China’s Sonic Fictions: Music, Technology, and the Phantasma of a Sinicized Future

Herold, Carmen. "China’s Sonic Fictions: Music, Technology, and the Phantasma of a Sinicized Future."SFRA Review 50.2-3 (Spring-Summer 2020).[1][2]

See last part of the article, "China's Sonic Fictions," for the title topic. Discussing some relevant artists and groups:

While Warmchainss’ persona already hints at the dissolution of gender or human, Wu Shanmin alias 33EMYBW[3] radicalizes this idea through her increasingly identifiable approach with the character of the arthropod. As an insectoid alien, she superimposes the producing human subject in favor of a post-human vision that sounds like “music from a different universe” and overlays rhythms, “that would be impossible for a human to play” ([Andrew] Ryce [“Label of the Month: Svbkvlt.” Resident Advisor, 3 February 2020]). The pulsating, epileptic beats on 33’s (pronounced San San) track Tentacle Centre attack the nervous system like razor-sharp pincers. The audited Arthropods Continent is at the same time organic without being material and mechanical without being purely functionalan [sic] Artificial Life (AL). It is precisely these intersections between the organic and the technological that interest 33EMYBW.

Note association of the arthropodal (a taxon including insects) with the intersection of "the organic and the technological," a longstanding motif in SF narrative that T. P. Dunn and R. D. Erlich called in 1980 "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance"[4] apparently going into the broadly musical (at least lately), and with a significant, positive, re-evaluation.

RDE, finishing, 25Oct21