NAISA Sound Byte 20 - Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz
Performance by Aliyah Aziz using electromagnetic sensors followed by an Interview about her writing and sonic explorations in Sandpaper Hammock
In this video Aliyah Aziz performs her work Sandpaper Hammock during the Deep Wireless Festival of Radio & Transmission Art. The performance was recorded February 21, 2026 at NAISA North Media Arts Centre in South River, Ontario, Canada and the audio soundtrack is also from the Making Waves radio show (and podcast) for WGXC Wave Farm.
In the performance Aziz wears a custom-made electromagnetic #sensor on her hand to transduce electromagnetic sounds from a CRT monitor, camera, and from Anju Singh's Material Transmissions sound sculpture. She mixes those sounds with #spokenword, #effectspedals and #loopers . After the performance NAISA Artistic Director Darren Copeland interviews her about the texts and improvisational scores that are part of her project Sandpaper Hammock.
Transcript of video
Introduction
Darren Copeland: Welcome to Making Waves a show about sound art produced for WGXC Wave Farm by New Adventures in Sound Art. Right now you are hearing the beginning sounds of a performance of Sandpaper Hammock by Aliyah Aziz
In this performance, Aliyah Aziz wears electromagnetic gloves, kind of listening gloves as it were, that probe into the various electronic devices which she has laid out on the table in front of her.
At other times in the performance she’ll activate with the help of audience members the sewing machine instrument from Anju Singh’s sound installation at NAISA which we heard in the previous couple of episodes of Making Waves. After the performance I will have a conversation with Aliyah Aziz about Sandpaper Hammock and you can watch this performance and interview on the NAISATube Youtube Channel.
Performance
Aliyah Aziz:
Who remembers longer?
The static, the screen,
or the human being?
and will you remember me?
by my skin,
as static on screen
or will my habit
turn your children into static?
Interview
Darren Copeland: That was a performance of Sandpaper Hammock by Alia Aziz. It’s part of a series of texts and improvisational scores that she wrote, exploring the connection between the human body and electromagnetic energy. Before we join my conversation with Alia Aziz, here she is reading from Sandpaper Hammock.
Aliyah Aziz:
Everything has a voice.
Just because you cannot hear it, that doesn’t mean it is not there.
Sound is something that you can feel beyond your skin.
I began my research for Sandpaper Hammock with magnetic tape. I found that even when a voice on magnetic tape is eroded, it makes a sound. Even when the words are sanded down, the voice of it remains. There is a crackling static that it leaves behind. Erasure is not silent. There is a friction in our technology. There is a tension between your body and my body and the other body. There is a friction hissing at me from behind a TV screen when a Canadian newscaster refuses to say the word genocide over images of dead bodies buried in rubble.
Don’t worry, you say. These are the other bodies. These are the bodies over there.
And when you are scrolling, is it smooth under your fingertips, or do you feel it too? We are sanding down human beings. We are sanding down children. And the louder I am, the more I am reminded that I should consider silence. Have you tried silence? Have you tried muting yourself? I want to yell, what and who does my or our silence serve?
I don’t believe in silence of the living. Silence is death. As long as you are alive, as long as I am alive, we make a sound. Even in a soundproof chamber, you can feel the rhythm of your pulse beating in your ears, moving you alive. I believe that making sound is an assertion of life, and that silence is death.
As long as there is surface, there is friction. As long as there is life to make it, there is sound. We are all part of this composition. Can you feel the sound of your own breath moving in your chest? Can you feel the sound of mine on the othered side at the same time? It is your turn to feel this sandpaper hammock too. It has always been here, even when you weren’t listening.
Darren: What is the sandpaper hammock - those two images - represent for you in your look at technology and your life?
Aliyah: For me, when I think about being offered comfort or being told to lean into that, there is always tension. I am given a hammock, but it is made out of sandpaper. You can’t move or squirm too much. There are conditions that meet you at your skin depending on how the world reads you by your surface. When I think about sandpaper hammock, what is personal about it to me is I know that I am acting in disruption in some ways, but sometimes I feel like the camera is the eye that disrupts my body, like a Muslim woman.
