Working Paper: Overflow

The following is a sample of our contribution to a forthcoming book chapter in Reiko Yamada ed. Quantum Sounds. No citation or reproduction is permitted without the permission of the authors

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Overflow: Opening quantum sounds to a socio-material approach

It has been our assigned task to begin this volume exploring quantum sounds with a discussion of what it might mean to explore quantum, sound and society today. We do so under the guise of offering nothing new to say in the domain of contemporary experimental physics, less still to the world of professional music or performance art.[1] What we do want to say comes from our work as members of the ‘Observatory of Quantum Technologies’ in Barcelona, where we have combined sociological, ethnographic and technical approaches to ‘observing’ the development and representations of quantum technologies to offer an account of their formation, development and impact.

A feature of our work has been to take seriously with quantum technologies the sociological, cultural and organisational aspects of its formation and impact. This is something that we also think will be of value in the opening up of and analysis into the current relationship between quantum and sound, something that we - as ‘observers’ - have also been hugely lucky and inspired to be included in.[2] As demands the kind of work we do, we have been interested in recent discussions of quantum music and quantum sound.[3] Yet, the analyses offered in much of the current literature have, in our opinion, done little to capture the processes that are going, or raised the kinds of questions that make enquiry worthwhile.

What we propose in this account is to offer a perspective that we think opens up an approach to quantum sounds to make further enquiry interesting and at the same time offer some concrete things - with academic tools - to say about what is happening now. The primary approach we offer is one called ‘socio-materiality’ - an approach developed over the past thirty-five years in the field of the sociology of science and technology and science and technology studies (STS). Our piece will begin by introducing and addressing the often-misused concept of materiality before showing the range of ways a socio-material approach may help us to unpack and throw open a study and reflection on quantum sounds. The piece will then offer a brief structural history of how it is that we are now able to speak about quantum sounds, before ending with a reflection on our brief ethnographic description presented above. As a contribution to the academic analysis, we develop the concept ‘overflow’ as a concept we think captures to some what is going on, and we hope, what will continue to go on in multiple ways in multiple spaces in the loosely bounded worlds of quantum music and sound specifically, and quantum applications to the arts and humanities more generally.

Quantum Materiality

When we say that we are addressing ‘materiality’ we mean to say that we are concerned with the physicality and technicality of quantum sounds (and indeed quantum technologies more generally). At first, this might seem too obvious to even mention, particularly to an audience interested - at least to some degree - in physics.

Physical things matter, so what? Our answer is that when we refer to ‘materiality’ we mean it in the fullest sense possible. In the physical sciences, there is of course attention to particular physical items or objects, such as specific units of analysis (qubits) or particular instruments (an electron microscope). Materiality, in the sense in which we use it in the sociology of science and technology points to a much wider sense of physical things. It asks us to pay attention to all kinds of physical and technical aspects of the world the are typically ignored: the spaces in which instruments are kept, the means through which they are moved, the ways in which they are broken and the ways they are repaired or thrown away, the tools that are used to repair them (or not), and so on. It would ask us to pay attention to things like even the form of lighting in the room, the means by which that lighting is powered, the things that happen to mean that the lighting stops, the things that prevent the lighting from stopping, and we could (and later we will) go on and on.

Once we start to think about materiality as the full range of physical and technical things that are part of advanced and even mundane scientific and technical practices, we start to see how much is often written out of scientific accounts. Rarely does the flickering lightbulb in the corner of the lab get a mention in Nature, but if I was to visit the lab, I’m sure it would be one of the things that the PhDs and postdocs mention or joke about. The point is, that materiality in the sense that we as sociologists of science and technology use is starts point us towards a broader set of experiences. Materiality then, is not a reductive itinerary of spare parts and objects that could be found in a toolbox (although we do like those), it is an approach that seeks to avoid the privileging of one particular object or set of objects over an other in order to capture what could be called the ‘experiential-materiality’ of a space.

