Affective Labour of Stimulus Progression

Abstract

The following text interprets the affective space of Mika Taanila’s record “Stimulus Progression” in terms of affective labour and capitalism. Analysis of the record, combining post productive mixes of muzak history and soundscapes of consumerist spaces of nowadays Helsinki, elaborates the question of affects as encounters or becomings. Artist plays with the history of muzak as part of affective capitalism and questions the technological capacity of it to control and master the physical environment in the modern world. The disruptive stimuli of the record does not submit the modern progression and it’s aspiration for standardization, but deterritorializes the geographies between pleasure and consumption within an affective atmosphere. This deterritorializion, with peripheral signs, I’m decoding in my paper after Malcolm McCullough’s original idea as “ambient commons”.