The idea of sandpaper hammock came up a lot when I was in art school. I was also told, in order for us to listen to your stories, you should be promoting yourself by the hyphenations of your identity, by these things that you were othered by. If it was my choice, yes. But a lot of times there was this extractive-ness that in order for you to have acceptance as an artist, as a storyteller, you have to explain your difference by your skin. To be accepted in this comfortable space, there is some sandpaper.
A lot of times, I think there is that desire to be palatable and smooth and to make conventional sound. And I had to resist a lot of that, and it feels a lot about, even in terms of assimilation, that idea of a sandpaper hammock. It’s like, yeah, there’s a place for me to rest, but it’s never fully rest. You’re never fully a person, you know? But I still have dreams. I don’t know if that... It’s not so much as literal as maybe... I don’t know. I leave it out, but that’s how I feel about it. It’s about my relationship to comfort and being held depending on who you are and where you are and the conditions of being considered a person, if that makes sense.
Darren: Yeah, I was just thinking of the fact... I mean, you’re using radio waves and electromagnetic energy, which is an auditory phenomena that you’re transducing down to human hearing. But a lot of your performances, I guess, have been witnessed in person as opposed to heard on the radio. And like here we’re talking, we’re seeing each other on a screen, but the listeners might be hearing this on the radio, so they won’t see what we look like. I was interested in that play, that if you take out the visual, how does that... Does that change the tension? Does that change the sandpaper?
Aliyah: Yeah, for sure. But I appreciate you bringing that up. I think it’s really important that it’s me standing there, cranking up the discomfort. And I’ve had conversations even during my thesis where I’ve been told that it would serve the work if I didn’t take up space and I gave my poetry to random members of the audience and let them read my stories. And I think it matters that it is someone who looks like me who is making work like that. And I think it matters.
One of the pieces is called Passing Static Person’s Screen. And in part of the work, I was also... This conversation came up about being viewed and my relationship to that. And in the work, I have a CR2 monitor and a live feed. And before I start, I turn the camera on the audience. And so where they sit, they are watching themselves watch me on a screen. So for me, being visible and having control over that in a way, or not control, but consent, being able to consent, it allows me to also be subversive for me to be able to zoom in on the people watching me.
And it’s a dynamic. It’s not that I’m above them because I’m the performer, but it is also like we are experiencing this together. Like I’m asking something of my audience as much as they are of me. And so for me, it feels a bit like an exercise, an empathy, that I can be there, that I can be visible, that I can... Maybe I get in people’s faces sometimes when I perform, like I’m there. But at the same time, I have a say in that presence. You know, it’s on my own terms. And I’m able to also... I like to try and include people in what I’m doing as much as I can, as part of that, if that makes sense.
Darren: So the performance is as much about the social experience, the social encounter of you in the audience.
Aliyah: Yes, yes. So for example, when I turn the camera on the audience, like a lot of times I do that, and then I sometimes create feedback on the screen. I distort their image. I’ve had people say, wow, I feel really uncomfortable being on the screen. Because I would set it up in a way that if you sit in the chair once the camera’s facing, there is a choice, but you’re putting people on the spot. And some people are like, wow, I made the decision to sit there in front of the camera, but it made me feel uncomfortable, because people could see me. Why is that? It’s like, we are sharing in that. We both have this. We all... That idea of the eye is not only the camera, but it is also interesting to me, because it also takes labor off me sometimes. Like, if I’m not the only one worried about being consumed, or about how I should reduce myself to fit into the screen, you know, it’s like, I think that that’s something, a discomfort we can share, and that a lot of us do share, but not everyone has the opportunity or the motivation to maybe lean into that and talk about it. So it’s a reason for me to talk about this stuff, if that makes sense.
Darren: Now, at the performance you did at NASA, the situation was different in that you... The camera wasn’t working for whatever reason, or not picking up the audience, and so we didn’t have that element, but you seem to have maybe addressed this aspect by including the audience in the performance, having them, you know, assist you with making some of the sounds and that kind of thing. So is that sort of part and parcel the same thing of... you know, including them in the participation, even though the setup of the space was there in the dark and you’re in the light.
