Spiralling Out of a Shell: Fictioning more-than-machine listening

This article critiques the anthropocentric tendencies in machine listening practices and narratives, developing alternative concepts and methods to explore the more-than-human potential of these technologies through the framework of sonic fiction. Situating machine listening within the contemporary soundscape of dataveillance, the research examines post-anthropocentric threads that emerge at the intersection of datafication, subjectivation and animalisation. Theory and practice interweave in the composition of a music piece, The Spiral , enabling generative feedback between concept, sensation and technique. Specifically, the research investigates the figure of a mollusc bio-sensor between science fact and fable, as the (im)possible locus of musicality. This emergent methodology also offers new insights for other sound art and music practices aiming to pluralise what listening might be.