By: Rebecca Miller

The Future of Sonic Tree Medicine

About 1 in 3 adults sleep less than 7 hours per night, which can increase the risk of both mental and physical health conditions as well as the likelihood of accidents, injuries, and even possible death.¹ For the sake of daily functionality, humans need adequate levels of sleep, because “sleep services all aspects of our body in one way or another: molecular, energy balance, as well as intellectual function, alertness and mood.”² As explained by Dr Merrill Mitler, a sleep expert and neuroscientist at National Institutes of Health. “Loss of sleep impairs your higher levels of reasoning, problem solving and attention to detail”.³ Getting an adequate amount of good quality sleep can lead to benefits such as creative problem solving, improved performance, enhanced learning, and a better mood. But it’s a privilege reserved only for those who are not homeless.

In Grants Pass, Oregon, in April 2024, the Supreme Court leaned heavily in favour of passing local ordinances to ban sleeping and camping by unhoused people in public spaces. In defence of not criminalizing unhoused individuals, Justice Elena Kagan argues that “Sleeping is a biological necessity. It’s sort of like breathing. I mean, you could say breathing is conduct, too. But presumably, you would not think that it’s OK to criminalize breathing in public, and for a homeless person who has no place to go, sleeping in public is kind of like breathing in public.”⁴ This leads to the question, is the Supreme Court criminalising the dreams of the unhoused community? Or even depriving unhoused people of their human right to dream?

Scientists and artists throughout history have reported that their ingenious intuitions came to them while they slept. Among the most notable was Mary Shelly, who said the concept for her Gothic novel Frankenstein appeared to her in a dream. There is anecdotal evidence that Hypnagogia or N1, the earliest stage of sleep, is an incubator for creative ideas. Anne Trafton, life sciences writer at the MIT News office, recounts, “Thomas Edison often took advantage of this state. When struggling with a thorny problem, he would sit down for a nap while holding a metal ball in his hand. Just as he fell asleep, the ball would fall out of his hand and wake him up, and when he woke, he often had a new solution in mind.”⁵

METHODS

One of my cherished memories from childhood in California was going to Girl Scout camp in the summer. My favourite was Hidden Falls established in 1957, in the Redwood Forest of Soquel in the Santa Cruz mountains. Hidden Falls is a 90-acre gem populated by giant California Redwoods. This is also the site of the recent CZU Lightning Complex fires that burned through the Big Basin Redwoods State Park. In August 2020, a series of lightning strikes from a major thunderstorm struck Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties, initiating one of the most destructive wildfires in California’s history. The fire covered over 86,000 acres of land, homes and forest, including 97% of the state park which is home to ancient coastal redwoods ranging in age from 1,000-2,500 years old.⁶ Yet despite this recent history of destruction, these trees have long captivated those who wander amongst their ancient bodies. “The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always… From them comes silence and awe. It’s not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time.”⁷

On one memorable occasion, my oldest sister Sile and her best friend went to camp with me. In the evening we rolled out our sleeping bags under the majestic giants and slept underneath their graceful canopies. There was one night I was woken up in my sleep by some older campers who were disguised as Fairies. They said they were taking me to a Fairy party, and took me to a clearing in the woods where there were a few of the other campers. The Fairies danced and laughed and encouraged me to join in. They gave me a cupcake, and it tasted delicious. The Fairies sprinkled glitter over me and the other guests at the party, and when the party ended they led us back to our sleeping bags. I slept happily and soundly that night. In the morning I tried to find the other campers that were there with me. I asked my sister if it was her who took me to the Fairy party, and she denied it. None of the other campers besides the ones at the party knew anything about it either. I still had glitter in my hair for the rest of the day. I wondered about the night for a very long time, and occasionally I would pester my sister about her involvement in that night. She would consistently insist that she knew nothing.

Since that event, I have drawn a connection between trees and sleep. This was the initial inspiration to develop an experimental sleep hygiene routine to hack sleeplessness, improve sleep and foster creativity. This project is a prototype for sonic tree sleep medicine and could contribute to the development of an evidence base for nature prescriptions as outlined in Koselka et al.⁸

I propose that the interior sounds of trees could help with sleep; for example, listening to a recording of the interior sounds of trees before bedtime is part of a good sleep hygiene routine. The interior sounds of trees are in a different category from green noise,⁹ a type of noise designed to mimic the sounds of the natural world such as a bubbling stream, an ocean breeze, or the rustling of leaves, synthesized by focusing on midrange sounds. Although green noise may be popular, the green noise produced for sleep is not naturally occurring. Sleep product expert Ben Trapskin says, “Some green noise products may contain artificial or synthesized sounds, which can be less effective than natural sounds. It’s important to choose a product that uses high quality, natural sounds for the best potential sleep benefits.”¹⁰ Sara Silverman, a holistic sleep doctor and behavioural sleep medicine specialist, says green noise may help with sleep onset: “Overall, there’s limited data on green noise and sleep, but there is some evidence that it may potentially aid with improving sleep onset rather than sleep maintenance.”¹¹

For this sleep experiment systems hack on the nervous system, I sought out the highest quality recordings of the interior sounds of trees. Using the interior sounds of trees is important for this study and distinguishes it from the small evidence base of green noise that focuses on the external noises of nature. Although there are many recordings such as birds, water sources, and wind blowing through trees, there are not any investigations into the impact of the interior sounds of trees on sleep.

A study at UNSW Sydney indicates there is a connection between the proximity to green spaces and how much sleep people get.¹² Their research article Does Sleep Grow on Trees? is a longitudinal study to investigate the potential prevention of insufficient sleep with different types of urban green space. Professor Thomas Astell-Burt hypothesised that “parks, woodlands and other nearby green spaces might actually help us to nod off. Green space might counter impacts of noise and air pollution, and cool local heat islands, all of which can make sleep difficult.”¹³ The study found lower odds of developing insufficient sleep in areas where 30% or more of land cover within 1.6km had tree canopy. This research supports my speculation that digital recordings of the interior sounds of trees could provide the benefits that sleeping under a tree canopy could provide.

I procured six minutes of inner tree recordings from Jez Riley French, the field recording artist for this experiment. Made using hand-built contact microphones by French and his daughter Phoebe Riley Law,¹⁴ one recording was from a Corsican Pine tree in Broxa Forest in North Yorkshire and the other was from a Spruce tree in the Forest of Dean. I was not able to access a redwood tree for the recording as I now live in the UK, but I was able to find the next best thing. Because my sleep quality is generally poor, I performed this preliminary sleep experiment on myself for two weeks. Before bedtime, I rolled out my yoga mat, laid down on it in Savasana or Corpse pose and listened to the recording with headphones on repeat for 15-20 minutes with the lights dimmed. I heard the sap quietly moving up through the trunk, the water taken up by the roots and pulled through tube-like straws up to the leaves. To track my sleep quality, I kept a sleep journal to record my dreams, reactions and thoughts that materialised during the listening sessions. I asked myself: How did I sleep last night? What was my sleep like? I allowed for spontaneous impressions of the tree recordings and their impact on my sleep experience to be included.

DATA

Each morning after waking, I wrote for 10 minutes in my sleep journal. I wrote about the quality of my sleep, my dreams and how I felt. For this study, I have extracted the key elements relating to falling asleep and the quality of my sleep.

Sleep Journal Extracts

9/1/2024 – The sounds were more like rhythms. It felt relaxing to listen through the speakers on my laptop. It would be interesting to listen through headphones. The two recordings are about 15 min together.

10/1/2024 – I replayed the sounds of the interiors of trees. I allowed my thoughts to travel sonically inside the trees. Then I was woken up at 4:00 am by the frightening sound of foxes mating. It lasted a long time, and I could not go back to sleep so I folded laundry.

11/1/2024 – Each time I listen to the recordings I hear new things. I feel like I am travelling and drifting along the sounds of the interiors of the trees. I drifted off lightly to sleep.

12/1/2024 – I listened to the recordings, and I slept very deeply. I feel as though I just shut off. I did not remember my dreams.

13/1/2024 – When I listen to the recording, I start to recognize sections and parts that stand out such as in any time-based media. I lay down on my yoga mat in Savasana pose and listen. By the end, I have drifted off into a light sleep. I am prepared to go to bed.

14/1/24 – I listened to the sounds of the water being sucked up the tree through the roots. I dropped off to sleep quickly. I cannot remember any of my dreams or the feelings of my dreams.

15/1/24 – I did not listen tonight, and I had a terrible night’s sleep.

16/1/24 – I slept average nothing remarkable. I am still not remembering my dreams. I woke up a couple of times. What I am finding is when I listen to the recordings for 15 min, and I lay down on the floor on my back in Savasana pose with the external speakers streaming from my computer, I drift off into a light sleep. This makes it easier for me to fall asleep when I am in bed.

16/1/24 – I listened to the recordings. I am now familiar with the sounds. I had a bad night’s sleep. I missed my alarm and had to throw on my clothes and run out the door with my kids.

17/1/24 – I listened again for 15 min before bed. I had another difficult night’s sleep.

18/1/24 – I decided to use my watercolour paint in green and paint lines of different opacity on watercolour paper. I did this while listening to the recording. I think I will make a relaxing and meditative video with these ideas. I fell asleep swiftly. I dreamt about colours and the feeling of trees. 

19/1/24 – I did not remember my dreams. I painted concentric circles while I listened to the recordings. The circles remind me of the cross-section of a tree. What it looks like when you see the top of a tree stump. I have been researching the properties of Corsican pine. And soon I will research Fir trees. I bought some pine needle essential oil. I burned some in a diffuser. This helps to create a multi-sensory experience.

20/1/24 – When I was listening to the recording in the dark with headphones on and pine oil burning, I felt like I was taken deeper into myself. The recordings feel like an interior space, cave-like. Listening to the recordings is a calm restful preparation for sleep. This is a sleep exploration. It could be helpful to compare the tree recordings with a recording of the wind rustling through the leaves of a tree. My dreams were more like feelings. I woke up with more resolved feelings about directions I wanted to go in. I feel guided towards certain directions. Otherwise, I have not had any visual dreams. I woke up with no recollection, everything goes black, I unplug the screen.21/1/24 – Last night I had a full cinematic dream in parts, part 1, 2 and 3. It felt like lucid dreaming. When I listened to the tree sounds it felt like more intimate sounds of trees flowed through. It could be interesting to recreate or isolate the individual sounds I am hearing. How is the sound directly from the interior of trees different from any other sound from nature? The direct sound from the tree not a sound that sounds like leaves rustling. Not synthesized.

RESULTS

Before I began this study, I felt that I was not getting enough sleep. I would sometimes have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep without waking up several times in the night. When I listened to the inner sounds of trees before bed, ten out of fourteen nights of sleep were positively impacted by the experiment. I fell asleep more easily and slept deeper and longer. I only experienced poor-quality sleep four out of fourteen nights. A spontaneous creative impulse to paint emerged for two out of fourteen nights. I picked up the most immediate materials I had near me, which were watercolour paint and paper. I simply and loosely painted an image of circles and trees. I added a woman reclining on her back. It felt like automatism to me, “bodily movements that are not consciously controlled like breathing or sleepwalking.”¹⁵

It is possible that listening to the recording of the trees in combination with lying in the Savasana pose could have a positive impact on falling asleep and staying asleep through the night. However, listening to the sound of the trees was important in helping me focus and through it I felt more connected to nature and the earth.

CONCLUSION

It is evident that listening to trees could contribute to a good sleep hygiene routine. As a hack for sleeplessness, it has been effective in relaxing my nervous system, which has helped me with the quality of my sleep. By intuitively exploring alternative sonic tree sleep medicine I was able to design a unique sleep hygiene routine which produced positive effects. 

Research implications suggest that there could be situations when listening to sonic tree medicine digitally in areas where there is no green space or tree canopy could assist with better sleep quality. Digital technology, which is so often seen as the opposite of nature, can be used to bring us closer to nature by allowing us to experience sounds of nature that we wouldn’t ordinarily be able to hear.
Creativity was a surprising affordance in this study. I speculate listening to a variety of the interior sounds of different trees could lead to a range of unexpected creative outcomes. The same study could be done for releasing creativity or assisting with creative blocks. There are ways that technology can harness the power of nature to solve human problems that are currently being researched. Over the past five years, the US Defence Department has spent large amounts of money to study the white-crowned sparrow, “to discover ways to enable people to go without sleep and to function productively and efficiently,”¹⁶ looking for a way to use the biology of the white-crowned sparrow to engineer a way to create a sleepless soldier. In contrast to the sleepless soldier outcome, sonic tree medicine is a viable way to collaborate with nature to promote health, well-being and creativity through better sleep for humans and hopefully a counteragent for the sleepless soldier.