Aliyah: Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate this question. I see most of my performances as an invitation of sorts, right? Or like an offering. And I think though some of the works are more literal and have the poetry I shared with you, I also think that it’s important to incorporate play and not have to only center pain and my suffering has the only reason why I listen.
And so in that way, in allowing and extending that invitation, to me it also feels like the barrier, again, of a lot of folks are intimidated when they see a bunch of wires. And also this idea of the performer versus the audience, you know, I think we’re all performers. And we become an audience together. Like, I’m an audience with the audience, listening to the stuff. So for me it’s an opportunity for people to have play. And I also don’t like to think of a hierarchy. Even as an artist, even as a performer, I think we’re all experiencing the moment together.
And so it was really a gift at NAISA to share that with people and to see their excitement and curiosity because I think that’s also really important. When I’m talking about the stuff that I’m talking about, that there’s curiosity and that there’s balance and it’s not just, like, shock value and trauma for consumption, you know, because that still is a reduction of the human experience. So for me, that was one of the more, playful moments. And yeah, I hope that answers the question.
Darren: Partly maybe on my suggestion (as the Artistic Director or Curator), but the performance explored a lot of the sound aspects and musical aspects of electromagnetic activity, and the exploration of the different timbres and sounds as many variations within that realm. And it didn’t have very little of the poetry aspect and the theatricality as it were. So I was interested in how that felt for you and what in reflecting back on it, were there any things that you noticed about it that maybe brought something different than maybe you might have done in the past to evaluate what you do?
Aliyah: To some extent I think I shift depending on... Because the original project, there’s 90 minutes long. I haven’t published every piece of the story. It only exists on some cassettes. So, I mean, for me, I think it’s... Taking on and telling the stories that I’m telling, a lot of times I ask myself, who is this for? And at the end of the day, a lot of it is for myself, an extension of my expression.
And so sometimes just being in my personhood and the play, and I think I said only maybe two lines, “will you remember me by my skin, or will you watch me as static on screen?” There’s also a letting go that I am conscious of when I’m making work like this. Because I can center myself, but there’s also the piece of connecting to what is bigger than me. And so the entire thing isn’t that, but I do like to try and allow myself those moments. And it’s actually hard to, because there is still that attachment to control, to being, I must talk about this pain and this hurt. And it does. A lot of the poems that I perform, it’s impactful, but I also, I cry. I talk about there’s a cry in my throat as I’m saying these things. And so for me it also is important to not always feel the only way that I can take up space is by telling sad stories. Because that’s another condition sometimes of being accepted. If I’m going to make a work that talks about my discomfort, how uncomfortable do I need to be all the time? So every, I think, or a lot of performances are different. They’re different facets of personhood that I’m lucky to be able to take up space in so many different ways. It doesn’t feel far from the spirit of it at all, no.
Darren: So are there times where you can fight back against that expectation of providing a sad story?
Aliyah: Yeah, and I try to almost as much as possible. I don’t take an opportunity, or I’ve said no to opportunities, or I believe it’s important to be able to own our stories or feel empowered in them. And so I think, for example, when I was talking about my thesis, one of the advisors I met with, I was saying I don’t feel like for this story to be valid, I have to over-explain the hyphenations of my identity, where I’m from, or that I’m a this or that. I don’t feel like I owe people that. And that specific advisor, they were like, oh, like, as an immigrant, that’s really brave of you. And that’s not my story, personally, right? I am reminded that I am fighting back in a way, because even if I don’t want to offer these things, people will look at me and try and tell that story over, even what I haven’t said. And so for me sometimes not saying everything, sometimes not over-explaining, that there’s a confidence from that, because there’s an acceptance that I don’t need to always be doing all of that, to be seen as human and to have people just listen.
