Sound Voice Perform

1 Sexualized 1990 / 00:10 Caller 1: Hi, I would describe myself as highly sexualized, perverted, computerized, audiophonic, loud and obnoxious… basically very human. Caller 2: I would describe myself as subterranean, obscure, black, poetic, infrequent, defossilized, primary, unfulfilled, desiring, funny, frantic, myopic, skinless, untouchable, paralogic, incompetent, silent, freaked out, unfamiliar, dry, speckless, insincere, crazy, wanton, lustful, and completely selfless. Excerpt from Describe Yourself (1990), live radio piece as part of the weekly two-hour radio art program Danger in Paradise (CKUT-FM, Montréal 1987-1994). An attempt to define the radiophonic body by asking listeners to describe themselves. First released on Hole in the Head (track 26) (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). 2 Evasion 2001 / 04:04 Holding out your tongue as far as you can for as long as you can. First performed live at the l’instant du presbyte enculé festival in Montréal, early 2001. Live components of this recording come from this first performance. First released on the CD accompanying the book Writing Aloud: The Sonics of Language, edited by Brandon LaBelle and Christof Migone (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2001). 3 SevenSixOne-FourEightFourOne 1994 / 07:01 ¿Quién es usted?… Hola?… How did you get my number?… Where are you calling me from?… Ma, que parle per favore?… Unlocated number… moshi moshi, domo… I don’t know why the hell you’re calling for… ok, anything I can help you with?… I’m not interested in talking to you right now, thank you… you’re calling for who?… si, pero… ¿quién es usted?… well excuse me sir… hable… alo… Hallo… ¿que es el número?… Canada is not United States of America… le numéro n’existe pas… Wo wollen Sie denn hin? Nach… wuenschen? Wen wollen Sie?… I know you’re not making sense… I don’t know what you want, I better hang up… so, you can have this phone number over there… this phone number over here is in the United States of America, it’s not in Canada… Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer… no existe… don’t call this number anymore!… who’s calling… Sir, right now I’m entretaining people, is that the number you want to talk to?… Wer, wer, wer ist da?… deme su nombre…what number you want, what, what did you want that number for?… Ja wuenschen?… you what?… okyakusama ga okakeni natta bangou ha genzai tsukawarete orimasen… No further information is available about… For this piece I called everybody in the world with my telephone number (but different area/country codes). Sometimes the number was not activated, sometimes the person answering and I had no language in common, sometimes they became upset and hung up once I told them the reason for my call. The other sounds come from the recreation of a 1992 radio piece entitled Running away with me: conversations with the neither here nor there. Instrumentation: one voice, two legs, many breaths, some distance. The piece consists of having a conversation with myself where, between each sentence, I have to run between two different rooms. A mic and recorder are setup in each room. In this piece the conversation is edited out. First released on compilation Rappel, curated by Christof Migone (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). Rappel was a project organized by Avatar, the pieces were first exhibited on an answering machine. Other participating artists: Algojo) (Algojo, Pierre-Andre Arcand, Doyon/Demers, Chantal Dumas, Kathy Kennedy, Daniel Leduc, Jean Routhier, Sylvia Wang and Gregory Whitehead. Edited 2004. 4 Excavation 1993 / 01:05 First released on Hole in the Head (track 27: Excavation 3) (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). Edited 2004. 5 « I » 2003 / 08:41 Audio piece composed entirely of sounds produced by the eyes of Aleksandr P. Thibaudeau as manipulated by himself. The sounds from this recording session were then manipulated by myself. First released on compilation noli me legere… to Maurice Blanchot (Lisbon: sirr-ecords, 2004). The piece premiered June 3 & 4, 2003 at D!sturbances in Copenhagen, Denmark — a pitch black concert curated by Hans Christian Gimbel and Mylène Lauzon. Video stills from the recording session with Aleksandr P. Thibaudeau. 6 Crackers 2000 / 01:52 … ahhhh… ok and now in order to do my elbows I will have to make a quick motion like this, so I’ll make sure I don’t bust into the mic but I usually have to be standing to do it… so you keep it in one place… that’s as close I can come there… now the jaw which is usually on this side… it’s not one that a lot of people like to hear… now… neck, if you can put the mic back in here, tell me when you’re ready… hold on, ok… I was hoping for a better one than that… not much no… toes, of course… alright so you’re going to have to be right on the floor for this… no, just a second, I can do it here… ok, the other one, mine as well exhaust all of the areas and then get to my back… ok… now when I do my back I have to swing it as well… so stay in one place… the best sounds usually come out of about right there… Do you crack your fingers? your neck? your back? your knees? your elbows? your ankles? your hips? your jaws? your toes? your…? A joint is the locale where bones articulate a tension. Crackers are compulsive about the release of that tension. A crack is incontinent. A cracker too. As the sound of the cracks echo, some wince, others feel relief. A crack is a body nonsequitur, a bone edit, a broken break. 7 Crackers 2000 / 04:24 Crackers began in 1997 as residency project for Gallery 101 in Ottawa. Participants were solicited through the radio, classified ads in the weekly paper, and via the Gallery’s membership. The recording sessions consisted of an interview succeeded by a cracking session. Participants: Germaine Koh, Justine Akman, Marguerite Dehler, Tony Daye, Sarah Dobbin, Vera Greenwood, Louise Levergneux, Michael Sutton. First released on Crackers (track 4) (Chicago: Locust Music, 2001). Remastered 2004. First released on Crackers (excerpt from track 1) (Chicago: Locust Music, 2001). Remastered 2004. 8 Ni (ni vu, ni su, ni connu) 1999 / 04:19 This project paired an audio artist with a photographer. Taking the title of the project literally, the sound of images, I put digitized versions of Jack Burman’s photographs, sight unseen, into a sound program and played them. The converted files became the source for this piece. First released on the compilation Le son des images, curated by Chantal Dumas (Québec: Galerie Vu, 1999). Edited 2004. 9 it would smack of bodysnatching 2000 / 03:29 Instrumentation: microphones. Site: mouths. First released on undo’s (Christof Migone and Alexandre St-Onge) CD, un sperme qui meurt de froid en agitant faiblement sa petite queue dans les draps d’un gamin (Montréal: squint fucker press, 2000). Title of the CD and all the track titles are taken from one page in Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable. 10 l’étranglement 2000 / 03:23 Alexandre and I strangled each other softly with contact mics placed on each other’s throats while Eric observed the strangulation and measured his heartbeat and blood flow with an amplified medical device. The throats swallowed, the strangling arms shook and sweated. Duration of original performance: 23 minutes. Performance by undo with Eric Letourneau at Casa Del Popolo, Montréal, July 29 2000. Previously unreleased. Recorded live, mixed in 2004. 11 ID 1991 / 01:13 hey wait, how do you swallow your tongue? Using material from phone-ins on the program Danger in Paradise (1987-1994) on CKUT-FM in Montréal. First released on Hole in the Head (track 2: Identification) (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). Edited and remixed 2004. 12 Solar Plexus 1994 / 09:02 Solar Plexus is divided into boils, fires, fountains, suffocations, swallows, descents, and pain directives. The geography — Montréal, Geneva, Bay of Fundy, the Laurentians, and Innsbruck. Solar Plexus consists of microphone intrusions, bad singing, sporadic moaning, and half-hearted humming. Concentrating on the minute, the hereto insignificant, those tiny moments. Produced at PRIM Studios in Montréal, 1993-1994. First released on compilation Radius #3, curated by Dan Lander (Albuquerque: Nonsequitur Foundation, 1996). Edited and remixed 2003. 13 Quieting 2000 / 00:23 First released on Quieting (track 17) (Montréal: Alien8 Recordings, 2000). 14 Quieting 2000 / 00:23 In 1996 I recorded the cannon that is fired every day at noon from the Citadel in Halifax, Nova Scotia, all pieces on the CD are based on that recording or inspired by the shock of the shot. In my preparations for this project, I made several recordings from different positions in the city, but I was stuck on one in particular. In between the recording in 1996 and working on the CD in the Summer of 2000, I had periodically tried to use it, but I could never find the right form, everytime it was placed with or alongside something else, it would annihilate itself along with everything surrounding it. I finally realized that it should stand on its own. And so in thinking of how one could create that possibility in the listening experience, I just put that brief recording in the middle of the CD, preceded and followed by nothing, silence (the preceding track being an example), so as to further amplify the sound of the shot. And that point I felt I had found the right form, the CD got a bit more complex, but that is the basic premise. First released on Quieting (track 18) (Montréal: Alien8 Recordings, 2000). 15 Life is Long Xavier Leroi 2001 / 01:22 To be listened to while lying on your back, weight distributed onto your shoulders with your hips in the air, legs over your head and knees resting on the floor on either side of your ears, eyes gazing at your crotch. (Suggested pose by Claude Wampler). The piece is an excerpt from the soundtrack of Present Absence, a performance by Claude Wampler which premiered 21-25 May 2001 at the kaaistudios during the Kunsten Festival, Brussels, Belgium. An earlier version of this fartspeaker piece was first performed by myself for La Quinzaine de la Voix at Tangente, Montréal during O, a collaborative piece with Maryse Poulin and Bruce Gottlieb. In both instances the piece was diffused by holding a speaker in front of the ass, and having the speaker face the audience, hence the fartspeaker. It was titled Life is Long Xavier Leroi by Claude Wampler on the occasion of its release on the Syntax Error CD. First released on the Syntax Error CD for the Failure Issue of Cabinet magazine (Brooklyn: Immaterial Inc., 2002). Edited 2004. 16 Nalpas 2002 / 03:03 South Winds presents the results of a recording session I undertook with Le Petomane (Joseph Pujol 1857-1945). Le Petomane performed his fart fantasia at the Moulin Rouge in Paris where, to much acclaim, he would imitate musical instruments and with his ’second mouth’ hum recognizable tunes. For South Winds, Le Petomane and I sought to explore these somatic winds as a response to Artaud’s ontological formulation: “the depth of my being is the volume of my body.” Both Artaud and Pujol were brought up in Marseilles, city in the path of the infamous Mistral, a wind which “has the ill-natured habit of scattering roof tiles about, knocking down chimneys, blowing small children into canals, tumbling walls onto the unsuspecting natives.” South Winds has the same impetuous effect, it confirms that the body is a noisy place, that the body emits and transmits, and it cannot contain itself. South Winds is an essay on the flatulent and the incontinent. A live mix of this CD was performed (using in part the fartspeaker mentioned in track 15) for Volt-AA (6), Fall 2002 in Montréal. First released on South Winds (Track 5: excerpt) (Montréal: Oral, 2003). 17 Tickers 2002 / 02:22 A city’s identity contains an inherent tension between order and chaos. From the history of its physical expansion to its development of community standards and its conflictual relation to critical cultures (graffiti, street protests, performance art, etc.), the city is an organism which defies planning and prediction. The individual contains similar internal struggles. Both navigate nervously between the controllable and the uncontrollable. Tickers is part of an ongoing project consisting of portraits of cities through the bodies of its inhabitants. With Crackers (Ottawa, 1997) participants were recorded cracking their joints. With Poker (Montréal, 2001) the sonic properties of taciturn faces were explored. Tickers (Winnipeg, 2002) investigates the rhythmic possibilities of facial tics. These projects perform attempts (however tenuous) to constitute somatic communities; they result in sound and video portraits which oscillate between awkward intimacy and playful complicity. In Tickers participants were paired off and placed face to face, one person adopted a facial tic and the other had to come up with a aural translation of the tic. A participatory project for Send & Receive, Winnipeg, 2002. Participants: Brian Ferguson, Nicole Shimonek, Erica Lincoln, Patrick Harrop, Terri Fuglem, Jake Moore, Steve Bates, Mike Germain. Previously unreleased. Mix of the untreated sound files. 18 … as an idiot who utters thoughts with the grandiose tone of a self-appointed genius 2003 / 01:27 First released on compilation …as…, curated by Benjamin Green (London, England: Resonance FM, 2003). Edited and remixed 2004. 19 je me te parle 1995 / 08:52 A voice speaks through another’s voice. of nothing in particular, everything and nothing. It is unscripted. The voice speaks to the headphones of the other voice. The public only hears the second voice. The second voice is instructed to say and repeat only what the first voice says, but of course that doesn’t always quite work, the ventriloquism is not perfect. The second voice reacts to what it hears at the same time as it repeats it. Sometimes it loses track of the words, sometimes it starts laughing, sometimes it doesn’t understand. First released on compilation Radio Folie Culture, curated by Jocelyn Robert (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). Voice: Dorothée Morat. 20-46 Learning to Speak Well1991 / 5:07 20 Learning to – No.1 Neutral Voice / 00:07 22 Learning to – No.3 Falsetto / 00:10 24 Learning to – No.4 Creaky Voice / 00:08 26 Learning to – No.5 Whisper / 00:08 28 Learning to – No.6 Whispery Creak / 00:11 30 Learning to – No.7 Whispery Voice / 00:09 32 Learning to – No.8 Whispery Falsetto / 00:09 34 Learning to – No.10 Creaky Falsetto / 00:17 36 Learning to – No.11 Whispery Creaky Voice / 00:11 38 Learning to – No.12 Whispery Creaky Falsetto / 00:13 40 Learning to – No.13 Breathy Voice / 00:09 42 Learning to – No.14 Harsh Whispery Voice / 00:09 44 Learning to – No.15 Tense Voice / 00:07 46 Learning to – No.16 Lax Voice / 00:08 … No.9676 Wounded Raised Larynx Lax Vitriolic Falsetto … and finally No.126,789 Creaky, Breathy, Radiated, Harsh, Tense, Electrocuted, Fondled, Neutral, Contorted, Raised Larynx, Throated, Vexed, Whispery, Transpired, Articulated and Vehiculated, Incontinent, Vagabonded, Phantomized and Phased, Jaundiced, Relayed, Post-determined and Post-digital, Deregulated, Mellifluent, Erased, Manipulated, Fast forwarded, Battery operated, Synoptic and Phatic and Tonsilitic, Glottal and Colossal, Salivaphile and Expectorant, Lecherous, Licentious, Projected, Reverberated, Remote controlled, Vivisected, Transistorized, Modulated, Masticated, Animated, Assiduous, Analphabête Voice. The Learning to Speak Well series was part of Horror Radia Vacui: phatic drones and microphobia techniques, the second annual report from the Center for Radio-telecommunication Contortions (CRTC). This performance text travels from the drone produced by the pearl divers of the Persian Gulf to the hems and haws of the radiophonic body. From the horror of the void to the deadness of the air. The performance gropes at radio’s invisible articulations and at the viscosity of its language. The CRTC was a phantom mirror organization to the actual governmental regulatory body, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Live recording from a performance during the Radio Possibilities festival, March 13-14, 1991 at the Forest City Gallery and simultaneously live on-air at CHRW-FM in London, Ontario. Previously unreleased. This piece also includes in-betweens originating from the following three sources: The Death of Analogies / 1996 21 Knobby Tongues / 00:11 23 Wrapped Up / 00:13 25 Mal aux Dents (excerpt) / 00:05 27 Visit to Whistler / 00:26 31 Survey of Comfort / 00:14 33 Architecture Hum 2 / 00:07 41 Slap Me / 00:24 43 Architecture Hum 3 / 00:07 The Death of Analogies is a piece for short attention spans. On the radio, the ninety-six sections of The Death of Analogies are analogous to those in-betweens, those intersections or incisions between longer pieces (usually music) and the host talking. Normally, these intrusions consist of ads, station identifications, promotional announcements, and “stingers”; all are instrumental in shaping a radio station’s “sound”. These are the bursts and blips of an imaginary radio station. First released on The Death of Analogies (Austin, Texas: ND, 1996). Joints for Novarina / 2000 29 Nova a / 00:08 35 Nova b / 00:11 37 Nova c / 00:13 39 Nova d / 00:09 These are part of the in-betweens for the play Theater of the Ears, a play for recorded voice and electronic marionette by Allen S. Weiss based on the writings of Valère Novarina. These audio miniatures, operate as sonic joints, as compact fragments, as ear-betweens. They are all of Novarina’s characters passing through, emitting a cry, a whimper, a silence and then scurrying past. Previously unreleased. Metal God / 1992-2000 45 Toupille 00:23 Excerpt from Metal God, a CD-ROM based on a text by Beth Greenspan. Metal God was originally a performance created by Tammy Forsythe and Christof Migone and presented at Espace Tangente in Montréal in 1992. The CD-ROM was completed in 2000. First released on Metal God (Montréal: self-published, 2000). 47 happy land 2003 / 02:18 First released on Escape Songs, CD with Veda Hille (Montréal: squint fucker press, 2004). 48 Lone 1993 / 00:19 Well, why did they hang up? I have no one to talk to… Ay aya ay, it’s lonely out here in the middle of nowhere… Oh! We’ve got a friend… Hello, I heard you were all alone, so I thought I should call and say something I was all alone in radio land, it should never happen Well actually you are never really all alone in radio land, ya know I felt all alone, no one was here to save me Gridpubliclock utilizes a radio station, an audience and telephones as instruments. The host welcomes the audience from the studio and then leaves. The host calls from every public phone he comes across and asks the audience to tell him where to go next or invites them to carry out the same process of ambulation and calling in. A silent operator at the radio station fields the calls coming in and puts them on the air without screening them beforehand. The host is no longer the central voice ’managing’ the calls. A couple of versions of Gridpubliclock were performed on CKUT-FM (Montréal) in 1993 before it acquired this name. It was performed as Gridpubliclock (with Ed Baxter as participant) in 1998 for Resonance FM in London, England. First released on Hole in the Head (track 26: Danger 2) (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996). Edited 2004. 49 Sans titres 1993 / 00:35 First released as five different miniatures (Sa, ns, ti, tr, es) on compilation Ding Dong Deluxe CD, curated by Jocelyn Robert (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1994). Edited and remixed 2004.< 50 Bore 1993 / 00:19 Hello There’s lots to say that hasn’t already been said That’s true. It’s becoming kind of empty Strange. It feels like I’ve had this conversation before It’s just you and me Are you still you? No. I think I’ve changed Grown within the past minutes have you? No. I haven’t progressed or regressed, just changed You bore me Sometimes I bore myself too. Goodnight. Half of a telephone conversation live on Danger in Paradise (Montréal: CKUT-FM 1987 – 1994). First released on Hole in the Head (Track 29: Confession You, Call 2) (Québec: Avatar/Ohm éditions, 1996).