User:Yoana Buzova/ latest

Tentative Title

voice drop (worktitle of an an ongoing experiment)

Introduction

During the past nine months I have been experimenting in different fields, using different approaches and tools. I made a few small projects, exploring these areas. My way of work is observing, collecting and reusing the collected material trough a personal way of encoding it and then decoding it again ( an example would be the Street Compositions project). In the same framework, during the following months I would like to work on a project that deals with collecting sound. I want to investigate the possibility of collecting voices and sounds in a fragmented way, and then looking into analyzing and reusing it. My interest in such a research arises from the idea of initiating a chain of audio messages, left by people in public space. That relates to the chain-like structure of my previous work. I will try to initiate such a chain of voice recordings in different situations, I will collect sound both offline and online, interested in the difference in content. We message and communicate all the time, but this more often happens via text and images and usually among the circle of people we know. Where is sound and voice in our way of communicating? Our mediated communication tools are usually silent. What do we want to say to someone we don't know? Is voice more difficult to leave than text? Is it something we consider transient? Is it still considered to be a personal, intimate object? Does voice make us appear less or more confident, make us less anonymous by revealing gender, age, nationality?

Methodology

In public spaces an object with a speaker and microphone will invite people passing by to record their voice. The last recorded message will be played back aloud every time someone approaches the object. That will both serve as a way to attract attention (invite the passer to record his own message) and also a way to construct a loose narrative, as it will be the trigger, context and starting point for the next message. The newly recorded sound becomes the one played aloud. The sounds will be stored in the order they were recorded and the whole 'story' will be accessible to listen online. My experiments will be researching the idea of taking randomness, but giving it structure, relying on the fact that people will leave a message related to the one before. I will look at that link that goes trough the collected database. Online, a website where visitors are asked to leave a recording.

contextualising : dada / cybertext / situationism

notes : create structure, rules (score) possibly discover a collaborative narrative / look at difference in content depending on certain tags (location, time, gender...) /

Relation to previous practice

the previous months I have mainly been working in the model of practice-based research. In the second trimester I started my self-direction project, provoked by the subject of signals and code. My approach was towards encoding and decoding simple urban patterns I collected. I photographed streets at night and then taking them as input, I created a visual code from the lit house windows. The code I played on a music box i built myself. The result are minimal, generative compositions of urban activity. I took information of a large scale ( whole streets and their buildings) to reinterpret it and notably descale it into a gentle sound, coming from a small mechanical object. As a continuation of the project and aiming to close the loop I started, I built a discrete but resistant urban installation, aiming to bring the data I processed back to its place of origin – the streets. The melodies are looped in speakers, made of concrete, placed in the city. The speakers, in contrast to the music box are resistant, heavy and keep repeating the otherwise transient moments. This iteration where the translated gentle, almost fragile information (composition) is distributed and preserved was the endpoint of the project and made it a complete piece. Relation of my interest to my previous work described above - ----> This work deals with processes of encoding and decoding and translation of data. It encloses information into tangible objects. Maybe as an unconscious result of my BA studies in photography, I take the position of a viewer, I collect data and use it examine and explore later so it can be the starting point of my work. Work is created during exploring diy strategies, conceptually and physically contrast/different materials and techniques

Practical steps

The steps I will take in the process of developing my work are focused around practice-based research. Similarly I worked throughout my self-directed research during the second and third trimester. I start by building prototypes of small project ideas and doing some related reading at the same time.

My experiments will be documented in my prototyping page aka WORKLOG ---> click here. The steps, discoveries and results of the works will influence and shape my research.

Key Words / themes

Encoding – Decoding / reinterpreting

Translating and transporting information / taking it from one domain to another, from one place to another

Compressing - Decompressing

Scaling – Descaling

environment - sound

Fascination for making objects

using, mixing / commonplace objects

practice-based research

Tangible

DIY strategies

questions:

exploring, experiencing information from a source different than a computer, screen / a custom, unfamiliar object

sound, voice, shout, whisper, intimacy

voice/anonymity

preserving information in another form ( what happens when data is suddenly gone)

unpredictable behaviour -predictable behaviour // offline-online

how predictability has shifted from the public space to be present online as well did this make us at least unpredictable offline?

unaware (unconscious) collaborations, generative collaborations

a sound map --> a voice map

Relation to a larger context

Performativity

Situationist approaches to psychogeography, urban tactical media and activist strategies of reclaiming the streets.

Works I find related to my interests /practice /method

Georgina Starr - