Filippo Tommaso Marinetti – Zang Tumb Tumb.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

Zang Tumb Tumb.

1912.

Sound poem / Parole in libertà.

There’s that historical veneer which now covers so much of pre-war modernism, rendering what power it once had almost entirely mute. I’m simultaneously trying to imagine the audience’s response to Marinetti as he flung words about the room like missiles, piercing the omnipresent envelope of language with a barrage of explosive consonants and razor thin vowels. But at the same time, the Parole in libertà graphics are reminding me of depressing chain pizza stores and badly stencilled decor in Brunswick cafes. But historically it is interesting, and perhaps experiencing art as interesting, is as much as we can expect in 2019.

Building on what I’d written here in previous posts about spooky voices operating outside of both the human body and language in 19th century literature, this work from 1912 is a hugely significant development, where Victorian era supernatural horrors were suddenly replaced by mechanical horrors as Europe found itself about to be totally engulfed in the first truely mechanised war. In this light Marinetti’s futurist provocations are not only interesting, but altogether chilling.

Marinetti. F. T. (1912). Zang Tumb Tumb. [Sound poem]. Accessed 13/08/2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Yld7wGWEI

Categories: Voice as Material / Transhuman / Processed Voice

Christian Marclay – Manga Scroll

Following on from Marinetti’s sound poems I’m reminded of Christian Marclay’s Manga Scroll, which also highlights the materiality of the voice through the use of onomatopoeia. As far as I can tell, unlike the futurists Marclay thankfully isn’t using these scripts to forward a fascist agenda, instead it appears he’s trying to draw our attention towards the way in which the materiality of the world is organised through the range of the human voice. While writers such as Foucault have argued it’s through language that we order our experience of the world. What about all of those vocalisations which exist outside or on the cusp of language. We’re born into bodies with ears which prioritise the frequencies of human speech, and in this way our experience of all sounds (not only language) is ordered through that sonic range; all within a reference frame tuned to the voice. This is why the wind howls, the ship groans and fingernails on a blackboard shriek.

With regards to the two performances, I was captivated by just how bombastic both Joan La Barbara’s and Theo Blekmann’s renditions are. If you’re going to implicate your own body into a work, in a way which questions our material relationship to the world, all the better to take it to the limit! Make us aware of where the edges are.

Barbara. J. L. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Extended voice performance]. New York, USA. Accessed 13/08/2019. https://youtu.be/SqtGrpjI9Yw

Bleckmann. T. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Extended voice performance]. New York, USA. Accessed 13/08/2019. https://youtu.be/k8goKkTGJqI

Marclay. C. (2010). Manga Scroll. [Lithographic print 19″ x 3″ x 3″]. London, UK.

Image: https://graphicstudiousf.wordpress.com

Categories: Language / Voice as Material / Processed Voice

Kurt Schwitters – C21 John Bull.

Kurt Schwitters.

John Bull.

1946 / 1947.

The mid-century collages by Kurt Schwitters are worth also considering as sound works. This example in particular, draws the words John Bull through my mind’s ear again and again. I begin to pay attention to all the rounded tones and curved envelopes on which the words depend. The text on the page rapidly oscillates between the aural and the visual, not merely a static image, but an image in time and space. It’s game we’ve all played as children, where you say a word over and over until it becomes alien, hollowed out of meaning for just a brief moment. I’m not sure what it is that words become when they no longer point to things in the world, but there it pleasure in that as well.

Image: theguardian.com

Categories: Voice as Material / Processed Voice

François J. Bonnet – The Order of Sounds.

François J. Bonnet.

The Order of Sounds.

2018.

Book.

This recent book from Bonnet sits in stark contrast to dominant sound art paradigms which have traditionally argued for either a formal reduced listening (Schaeffer) or at the other extreme – a subjective ocean of sound which engulfs us, evading categorisation (Voegelin). To move beyond this thinking, Bonnet draws on the field of Semiotics to construct a compelling history in which our experience of sound is culturally ordered and categorised, not as signs, but as traces. The scope and ambition of this historical arc is reflected in the title, itself a reference to Foucault’s The Order of Things.

Of particular relevance to my own work is his writing on the ways in which bodily presence is intuited from sound, not through metaphor or reference, but actually. In order for sound to exist at all, it requires both a listening body as well as a sounding body, which leads to sound’s natural predisposition to implicate bodies – “..whether through subtle incursions into the into the intimacy of listening, or through deep roars whose power sets the auditor’s stomach resonating.” (p. 66).

Bonnet, F. J. (2018). The Order of Sounds. Falmouth, UK: Urbanomic Books.

Foucault. M. (1971). The Order of Things. New York, USA: Random House.

Schaeffer, P. (2012). ‘In Search of Concrete Music’. trans. North, C, Dack, J. Los Angeles:
University of California Press.

Voegelin, S. (2010). ‘Listening to Noise and Silence’. New York: Bloomsbury.

Categories: Processed Voice / Making Worlds

Wolfgang von Kempelen – Mechanical Speech Machine.

Wolfgang von Kempelen.

1791.

Mechanical Speaking Machine.

Before the continuum of sound was able to be captured through the phonograph, or even earlier experiments where grains of sand were ordered on a surface by certain frequencies, the desire to order, control and reproduce sound was largely focussed on the human voice. This may be reflective of the fact that at least in the West, it’s the voice and the Word, which has historically served to order our world. Of this desire, Wolfgang von Kempelen’s speaking machine is an important example.

