Jan Jelinek — Social Engineering

Collaged from the texts of phishing emails, Jan Jelinek has produced something so contemporary that it struggles to be interesting, which, I guess, is maybe the point. Much of the text is in English, but there are fragments in German as well, in case any of us happened to be unaware of the boundless reach of the global. This sounds dismissive, but, really, there is no lingua franca when it comes to attempts to con us out of money, access, whatever. In a sense, these emails are as geared as almost anything to a specific market or audience. The voices are ones that we’ve become accustomed to – robots, though that sounds hopelessly nostalgic – made to sound like humans, and the failure to do so is certainly rife with sonic potential. Jelinek repeats or cuts the texts of said emails, and puts them to mostly agreeable soundtracks, though nothing that feels intentionally musical.

Known especially for his production and radio work, Jelinek certainly understands how to put the essential on stage, whether that is in the repetition of a simple phrase on “Social Engineering 2 (A Mystery wants to be disclosed)” – “he was your countryman and had something in common with you” – or more elaborate vocal palimpsests, like those found on “Social Engineering 5 (The One-off opportunity)”. In the latter, the computerized delivery is heavily processed, and slowed down, so that we can make out the artificial diction, thereby foregrounding the production itself in the process. This might be the rub here – a predictable formula that puts the technical front and centre – and whether or not that is sufficient for Social Engineering to encourage repeated listens, is really anyone’s guess. I couldn’t help feeling this was part of a larger installation project, where the space of a room might be meant to mediate the claustrophobia and cacophony of computerized speech. 

For fans of Jelinek’s savvy production and more conceptually driven sound work. For others, this could just be the bad dream of AI, assuming there is a good one to speak of.