The Wire’s takeover last month at Iklectik, part of the South London space’s closing events as it moves onto new things, featured a cute and memorable film by Frédéric Acquaviva, as part of his partner Lore Lixenberg’s solo set. AI Music features Antoine Spennato arguing with his Alexa when he asks a Microdot device to play some of Acquaviva’s music. Spennato asks for an Acquaviva composition , and Alexa replies that it’s not on Apple Music. He tries again and again, like John Cleese in the cheese shop in Monty Python, getting a variation of similarly disappointing explanations: “Not available on Apple Music”; “Playing radio like Frédéric Acquaviva”; “Shuffling music from Apple Music”; etc. They overlap and interrupt each other until his patience runs out: “Alexa, stop”.

Not being able to find music on streaming services is a pretty familiar experience these days, and I’ve never been keen on voice controlled devices for a number of reasons. The way Spennato spars with Alexa underlines the distance that voice control creates; it’s strangely ironic that as new interfaces have been pioneered, the user has ended up with less, and worse, control.

Music in the Apple Music or Spotify era is a wide river of audio, and when you dip your toe in, it tends to steadily push you further towards the centre. If I request an album, it’ll keep autoplaying afterwards, moving towards more popular or notable songs. The stream of sound seems to have a life of its own. This is antithetical to the listening experience I want, which is a self-contained sample of what the artist/producer/label intended.

None of this is really new, because listening always happened in a particular context. But some of the particular manifestations are. With Alexa, you never quite know if it’s playing an album or it has suddenly spun off into something else. If it’s a new or deluxe edition of an album, you can’t be sure it isn’t exploring alternative tracks from the sessions. A meaningful contract between the listener and the media is broken.

My experience of music on Alexa reminded me of the importance of silence when listening. When there’s a gap between tracks, it’s important, to me at least, that the period of reflection was intended. The gaps in between tracks are as significant as the cuts and dissolves in a movie. If there’s a quiet spell of music, the relationship between that and the silence around it takes on the quality of a dialogue. When Alexa is skipping around or mysteriously stopping, those moments of immersion, the way you are sutured into the sound, is lost. If you’re into experimental or weird sound of any sort, these problems are all the worse. You are trying to follow any kind of low-level audio or subtle play with the environment. The relationship between you and the music, your listenership, has gone from precise to approximate.

Maybe the experience of listening to music is just another kind of control freakery. For a certain period, you want to let nothing disturb the environment you are in, and you willingly submit, like some kind of BDSM game, to whatever the musician themselves wants you to experience. It might not be rational but it becomes a meaningful and compelling ritual.

You can read more about Frederic’s work at his website. Iklectik, which was a thriving hub for underground sound and culture in the beautiful space of Old Paradise Yard, has now closed. They have exciting plans to take their projects on the road, which would help preserve their important activities. You can contribute to their fundraiser here.

Photograph: Frederic Acquaviva, AI Music (2015), performed by Antoine Spennato