My story doesn’t have to have words. Sometimes I can just be there and share a feeling with someone. And that is really valuable to me, and that a lot of times I’ve been taught to market myself, and I know that that’s a real thing, but in the arts marketplace, I’ve been encouraged that, you’re not going to get opportunities if you don’t write it out like you’re this, this, this, this, this, and this is why what I’m saying matters. It’s like, it does matter first. Yes, my identity is relevant, but I don’t base it on a labor that I have to explain the value of my personhood. I let people in, and if they’re curious and want to listen, then that’s great. And if not, I’m not trying to win anyone over with the work.
Darren: Yeah, I think that that personhood and that unconscious state that’s underneath everything, that speaks to the universal human condition, and that can speak to any listener, I think, or viewer for that matter.
Aliyah: Yes, no, absolutely. So I think it also is sometimes in the arts world there is a generation of hierarchy, or I would say a false sense of hierarchy, where the idea is that you’re encouraged sometimes to believe that you’re special, and you’re the first one to do everything, and that you’re, everyone is special, you know? And the thing is with the sound, the human condition, like the things that connect us is a lot of times like to stand up there and perform, I have to de-center myself. I have to, to some extent, surrender to sounds I cannot control and accept them for who they are and what they are. And that’s like how I approach people. That’s how I feel inside. And so I think a lot of it is, can be very surface level. And I think sometimes again, that’s a skin that can be a barrier. Because like, what about the tension? What about the EMF? What about, it’s like that constant, like there’s, can be more, there can be depth beyond that surface, and there is, it exists, even if we don’t hear it, and that’s how I feel. But yeah, like I’m agreeing with you.
Darren: I just wanted to shift to something you said there about, with electromagnetic sound, there’s an element of discovery and not bringing out sounds you didn’t expect and element of chance and that kind of thing. So I wanted to sort of maybe have you elaborate more on that and how is that as a performer and is this the only way to perform because of that element of surprise or is it a kind of a byproduct that you tolerate?
Aliyah: Ooh, I like this question. It is a gift. It is a great privilege to be able to be curious and share that in the way that I’ve been able to. I am an audience to those sounds. I feel like it started, and I still consider this all research, you know, it started as a curiosity. It is essentially me being curious out loud. And again, I am an audience.
I do discover something new almost every time. Every place I go, depending on the power bars they give me or the extension cables or how something is grounded or how a wire moves, it is really incredibly humbling because even when a performance goes well, I don’t really take full credit for a lot of it. Like a lot of it is, I can be proud that I listened. I can be proud that I committed myself to that curiosity. And so I don’t think it’s ever been a negative thing and it’s been actually very hard for me to think about having more control because I really feel like it’s quite meditative. It’s like tuning into your own heartbeat. There is a relationship between, if you move faster or if you get more excited, your heart moves faster. There is a connection there, but it actually, I think it keeps me grounded because throughout my performance, I have to listen almost as much and sometimes more than think about it like I’m creating this.
And I don’t think, in terms of art, and this is my opinion, I don’t think, it’s a lot of pressure to think that you’re original. I don’t believe that anything I do is original. And that is something that I take pride in because it’s just like I’m echoing something that is bigger than myself. And I’m just letting that be. And so, yeah, I don’t know, I have a lot to say about, but I just, I love it. And sometimes I forget that I’m being watched because I’m just having fun. It’s the same as a performance, like at a show yesterday and I was smiling the whole time. I was like, oh, that’s really cool. And I wasn’t hiding it because it’s like, I’m like that in my own home. I forget that I’m being watched. I forget my audience sometimes. And that does, makes it not feel like a performance. I feel like I’m performing the least in those moments. I love it. And so that, I hope my audience can honestly, sometimes forget me too and feel that what I’m feeling. Like, if we could all just listen and experience and just take that moment, that is also a gift. And I don’t know, I have a lot to say about it, but yeah, that’s how I feel.
Darren: Well, you’re a medium for the moment.
Aliyah: I do feel that way. I do feel that way. It’s like, to some extent, you’re kind of a conduit. Like you do, it does kind of move through. Your sounds do, right? They move through our bodies in this way. And so, yeah, like it moves me beyond my skin. And that’s, I love sharing that with people. That’s what it feels like, you know?