And that is just the foundation. Materiality has analytical value not just because it asks use to pay attention to the full range of physical and technical objects that are so often written out of science and accounts of how science happens. It also is important because it asks us to attend to the kinds of effects that objects, tools, equipment have on each other. Physical things are not just in networks. When taken seriously, we see that they have particular kinds of relationships depending on their particular configuration. For example, when we consider the configuration of the internet, it is not enough to say that it is made up of a network of wires, servers, cables and personal computers. The different parts have different relationships to each other in terms of power, in terms of control. For example, the sociologists of technology Michael Callon may identify servers as an obligatory passage point, meaning that regardless of what I wanted to do from my laptop on the kitchen table, if I want to access the internet, I’m pretty much forced by that system to go through particular servers (Law and Callon, 1994). Technical systems then, can demand obligations. They may also refuse certain course of actions or events. In his analysis of the development of long-distance electrical power systems, Thomas Hughes showed how the method of generating electricity through direct-current proved extremely difficult, almost impossible, to move over large distances, thereby hindering the development and extension of the electrical system. A feature like this in a technical system is referred to as reverse salient pointing to its impact in preventing the path of growth that a system - like that of the network of electricity production - could be on (Law, 1983).

Concepts such as these are important not just because they allow us to characterise relationships between material things, but also because they remind us that this things happen in time. Physical, material and technical things are always part of processes: processes of development or emergence; processes of stabilisation and maintenance; processes of decline or destruction. To be able to think about physical things in terms of the relationship to each other and that those relationships are being formed, altered, maintained or disintegrated over time gives us access to a whole world of arrangements that may be taken for granted (what Bruno Latour has called ‘black boxed’) or actively rejected (what we could call ‘black-binned’).

The two examples used above: of computer servers as obligatory passage points and electrical systems developing reverse salients, beg one final example of how materiality may help us to think of the technological development more seriously (and, we promise, eventually quantum sounds!). That is thinking about the relationship of newer material systems in relation to older ones. The point is simple, but so often missed: when new technologies or technological systems emerge they are always - and please know, we are usually allergic to universal claims - always dependent upon much older infrastructures that already existed (MacKenzie, 2021). In the case of the emergence of the internet, its relationship to systems of electrification - and the eventually overcoming of the reverse salient of direct current by alternating current - is again one level so obvious it doesn’t need pointing out. And yet if we consider how those older infrastructures effect the operation of the new one, it becomes extremely important. The fact that servers depended on a particular form of electricity network has a major influence on where they are located. This could be for reasons due to the specificity of cables - where are those cables laid and how reliable are they.? - to what type of energy source is powering the huge amounts of electricity demanded by servers to heat them up and then to cool them down. You are not likely to build a major server - certainly not a quantum server - in a location where the energy source is unreliable, expensive, or vulnerable (Phillips & Jimenez, 2024). Where the phone cables were laid in major cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century still impacts the building, management, maintenance and yes, even experience of computing today. New systems are not just related to, but are actively shaped by older ones. Materiality of infrastructures matter.

Quantum socio-materiality

We are sorry to say that with our approach, materiality is just one side of the coin. By taking a socio-material approach, we also insist that the relation and interactions of social groups with materiality is fundamental to understanding and explaining technological processes. One older form of sociology used to be focused on the question ‘how does technology impact society?’. Indeed it is a question that motivates a lot of policy indicators that physicists are told they must answer as part of applying and justifying grant money: the EU’s Key Performance Indicators are a clear example of this kind of approach (Phillips & Jimenez, 2024). A socio-material approach, however, asks a complementary question: not only how is technology impacting society, but how is society (social groups, culture, politics) impacting technology?

This is important, because, like our approach to materiality, social groups and social impact is also something that is by training and habit written out of accounts of many accounts scientific and technological development, and, up to now accounts of quantum sound and music. So how might we start to think about how society and culture ends up in material things? How might we begin to think about not just the relationship of things - to - things (materiality), but also society-to-things in the context of quantum technologies and quantum sounds?

Here we can offer a simple example of what we mean. Consider the simple ‘speed bump’ or ‘road hump’ found on many roads in urban areas. The (usual) effect of these simple raised parts of the road is to make cars slow down. As Bruno Latour and others have pointed out, what is going on there is more interesting than first seems. Because in the relationship of the material bump impacting the car (making it slow down), the bump has stood in for what was formerly a command (what sociologists call a ‘script’) to slow down (Latour, 1992). That command might be a physical sign, or it might have been simply a ‘law’ or ‘rule’ that cars drive at a certain speed. What has happened with the bump is that society (or one more powerful part of society) has inscribed a command - or delegated its intentions- into a technology, which then does the job of the command through its physical presence. It is not too extreme, we hope, to then say that society or culture is in that bump when it is in the context of being on the road making a car slow down.