BIO

Rebecca E. Miller – multimedia artist, arts-based researcher, and educator. I studied fine art at the San Francisco Art Institute as an undergraduate and completed my PhD in Art and Computational Technology in the computing department at Goldsmiths University of London in 2020. The Arts in Health movement and participatory arts-based research influence my work. My research explores the intersection of digital and analogue processes. I use different types of digital media, analogue media, and traditional art materials to express and produce the concepts that I am working with. I investigate my subject matter in experimental and playful ways. 

REFERENCES

1. Ashley Valentine, “44 Surprising Sleep Statistics That Will Remind You Why Sleep Essential”, CNET, February 7, 2024. np
   https://www.cnet.com/health/sleep/44-sleep-statistics-you-probably-didnt-know-that-will-surprise-you/ ︎
2. Vicky Contie, Alan Defibaugh (Illustrations), Dana Steinberg, Harrison Wein,
    “The Benefits of Slumber Why You Need a Good Night’s Sleep.” NIH (National Institutes of Health) News in Health, April 2013. pg1
     https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/sites/nihNIH/files/2013/April/NIHNiHApr2013.pdf ︎
3. Ibid np ︎
4. Abbie VanSickle, “Supreme Court Seems Poised to Uphold Local Bans on Homeless Encampments.” The New York Times, April 23, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/supreme-court-homeless-case-oregon.html?smid=url-share ︎
5. Anne Trafton, “That Moment When You’re Nodding Off is a Sweet Spot for Creativity.” MIT news, May 15, 2023. np
   https://news.mit.edu/2023/sleep-sweet-spot-dreams-creativity-0515  ︎
6. Christopher Potter, “Impacts of the CZU Lightning Complex Fire of August 2020 on the forests of Big Basin Redwoods State Park”, California Fish and Wildlife Scientific Journal, 12 April 2023, http://www.doi.org/10.51492/cfwj.109.1. ︎
7. ”Beyond Your Wildest Dreams: Redwoods.” Santa Cruz County.org, May 1, 2024.np
   https://www.santacruz.org/blog/beyond-your-wildest-dreams-redwoods/ ︎
8. Elizabeth Koselka, Lucy Weidner, Arsniy Minasov, Mark G. Berman, William R. Leonard, Marianne Santoso, Junia N. de Brito, Zachary Clark Pope, Mark Pereira, Theresa H. Horton, “Walking Green: Developing an Evidence Base for Nature Prescriptions”
   International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, November 2019 np
   https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337092325_Walking_Green_Developing_an_Evidence_Base_for_Nature_Prescriptions  ︎
9. Susan Writes “What is Green Noise.” Medium May 1, 2024. https://medium.com/the-daily-cuppa/what-is-green-noise-20574ff81644 ︎
10. Ben Trapskin, “The Soothing Sounds of Green Noise: How it Can Help You Sleep Better” Yawnder, January 17, 2024. np
    https://yawnder.com/the-soothing-sounds-of-green-noise-how-it-can-help-you-sleep-better ︎
11. Casey Clark, “Is ‘Green Noise’ The Magical Solution to Better Sleep?”
     Huffington Post, April 15, 2023. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/is-green-noise-the-magical-solution-to-better-sleep_uk_643967afe4b0a7592625e596 ︎
12. Thomas Astell-Burt, Xiaoqi Feng, “Does sleep grow on trees? A longitudinal study to investigate potential prevention of insufficient sleep with different types of urban space.” SSM – Population Health Volume 10, April 2020. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827319301703 ︎
13. Thomas Astell-Burt, Xiaoqi Feng, “More green, more ‘zzzzz’? Trees may help us sleep.” UNSW Sydney Newsroom, March 16, 2020.np
    https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2020/03/more-green–more-zzzzz–trees-may-help-us-sleep ︎
14. Jez Riley French “C-Series Pro + Contact Microphones.” September 24, 2023. np
    https://jezrileyfrench.co.uk/ ︎
15. Automatism, “Art Term.” Tate, May 1, 2024. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/automatism ︎
16. Jonathan Crary, “24/7 late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep.” Verso, 2013, 10. ︎

back to the ball

By: Max Oginz

Manifestations (No Set Future)