What’s also interesting about Kempelen, is that his most famous endeavour, the Mechanical Turk was soon exposed as a fraud, whereby the automated chess player in truth had an expert operator hidden under the stage. This would suggest that Kempelen was more interested in the depiction (or at the very least, the concept) of the artificial, constructed human. By today’s standards he might be thought of as a conceptual artist rather than a scientist.

Image: on-culture.org

Categories: Processed Voice / Post-Human

Homer Dudley of Bell Labs – The Voder.

Homer Dudley (of Bell Labs NY).

The Voder. (Played here by Mrs Helen Harper).

1939.

Speech Synthesis Device.

Both in the lead up and during the Second World War, all sides developed ways to weaponise the human voice. Radio, film, tape, encryption and imitation were all drafted into service, which gives some context to the rapid developments around synthesised speech at this time. In the post-war period these new technologies were quickly disseminated, and just as the factories which had turned out fighter planes were now making cars and fridges – so too magnetic tape, vocoders and computers developed during the war were then afterwards co-opted by a flourishing experimental music scene in the USA.

What is so significant about this particular artificial talking device, is that unlike pervious examples such as the Euphonia, it did not use air, but instead relied on pure energy in the form of electricity. In this way a synthetic voice could now be summoned not out of thin air, but from somewhere beyond air altogether.

Image: amusingplanet.com

Categories: Post-Human / Processed Voice

Robert Ashley – She was a Visitor.

Robert Ashely.

She was a Visitor.

1967.

From the LP – Automatic Writing.

In a similar style to Yamamoto’s – Banana Apart which I’ve posted here previously, this work by Robert Ashley abstracts the human voice largely using repetition. Through this process of abstraction, the voice never truly escapes the grip of language, but rather is suspended between both formal and textual experience. Regarding my own work, I’m looking to bring language (in recognisable form) back into the performances, in a way which doesn’t go so far as narrative but instead also inhabits this slippery space between meaning and form.

Robert Ashely’s composition also serves as a reminder that the voice can be processed not just through the very literal use of audio shaping technology, but also using strategies such as repetition, tone, pace, placement and so on.

Ashley. R. (1967). Automatic Writing. [Album]. New York, USA. Lovely Music.

Makiko. Y. (2018). Bananan Apart [Performace]. Melbourne, Australia: RMIT Design Hub – 28/11/2018.

Makiko Yamamoto – Banana Apart.

Makiko Yamamoto.

Banana Apart.

2018.

Extended voice performance.

Sitting at a low desk before a laptop, Makiko begins shuffling her papers, mumbling into the microphone. Whether or not the performance has now started started I have no idea, which tends to be a returning theme at sound-art events. The work never actually begins, but rather fades in as her repeating of the word “banana” gradually suppresses the ambient chatter amongst the audience. Just that word – “banana”, over and over and over, until the syllables run together without beginning or end. At some point electronic looping and delay effects are introduced, though it’s hard to know exactly when. That word – “banana” eventually dissolves into a whirring soup of vowels and consonants, nasal and plosive.

What interested me most about this performance, was its suggestion that words (language) which we use to structure our experience of the world are formed in the body, rather than the mind. While our daily experiences may feel exclusively cultural, they are at least mediated by, if not entirely rooted within the body.

Makiko. Y. (2018). Bananan Apart [Performace]. Melbourne, Australia: RMIT Design Hub – 28/11/2018.

Image (1): Liquid Architecture

Categories: Processed Voice

Flann O’Brien – The Third Policeman

Flann O’Brien.

The Third Policeman.

Written – 1939 / 1940

Published – 1967

Fiction.

This entry follows on from my note about Edgar Allen Poe’s The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar and the way in which literary fiction has a rich history of voices which are synthesised, disembodied or mysterious in their origin. By chance I came across this example in O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, in which a ghost of the murdered Mr Mathers returns as a kind of clunky double, somewhere between a puppet and a hologram – who can only answer questions using a binary of yes or no answers. Such a vivid description of an embodied digital voice in 1939 (One year before Alan Turing would begin developing the world’s first computer) is remarkable and may prove useful in helping me connect more recent synthetic voices such as Hatsune Miku, with a longer history of digital virtuality.

O’Brien. F. (1974). The Third Policeman. [novel]. London, UK: Picador.

Categories: Avatars / Post-Human / Processed Voice.

Donna Haraway – A Cyborg Manifesto.

Donna Haraway.

A Cyborg Manifesto.

1984.

Essay.

Reflecting on the situation that humans (women in particular) find themselves in towards the end on the 20th century, Haraway argues for the cyborg as a model under which to understand ourselves. As we’ve been profoundly re-shaped and continue to be impacted by bio-tech, computers, pop-culture and more – the dream of a ‘human’ life, lived in it’s natural unmediated state has all but vanished. As she points out – “The cyborg would not recognise the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.” (p. 9)

A major theme running through the text is that the emergence of this said cyborg not only now changes everything, it forces us to realise that nothing ever was truly as it seemed. The cyborg not only destroys the garden, but shows us that the garden was never anything more than a shabby assemblage of cultural artefacts to begin with. While for some this might form of a crises, Haraway argues that by confronting the situation head on, it provides a escape route, an avenue for profound cultural change. After all, cyborgs can be rewired, reprogrammed – their codes can be hacked and altered in useful ways.

Haraway. D. (1984). A Cyborg Manifesto. Minnesota, USA: University of Minnesota Press.

Categories: Post-Human / Making Worlds