Concepts such as scripts, delegations and social interests are, we believe, useful ways for thinking about how social groups interact with the physical and technical things they use. It invites us to consider how and when a certain script or delegative order becomes standard (as in the case of a particular instrument or tool) or why and how standardisation is resisted. By thinking about both sides of the coin: the socio and the material we believe the world of quantum in general, and quantum sounds in particular becomes a possible site of study.

Overflow: A socio-material approach for quantum sounds

A motivation for us to offer a socio-material framework for thinking about quantum sounds is that it is inherently anti-reductive. That is, it demands constant attention to the ways, forms and places in and through which practices involving human-tool interactions develop. A focus on the processes as well as the forms that constitute the coming together of particular social groups, in particular settings, with particular instruments, using particular practices, to make particular sounds, is one in which demands description and analysis, but rejects both abstract or ontological speculation as well simple or trite definitions.

It is our contention that socio-materialiy allows us to move away from the kind of empty or loose speculation that is so easy to fall into when discussing things like the relationship of quantum technologies to society, or quantum science to quantum sounds and performance. It also offers a way out of a cloud we have all been labouring under in one way or another: the cloud of ‘quantum revolution’, something which is an extremely loose term that apart from denoting some kind of change, tells us very little else about what is going on. Importantly, it also offers no tools for how to orient ourselves or get out.

Getting out, or ‘overflow’ is a concept first used by Michael Callon and later elucidated by the sociologist Trevor Pinch to describe the process through which new instruments may create indescribable and undefinable sounds (Callon, 1998). In his monumental study of the emergence and standardisation of the Moog synthesiser, Trevor Pinch has described the moment when Paul Beaver (one of Moog’s sales representatives) began using a synthesiser in a Door’s recording session:

Paul Beaver began plugging in a bewildering array of patch cords. He’d hit the keyboard and bizarre, Karlheinz Stockhausen-like sound would emerge. “Actually that sound you had about three sounds back was very usable. Could you go back to that?”... “That Crystalline sound” Jim Morrison joined in. “I liked the sound of broken glass falling from the void into creation.” Which sound was that?” said Paul Beaver. Ray Man- zarek – Keyboard Player of The Doors. (Pinch & Trocco, 2002)

Whilst the instinct of the Doors when they experienced new sounds was to try to capture the usable, the concept of overflow doesn’t have to point in that direction. Overflow might well be the target for performers and artists engaged in quantum sound: create the unusable, the uncapturable, the unrepeatable. Overflow may even be a useful heuristic for quantum physicists themselves, to embrace the indescribable and undefinable. As the quote above indicated, an experience of overflow can sometimes move in the direction of trying to make sound useful or standardised. As has been shown, the process of standardising sound is inseparable from the process of aligning 'particular bodily movements’ with ‘particular aspect of the technology’ enabling repeated performances (Pinch, 2019). Overflow invites us then think of the opposite - to attend to the non-repetition of bodily movements, of ineteracting with different aspects of a technology or technologies, and so on. The socio-material approach would then go further and ask how is it that overflow can or cannot take place, what tools, spaces, social groups, cultural environments, funding bodies (etc,) are in place such that a quantum sound performance can or cannot overflow. To put it another, way, this approach demands that we pay attention not just to the intention but to the actual processes through which overflow occurs, and through which it either keeps occurring or begins to acquire some standardised forms.

To sum up, we have argued so far that by paying attention to materialist in its widest sense offers us a way to capture the full range of possibilities of interaction of physical and technical ‘things’. We have said that these interactions are not necessary ‘equal’ and that this imbalance in relations informs our experience of the material world. On top of this, we have said that technology does not just shape experience and social groups, but that there is another process that takes place, whereby social groups give meaning to objects, tools, machines, instruments, and that forms of desire - overflow of sound or not - may well a large part in the path development of quantum music or quantum sounds.

