instructions

meta memory

choose a text which you have previously written

choose a space in which to speak this text

record the sound of this space without speaking – all artefacts and features of this space, including exterior environmental sounds are welcome

record yourself reading your text out loud in this space – speak as if you are reading to yourself

mix the recording of the space without voice together with the recording of your voice

this mix is played back during a performance in the same space

the playback should be unclear and muffled

a performance consists of speaking the text again in the same space, but this time without reading it

an additional instrument may be used to accompany the voice

the performer tries to remember the text and uses the recording to prompt this memory

an introspective meta memory exercise

devised for Zsolt Sőrés Ahad

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performances

MM Centar – Showroom of Contemporary Sound – Zagreb
6 May 2015

[VIDEO] ↓

[AUDIO] ↓

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“music after the end of music”
Művelődési Szint (Müszi) Budapest
10 October 2015

photo: Orsolya Kaincz

tune your syllables

microtonal melodies are sung using syllables which serve an internal musical logic – these language elements have no specific meaning, however within the language of the music they serve a clear purpose – giving form and emphasis to details within the evolving melodic line – emphasizing contours in the music and highlighting specific tones, intervals and inner harmonics

the voice is accompanied by and electronically combined with a drone which takes on a vocal quality, showing the harmonic and rhythmic effects of the sung syllables within the total sound spectrum

an exploration of the relation of natural speech to melody, working within a very limited microtonal range and demonstrating how the annunciation of specific syllables affects the vertical axes of the harmonic spectrum

devised for Amelia Cuni

talk to yourself using the given structure to discover your own inner-space grammatics

a simple language structure is created for use as an introspective tool with no fixed verbal sounds – a linguistic construction used as navigation into internal mental space, providing a unique means for talking to oneself

once a basic map is made, the performer can fill in the blanks with his own unique sounds thus giving him a personal toolkit for having conversations with himself onstage

performances of this solo consist of a live amplified rendition of such an inner conversation, making the audience a witness to a particularly individual process of inward reflection

a demonstration of the potential for anyone to discover and use their own unique vocal fingerprint, where each person is enabled to fill in the available spaces with their own personal sounds

devised for Jaap Blonk

translate the transitions

Alessandro Bosetti – a voice artist who works with language and who speaks four languages fluently (Italian, French, English, German) – is asked to dynamically explore processes of translation and the relation of sound to meaning

his material is a poem by Louise Landes Levi which describes the process of translation from her perspective, drawing on ideas about translation from the French writer René Daumal, an author who she has herself translated (“Rasa or Knowledge of the Self. Essays on Indian Aesthetics and selected Sanskrit Studies”. Shivastan Publishing, 2006. Soon to be republished by Station Hill Press)

the poem combines Alessandro’s four languages and is processed with a series of translation permutations, so that four versions of the original text come into being – these four permutations are repeatedly spoken and as the voice continues it is electronically transformed so that the individual words become unclear and eventually dissolve into pure sound

the live performer interacts with the slowly mutating recordings, varying what is said during the dissolution of the original words, so that clearly understandable language moves into abstraction – while speaking within this increasingly non-semantic situation, unusual combinations of words in the different languages appear – at the same time the natural rhythms and cadences of each of the languages used become superimposed, showing the relation of words in the different language which demonstrates processes of translation at work

a continuous game of moving between abstract sound and understandable language is played, making audible a vital aspect of the art of translation – the aim of this game is to use spoken text and its dissolution for literally hearing the connections between meaningful language and pure sound, locating the point at which meaning disappears

devised for Alessandro Bosetti
based on a text by Louise Landes Levi

swim in a sea of potential language

a sound space of phonetic sounds projected into a space in which a singer moves and freely associates

a series of short samples of Claron McFadden’s voice speaking and singing vowels, consonants, phonemes and syllables were recorded and assembled to create a sound space filled language elements – a moving sound collage, a sea of potential language

during a performance of this piece the singer moves through this continuously shifting sea of potential language and attempts to find words emerging from out of the sound collage – she might find already existing words, new words or words in a language she does not know – the emergent language of new words, known words, unknown words, cut-up words and semi-formed sentences provide clues and keys to her thoughts and associations

devised for
Claron McFadden

[AUDIO] ↓

instruction 001 – voice: Claron McFadden