In 2019, Remedy Entertainment released a supernatural action video game called Control. In the game, an insidious aural force dubbed “The Hiss” invades and corrupts the headquarters of a secretive agency called the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC). “The Hiss” manifests sonically as a disjunctive earworm, a looping incantation that the infected can’t help but utter over-and-over ad infinitum as they float aimlessly amidst the Brutalist architectures of the game environment. Never written, only heard: “The Hiss” is as mysterious as it is pervasive. Playing Control subjects the user to the tune of this self-declared “Dadaist” poem’s layered refrains for dozens upon dozens of hours on end. Well into these repetitions, I realized that I had, indeed, heard this one poetic work in all its variants with more frequency and continuity than any other poem in my life. A fact that also rings true, surely, resoundingly, for the other 10 million players of the game. In this way, it might not be outlandish to propose that “The Hiss” is perhaps the single most popular work of aural poetry ever released. But what does it say? Pure performance: neither textual document nor official transcription of “The Hiss” exists. Instead, fan transcriptions intermingle with speculative readings online. Taking this as a cue for writing listening in the following composition, I’ve re-disarticulated the cut-up bricolage by transcribing the poem in fragmentary form. I’ve returned “The Hiss” to its constituent parts in order to explore these fragments in more detail. This transmutation aims to be as adaptive as the incantation itself: to afford manifold layers of resonance while creating the conditions for each individual fragment to echolocate differentially in new configurations. The linked installation of “The Hiss” features spatialized text, 3D positional audio, and an open-source collaborative virtual writing environment for further experimentation in Mozilla Hubs XR. Here, “The Hiss” remains open to all potential engagements with its glittering remnants hovering in space. Nothing hisses with quite the same register as Web 1.0 GlowTxt GIFs leaking creakily out of high-fidelity graphic processors. Here, unlikely arrangements and unexpected configurations might surface within the looping murmurations of “The Hiss.” Images of the installation featured here are invitations for further play. As much a writing environment as a transcription or composition, the work—much like “The Hiss” itself—calls for new modes of activation and response. 6.9.22
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“Virtual Sibilance, High Fidelity Hiss.” OEI #98-99 for “Aural Poetics” special issue ed. Michael Nardone. Stockholm, Sweden: OEI.
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