Darren: One audience member was, after the show was talking about the cell phone towers and this kind of thing and the effects. And she was wanting to know about the effects of that on people and why people reject their presence as far as having a psychological effect. Is your work tapping into something there that not everyone can perceive from the electromagnetic activity in our environment, that you’re kind of putting a lens on that and bringing that out into the foreground? And I was just thinking about how it’s always there, pervasively, in our everyday life, and particularly in urban environments. And I just wanted to know how that, is there a connection there between living in an urban centre and making electromagnetic energy the focus of your project?
Aliyah: Hmm, I appreciate this question, I need to think. I guess, like, I think about desensitization when I think about that. I understand, I think in many ways, rejecting those discomforts, because they exist anyway, like in the city, there’s all this stimuli. There’s a lot of pressure, I think, or can be a lot of pressure to get used to it, and eventually our bodies do. We do become desensitized to a lot of these things. It’s not in our control. But I like to think that we can opt in and listen and we don’t lose that, just because maybe we rejected or were used to something.
I think when I was younger, I was a lot more sensitive to sounds. And to me, that also comes into feeling. And so, yeah, you regulate or you get used to certain things when you’re older. But I don’t want to lose access to that ability to be sensitive. That ability to sense. And so I think that more and more with our phones, with our technology, I think it’s valuable to have that kind of friction with it and to allow ourselves a little bit of resistance when it comes to that acceptance of, this is smooth and this is going to be there. It’s okay, it happens. But I’d like to think that we can still interrogate the presence of technology in our lives, no matter what that looks like. I think there’s a naturalization that can sometimes be, that I think is something that’s interesting.
And I do think about a lot is, it’s never going to be nature. It’s never like, how natural is this? And what are the implications of us accepting this? What is it replacing? I think I talked to you about the sounds of birds playing in a park in Qatar on a loop. And that idea of it’s pleasant and most people will think that these are real birds, but also, what are the implications of just playing the birds through a speaker and eventually, and now we can replicate those, we can generate those sounds out of nothing. Like what happens when we stop asking questions about the difference between the source, where it’s coming from, interrogating that. That’s, I don’t know, it’s a bit of a spiral for me, but I think there’s always two sides and I think it’s okay to be sensitive about it. I think that I don’t want to lose that.
Darren: In 20 years time, what are the problems and situations you imagine facing?— Just to end on a wild card.
Aliyah: A very positive note. I think I can’t predict the future. I think a problem that exists now, I can imagine that has probably existed for a while, is just becoming disconnected from ourselves or that idea of the brain blood separation or the barriers between our mind and body. That is something I feel like I’ve dealt with a lot in terms of presence, in terms of dissociation. And so 20 years from now, I think as the time passes by, and I think this might just be always, I think we have to hold to the sensations or the things that make us feel connected to our bodies and not just allow our minds to be consumed.
To remember to feel grounded, to connect with ourselves, to connect with nature. I don’t know, I can’t predict the future, but I could think about this for a while. I could sit with this question.
Wrap Up
Darren: That was my conversation with Aliyah Aziz. I am Darren Copeland, and you’ve been listening to Making Waves here on WGXC. We’ll return one month from now with more explorations of sound art. Making Waves is a production of New Adventures in Sound Art. Thanks for listening.
Aliyah Aziz stitches together sounds as the voices of the ghosts that live in our technology, tuning into their electromagnetic frequencies as a sonic friction between surface and depth. Using “Listening Gloves”, which she designed to play audible EMF through touch, she weaves improvised compositions through the static into a sandpaper hammock of amplification.
New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA) is a sound-based media arts organization near to Algonquin Park. NAISA presents sound sculptures, transmission art, electroacoustic music, videomusic, new art, and the art of sound, through performances, exhibitions, broadcasts, and three annual festivals: Sound Travels, Deep Wireless, and SOUNDplay. Operating since 2001, NAISA is partially funded by Ontario Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Department of Canadian Heritage.