By thinking about what is going on with quantum sound through a socio-material approach encourages us to think of those particular groups of people - those social groups - who are currently involved, or who have been involved, in those meetings, events and performances related to ‘quantum sound’ or ‘quantum music’. It also then demands that we may attention to those these things as process. Or unforlding, changing, dialectical even. We have suggested that with a socio-materiality approach we can - and indeed should - avoid trying to define and delineate what quantum sounds is or is not. This surely is not our task. Much more, let’s look at and describe the possibilities, practices, tools, places, groups, collaborations, contestations, languages, intentions, less-then-describable sounds, reactions to those sounds, and so on. Let’s embrace overflow.

Quantum Infrastructures

Before we move on to our case study, a socio-material approach demands that we offer some account of how it is we can even begin to do or describe something like quantum sounds. Or, to put it another way, how is it that quantum sounds has become possible as a technical concept and a possible social activity today. In order to do this, it is important to recognise the socio-material infrastructures that have developed over the course of the past 100 years that inform practices, delegations, contestations and experiences today. Or, to put it yet another way, what has made ‘overflow’ possible?

A field like quantum theory is a tricky beast to summarise the continuities and transformations that have taken place. Scientists have and often still write what are called ‘internal’ accounts of their discipline. Such accounts are characterised by explaining the changes and developments of a particular science by problems pertaining only the discipline itself. In such accounts, the move from classical explanations of x to quantum theories would be explained by the results of a particular experiment or a particularly convincing theory (usually, but not always, with recourse to the role of a genius or a maverick). Quantum physics is no exception (See Purrington, 2018; Gribbin, 2012; Peacock, 2008).

Another perspective would ask us to look not just at the written and spoken words and images produced by physicists - important though they are - but also the changing combination of human beings, material objects, technical systems, research institutions, texts, social/cultural conventions, and intentions that have shaped - and been shaped by - quantum theory and technologies.To put it another way, rather than taking linear theories, or particular ‘lone geniuses’, we advocate looking at this collection of assemblages or, ni Callon’s term agencements (Callon and Latour, 1981). Such a history is clearly outside the scope of this introductory chapter but parts have been written (Gallison et al, 2001).

Since then, there has been a huge amount of attention paid to the possibilities of the utilisation of quantum principles through information technology - most notable quantum computing. It has become shorthand to refer to this as a ‘revolution’ (Dowling, et al, ). Even Europol have embraced a ‘Second Quantum Revolution’ (Europol Innovation Lab, 2023).However, if we are to consider this from the perspective of socio-materiality - looking at the those ‘agencements’ made up of an ensemble of human, objects, institutions, theories, and so on,- then we should not ignore the kinds of infrastructures and social choices that have shaped information technology and its users such that the experience of quantum IT operates in the way it does.

It has been argued that the material backbone of the system that has come to define the physical structure of information technology systems are the interconnected system of servers through cables that are now spread throughout much of the world. Despite the intense speculation in new server space that dominates financial markets and property firms, the system of cables were largely defined by the laying of cables across the major oceans, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century (Cookson, 2006). Still, the vast majority of information of the global IT network flows through cables rather than via satellite. Such as system depends not only upon localised security and considerations for environmental shock— it is thought by many to be not a good thing if a server is physically damaged - but is also highly dependent upon energy systems that are reliable, accessible and affordable: much of the internet is still powered by gas and coal. In the wake of ‘revolutionary’ talk, the discussion as to whether quantum computing and their associated systems will be powered by alternative forms of energy is still largely a marginal topic.

Social groups and interests have played a major role in shaping the meaning and experience of the material infrastructure that forms the kinds of systems in which quantum technologies will play a part. Many people know the story of origin of what we now see as the internet in the context of Cold War communication strategy and the desire to have a decentralise and distributed system whereby the destruction of one node would not incapacitate the rest of the system. Much less well remembered, but equally important, was the decision in the 1990s by the Bill Clinton administration to privatise servers and cables, leading to huge amounts of speculation and creation that led to the internet moving from being a largely university/laboratory based-domain, to to place of vast amounts of money transfer, information pushing and the ‘dot com' boom and bust, which left in its wake much of the online architecture that defines the web today. The point, from a socio-material perspective is that cold war hysteria and neoliberal dogma are built into our current IT systems as much as nineteenth century imperial cable layouts and industrial revolution-era forms of energy. This is not to say that it defines it, but when someone take their laptop, connects to the internet and some speakers and clicks play on a track for the rest of the room, all these things are being quietly mobilised and giving structure to the experience in that space.