In 2023, fashion Vlogger Tristan Payne moves through Manhattan streets as light washes the scaffolding around him. Between asking people “what are you wearing,” he speaks directly to the camera on the importance of authenticity and self-composed historicity. “I wanna speak the truth, I want it to be different, I want to show y’all what’s really going on…I don’t think about this as short term, I think about it as my legacy…so I think y’all should do the same.”¹ The atomized moment Payne walks through, in which what people are wearing is also “what’s really going on,” is characteristic of a specific post-pandemic logic of achievement, where objects, people, and time is given based on what might be called at best good habits, and at worst, good behaviour. Without a message, Payne presents himself to the world, and that presentation is an effective enough legacy. Self-presentation, finding oneself, self-realization, these are the abstractions that manifestation, a nebulous self-help term, serves. The purpose of this essay is not to trace manifestation to its origins, nor is it to provide a serious critique of a term that became a viral meme at the outset of the WFH era. Instead, manifestation serves as a window into contemporary visions of temporality. Manifestation is an imagined moment of mastery over time and capital, one that is particularly suited to the parasocial time of platform life. Such a mastery, I argue, expresses the circularity of time spent online, in which the system that distracts and allows one to live outside time is also the hack that offers users an opportunity to bend time–to 5 easy habits or a five-second countdown, or a special state of transcendent sleep. This circularity presents a particular vision of nowness that should be contextualized within the uncertainties of Anthropocene living. In a time where the prophecy is imminent material collapse, the importance of planning, and of manifesting, gains ironic and paramount appeal.

Since late 2020, manifestation has dominated meme pages and news feeds, variably used sincerely as a tool to improve mindfulness, and a joke parodying the notion of achieving goals simply through visualization or affirmation. In a YouTube video from 2022, self-help author Mel Robbins explains that “manifesting is preparing your mind, body, and spirit to take action.”² This preparation is a mental one with material outcomes. The mental system of manifestation varies from user to user, but manifestation has explicit predecessors in the late 19th and early 20th century “New Thought” movement. At its centre, manifestation is the notion that cognition is a system that can be controlled through the bending or refiguring of certain abstract rules of thought. 

From its outset, the practice was highly gendered and centered around a handful of self-help authors who appropriated hermetic, Vedic, and transcendental thought. These authors persist as apocryphal figures in online forums and instructional videos, with multiple personalities and pennames, each co-opting distinct theological frameworks. In sum, these authors, such as Prentice Mulford and William J. Atkinson, proposed a “mind-cure,” in which patterns of thought had a direct influence on material events. By changing thought, one could change circumstances. Philosopher William James, who provides a “psychological” account of self-help doctrine, wrote in 1902 that “Systematic healthy-mindedness, conceiving good as the essential and universal aspect of being, deliberately excludes evil from its field of vision.”³ The modulation of thought becomes the primary object of both New Thought and the online self-help doctrines that are promulgated on Reddit threads and YouTube videos. Abstraction is modulated to achieve an intended outcome. Where one might be introduced to their romantic partner by chance, work hard toward a promotion, or achieve financial success by making some calculated if risky investment, manifestation locates all these capitalist success stories within a mindfulness practice that imagines the outcome already achieved. In other words, manifestation is a way of remembering the future in the hope that it might become the past. Reddit user SpacewithinSpace writes:

A lot of other people that I knew were struggling to get a job too. So i decided to manifest it. First I spent the first two weeks every morning working on my self concept using affirmations and by putting myself in the mindset and feeling of a person who would be earning money. Then when I was used to that feeling and it felt more natural, I visualized every night before bed. Then on a random day, my brother texted me telling me that he referred me to a manager that he knew at the airport to convince them to give me an interview. This was random and out of the blue which is how i knew i manifested it.⁴

In identifying manifestation’s imaginary, a few characteristics stand out in this post, the first of which is the specificity and purpose of the manifestation in question. The specific aim here is a singular outcome: a job for the user. Mentions of exterior circumstances are absent: no family to provide for, nor family history, no mention of class. Second, a divine randomness is transposed onto an intended, planned-for outcome. The manifestation of the job is specific, but the proof that it was manifested is in its divine random out-of-the-blueness. Finally, the singular outcome is transposed on a collective intervention: it’s the user’s brother who helps him achieve the manifested outcome. Taking the outcome of a collective action as an outcome solely for and by the user is central to the certain future proposed by manifestation.

Karen Barad argues that with the discovery of the quantum particle, a cell that can exist in multiple temporalities, time takes on a newly volatile dimension, in which the linearity of spacetime is challenged, and the Newtonian physics of progression is troubled. By her description, the evils of colonialism now travel by spacetime, and their effects are felt across temporalities. In addition to challenging any linear conception of time, she challenges the neutrality of the sciences, argues for a beyond-Derridian deconstruction of science,⁵ and proposes a collective alternative to linear spacetime.⁶ As a system for manipulating temporality, manifestation exploits the disjuncture of atomic time to produce outcomes of capitalist success and excess. It serves as a counter-appropriation to collectivity–a singular but polyvocal encounter with time. Unlike the collective quantum time proposed by Barad, manifestation is a singular quantum time, in which people, objects and outcomes are manipulated as particles existing partially in mind and partially in the world. Or more accurately, partially in the world and completely in the mind. This reaffirms Barad’s call for the production of “collective imaginaries that undo pervasive conceptions of temporality that take progress as inevitable and the past as something that has passed and is no longer with us…”⁷ The abstract certainty of manifestation, its inparticulate, individual randomness, is its selling point.

Rising out of the work-from-home moment, labour and leisure are merely linear temporalities to transcend through thought. This, of course, is not the radical queer reimagining of temporality and quantum physics that Barad argues for. Instead, we are left with a cultish particalization of what otherwise, in Barad’s critique/reconsideration of linear spacetime, are actors neutralized by mathematics and natural science. The images of manifestation – often stock footage culled from paid services, overlaid with subtitles in the voice of a spiritualist proponent of self-help, imbues images with an aspirational appeal. We see astronauts, people in nature, meditation, and nostalgia-tinged evocation of childhood trauma, in which a child and adult, silhouetted against sunset, hold a paper cutout of a house. 

While the trajectory of manifestation’s logic, from have-not to have, is a linear mode of material advancement, the instrumentalization of thought and image for material gain suggests new, nonlinear forms of capitalism. To achieve the ends of accomplishment where it otherwise seems impossible, in the irreversibility of global economies, manifestation employs a pseudo-quantum science that turns thought material, renders habits ‘ atomic’, and privileges the act of visualization. This visualization, as Derrida’s Given Time helps us locate, need not be in the waking world of labour and leisure. 

In the logic of manifestation, there exists a space outside time, in which a transcendence of the physical is possible. This space is accessed through sleep. According to Prentice Mulford, an early 20th-century author of Christian New Thought, “the last thought before going to sleep is the one most likely to remain with on leaving the body…That is, it will be the first clew towards the recognition of your real self when you away from your body.”⁸ Manifestation proposes a zone outside of time, or in the case of Mulford, sleep, in which thought itself is transformed into a natural resource. As an impossible space, the state of sleep becomes ripe for observing the flows of capitalist data from thought to action. The impossible time observed in the state akin to sleep responds to time’s invisible encroachment–it is an abstract response to an abstract state. In Given Time I: Counterfeit Money, Jacques Derrida writes of time as a non-phenomenological non-object. For Derrida, there is no outside time. He writes that “time…gives nothing to see. It is at the very least the element of invisibility itself.”⁹ Manifestation, resistant to Derrida’s framework, the non-visible, non-material nature of time–the event’s constant inside–renders time as a natural resource in use even at rest. By Mulford’s logic, why sleep if not manifesting? Here, an appropriation of Vedic and Buddhist meditative transcendental practice becomes all about producing results in waking, ephemeral life. In sleep, the thought is a natural resource. Each page of Mulford’s turn-of-the-century text, Your Forces and How to Use Them, is printed with the declaration (disclaimer, agitprop?) that “thoughts are things.” Tellingly, Mulford associates this atemporal thinking with technology. “A thought is as real a thing as a telegraph-wire.”¹⁰ Here, we have the formation of a proto-datafication that foretells of the real datafication of habit in the form of surveillance capital. Outside time, thoughts become concrete things to be mined for profit. The purpose of manifestation becomes the extraction of material wealth from habit. In this way, systems of manifestation transcend the simple notion of healthy living or mindfulness, stepping into the economy by stepping outside of time. Derrida associates time with a kind of economic circle, in which given time and time taken are in constant conversation. The gift of time would have to be outside time itself–perhaps in sleep. Manifestation puts sleep, too, under anaesthetic. In his book on sleep in the age of digital media, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep, Jonathan Crary writes that “sleep poses the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present.”¹¹ At the dawn of the 20th century, already sleep itself was becoming capital, defending itself through communion with angels: “the thought of yourself as a spirit, as a being distinct and apart from your body, will serve as this clew…It will be the telegraph-wire ‘twixt you and them, because they will not stay permanently with you in your gropings on the cruder stratum of life.”¹² The state of sleep in which manifestation is made possible forms a contradictory logic of thought and reality. 

Here, thoughts become reality as a future that can be imagined–and thus transformed into visual material. The online spaces of manifestation, its Reddit threads and YouTube comment feeds, corroborate this transformation. As new technologies cannibalize old ones, thought for manifestation purposes move from telegraph wire to fibre optic cables. Visualization becomes one step in the vehicle for manifesting: “I’ve been manifesting for a month. I got my boyfriend back and he said all the things I’ve ever wanted to hear. Someone posted a video about writing your names together and folding paper then placing it under your bed. I did that. I imagined what our new life will be like. Then when I was used to that feeling and it felt more natural, I visualized every night before bed.”¹³ Manifestation, then, is imbricated with the visuality of online culture–our ability to be seen and see. Crary writes, of the visual situation that “…the demand for mandatory 24/7 immersion in visual content effectively becomes a new form of institutional super-ego.”

As both joke and doctrine, manifestation performs the role of the platform’s economic circle, in which time spent on the platform is time regained through the logic of achievement–which in turn leads us back into the leisure time of surveillance capital. The circle produces certainty, whereas time remains a non-phenomenological, non-object. The question of manifestation is easily construed with a whole slew of other questions that one is likely to be bombarded with when spending time on platforms: techniques to reclaim time from procrastination, distraction, negative self-talk, etc. But what force does the state of sleep reclaim time from? Manifestation reclaims time from the platform itself. It produces a state of certainty where there is simply the flow of time, the endless wastes of time that can be engendered by a scrolling feed. The feed of time.

Capitalism’s mindfulness cult, when considered in light of Anthropocentric clocks, promises to reclaim time we don’t have. Through the capture of what captures us, I aim to take seriously the multiple meanings of manifestation: the manifesto, the presence of a ghostly other, the appearance and reappearance of specific persons and things, and the trace of difference between the sign and object (in which one semiosis is a “manifestation” of another). Manifestation is a window into the platform’s metabolic circle of time lost in distraction and time gained through the achievement of financial certainty, corporeal well-being, and spiritual transcendence. Manifestation’s system of certainty is recoded into an aleatory flow of desires made public, spectral encounters mutating the virtual landscape, and hallucinatory experiences diffused across virtual material.

BIO

Max Oginz is a PhD student in Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz. His writing and films interrogate the literary, ecological, and cinematic implications of technologically mediated life. His writing has been published in Sleepingfish, Fanzine, Cinemedia, Senses of Cinema, and is forthcoming in the edited volume, Future Spaces of Power: The Cultural Politics of Digital and Outer Spaces.

REFERENCES

1. Tristan Payne, ‘What Are People Wearing in New York City? Midtown, Bowery, SoHo (EP.62)’, 13:27, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHCjINBU-eE&list=PLWHh-nTVQ-uTTJSisV-fDhuC4Vlk3i0fY&index=16&ab_channel=TristanPaine ︎
2. Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule (Post Hill Press, 2017). E-Pub, 62. ︎
3. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature (1902; repr., New York, NY: Routledge, 2002), 73. ︎
4. SpaceWithinSpace, “6 Years of Manifesting – Manifesting is Very Easy and Simple!” March 2023. https://www.reddit.com/r/lawofattraction/comments/12pku6g/comment/jgn58h1/. ︎
5. Karen Barad, “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/Continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-To-Come,” Derrida Today 3, no. 2 (November 2010): 240–68, https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2010.0206. ︎
6. Karen Barad, “Troubling Time/S and Ecologies of Nothingness: Re-Turning, Re-Membering, and Facing the Incalculable,” New Formations, no. 92 (September 1, 2017): 56–86, https://doi.org/10.3898/newf:92.05.2017. 62. ︎
7. Ibid. 57. ︎
8. Mulford. Your Forces and How to Use Them, “Where You Travel When You Sleep,” 6. ︎
9. Jacques Derrida, Given Time. I, Counterfeit Money, trans. Peggy Kamuff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). 6. ︎
10. Ibid. 7. ︎
11. Jonathan Crary, 24/7 : Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (New York: Verso, 2013). 15. ︎
12. Mulford. 7. ︎
13. Dependent-Painter-59. “It worked! So, So Well.” March 28, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/lawofattraction/comments/1bqchv8/it_worked_so_so_well/ ︎

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