, until some of the villagers got worried aboutthe
potential health effects. Now the turbine stays still, waiting forthe
situation to be solved.”
Pielisjokiseutu 28 Jun 2017 (http://www.pielisjokiseutu.fi/uutiset/item/1312-tuulivoimapelko-pysaytti-kylan-tuulivoimalan )

26. Noise researcher: Infrasound misunderstood -
"The sound of a spinning washing machine
stronger than the sound of a wind turbine"
Tekniikka ja talous 7 Jun 2017
(http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/kaikki_uutiset/melututkija-infraaani-on-ymmarretty-vaarin-linkoavan-pe sukoneen-i nfraaani-voimakkaampi-kuin-tuulivoimalan-6655489)

27. "The sound of contemporary
wind turbines does not exceed
the threshold of hearing, a recent
study suggests. The health effects
associated with them are caused
by the experience of them or
their sound as disturbing, not by
the sound itself, says noise
researcher Valtteri Hongisto
from Turku Polytechnic."
Noise researcher: Infrasound misunderstood -
"The sound of a spinning washing machine
stronger than the sound of a wind turbine"
Tekniikka ja talous 7 Jun 2017
(http://www.tekniikkatalous.fi/kaikki_uutiset/melututkija-infraaani-on-ymmarretty-vaarin-linkoavan-pe sukoneen-i nfraaani-voimakkaampi-kuin-tuulivoimalan-6655489)

28. How to approach this mixing up of the
negative attitudes towards wind farms and the
negative sonic sensations attributed to them?
1. To regard this kind of sensations as
”nonsense”, irrational, and thus, irrelevant
2. To take more seriously the complex
constructions of ”common sense” as
shared cognitive and affective processes

29. — Sensations are never fully determined by or enclosed in physical
phenomena, but rather are formed in a constantly mutating collective
understanding
— To understand how the wind turbines "sound" like, we have to
understand how people "listen" to them (how the sensations fit in their
personal and collective life-stories,what kindof societal trajectories are
they indexes of, etc.)
— This is not to say that all sensations are "only cultural","fully
subjective", or "mere social constructions”,but to search for a middle
groundbetween the biophysical and sociocultural understandings of
sensing and sense-making; between the material and the discursive

30. 1. Political: dealing with the inevitable coexistence
of different (and differing) sensory phenomena,
expectations, and valuations
2. Ontological: sensory/affectivefacultiesas
elementarilyshared; sensing as "co-sensing"
3. Discursive: making sense of the sensory through
language; reinforcing,reinterpreting and
contesting the formations of “common sense”

31. Thank you!
juhana.venalainen@uef.fi
http://juhanavenalainen.net
Twitter: @juhana_

32. — Barnes, Peter. 2003. “Capitalism, the Commons and Divine Right.” Speech delivered at the EF Schumacher Society, Oct. 25, 2003 .
http://corporation2020.org/corporation2020/documents/Papers/SF_Prep/Barnes.pdf
— Combes, Muriel. 2013. Gilbert Simondon and the Philosophy of the Transindividual. Translated by Thomas LaMarre. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
— Crehan, Kate. 2016. Gramsci’s Common Sense: Inequalityand Its Narratives. Durham; London: Duke University Press.
— De Angelis, Massimo. 2017. Omnia Sunt Communia. London: Zed Books.
— Haag, Stefan. 2002. “Listen and Be Touched: Aural Space in ‘Wandering Rocks.’” In Joyce’s “Wandering Rocks,” edited by Andrew Gibson and Steven Morrison,
107–120. European Joyce Studies 12. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.
— Hardin, Garrett. 1968. “The Tragedy of the Commons.” Science 162 (3859): 1243–1248.
— Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
— Harvey, David. 2008. “The Right to the City.” New Left Review 53 (September-October). https://newleftreview.org/II/53/david-harvey-the-right-to-the-city.
— Hess, Charlotte. 2008. “Mapping the New Commons.” Accessed March 19, 2012. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1356835.
— Hess, Charlotte, and Elinor Ostrom. 2007. “Introduction: An Overview of the Knowledge Commons.” In Understanding Knowledge as a Commons. From Theory
to Practice, edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, 3–26. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
— Hoare, Quintin, and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
— Huxley, Aldous. 1946. The Perennial Philosophy. London: Chatto & Windus.
— Linebaugh, Peter. 2008. The Magna Carta Manifesto. Liberties and Commons for All. Berkeley: University of California Press.
— Locke, John. 1967. Two Treatises of Government. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
— Rosenfeld, Sophia. 2011. Common Sense: A Political History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
— Schafer, R. Murray. 1969. Ear Cleaning. Notes for anExperimental Music Course. Toronto: Berandol Music Limited.
— Simondon, Gilbert. 1989. L’individuation psychique et collective : à la lumière des notions de forme, information, potentiel etmétastabilité. Paris: Aubier.
— Virno, Paolo. 2008. “Mirror Neurons, Linguistic Negation, Reciprocal Recognition.” In Multitude between Innovation and Negation, 169–190. Los Angeles, CA:
Semiotext(e).
— Williams, Raymond. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press.