RHETORIC AFTER SOUND: STORIES OF ENCOUNTERING ‘THE HUM’ PHENOMENON
In “Rhetoric After Sound,” published in Sounding Out!, I consider “after sound” to characterize a felt condition for rhetorical action that is a result of listening beyond or after acoustic valuations relating to “the hum” phenomenon.
Read it here!
STEPPING STONES
Stepping Stones is a collaborative digital project, developed with Sam Turner and other graduate students in coursework at UT Austin, which celebrates ways of relating within and beyond writing spaces. This project has grown to include a community of ten co-authors, all which have participated in audio-recorded reflections and the making of a non-linear exhibit on the Twine platform.
SONIC AFTERLIFES
Sonic Afterlifes is an ongoing design which brings together homemade radio telescope designs, GNU radio, and midi note-mapping via Python to question how we concieve of and practice data collection methods in the digital humanities. The final product is a physical, homemade radio telescope that collects radio waves and maps them to midi notes as a practice of sonification.
LISTENING ACROSS THE SHORTWAVE
Listening Across the Shortwave is a collection of interdisciplinary workshops that I led for the Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL); the Sound Space Art Lab in UT Austin’s Butler School of Music; an “Ecological Interaction Design” class in UT Austin’s School of Design and Creative Technologies; Computers and Writing Conference 2024; and at University of Rutgers-Camden’s R-CADE symposium. The workshop teaches participants how to build DIY radio receivers with found materials, based on the instructions develop by Shortwave Collective, an international feminist artist collective.
WINGS & WAVES
During the DWRL’s 2024 Digital Field Methods Institute, Wings & Waves was a workshop which used DIY echolocation goggles to experience how bats use sound waves to create a sense of space. Four pairs of goggles were taken to the largest urban bat colony in the world, under Congress Bridge in Austin. The goggles used a coded Arduino microcontroller and an ultrasonic rangefinder sensor to develop a non-representational method of engaging with waves.
SPACES AND DREAMS IN MURIEL RUKEYSER’S “THE SPEED OF DARKESS”
Spaces and Dreams is an AVAnnotate project created for the SpokenWeb Digital Anthology, which is the first anthology of anntotated AV material (to be published by Scholarly Editing in 2025). The project uses AVAnnotate, a software for creating digital exhibits of annotated AV artifacts, created by Dr. Tanya Clement and Brumfield Labs, to analyze how listening to spaces in poetry recordings is always a rhetorical practice.
This project is currently in peer-review.
REFUSIUM!
REFUSIUM! is a rhetorical technology for refusing certain faculties of the senses. The word “refusium” sticks together refusal and sensorium. The tool functions to deny sensory experiences afforded by sound by converting mp3 waveforms to binary data (zeros and ones).
Try it here!
AFFECTIVE
FOOTPRINTS
“Affective Footprints”, published in Heliotrope, explores the persistent low-frequency hum emanating from the cooling systems of four data centers in southeast Austin, Texas, and its impact on nearby communities. The essay examines how this mechanical, disorienting sound infiltrates the materials and bodies within its vicinity, shaping community relations through vibratory, affective, and rhetorical forces while questioning the environmental and social consequences of such exposure.
Read it here!
COMPOSING LOCAL LISTENING
Composing Local Listening is an ongoing project that expands on DIY radio designs by introducting writing into the circuit of the receiver. The design focuses on writing with radio as developing attunement to local sonic conditions, which are impacted by topography, geography, and other place-based relations. The project has taken the form of a zine, which will be published by Low Carbon Research Methods in September 2024.
Read it here!
UT LIVE LENS
In August 2024, Morry Kolman developed Traffic Cam Photo Booth, a website that allows visitors to use traffic cameras in NYC to take personal photographs. In response to this website, UT Live Lens is a tool which utilizes the City of Austin’s traffic cameras for play instead of surveillance. With 26 cameras covering the perimeter of UT Austin’s campus, users can misuse surveillance technologies for fun by entering the frame, taking selfies, and downloading them.
Use it here!
Trent Wintermeier is a doctoral student in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Edward Guiliano Global Fellow through the Modern Language Association (2024-2025). His research has been supported by the Initiative for Digital Humanities and UT Austin’s Humanities Institute.
As a rhetorical theorist and critic, Trent’s research explores how communities organize around sound. His project, Dissonant Rhetorics, investigates the rhetorical work of sensing sonic phenomena, examining how shared experiences of sound shape collective discourse and community formation. Through an analysis of “the hum”—a mysterious acoustic phenomenon with contested origins—his research explores how arguments about sensing sound link shared affective experiences to broader discourses on environmental and industrial dissonance. Focusing on the theory that “the hum” is caused by natural gas pipeline infrastructure, the project considers how this hypothesis resonates with global concerns about digital systems and their geologic impact. His work ultimately examines the rhetorical conditions that shape how communities come together in response to sonic experiences.
Here’s my CV! And some upcoming publications to keep an eye out for:
Appearance on The Data Fix with Mél Hogan. “Frequencies.” Episode 46.
“Algorithmic Listening” in Models for Making Distance zine (an ARRG?! publication)
Appearance on The Big Rhetorical Podcast with Charles Woods. Episode 169.
Contacts: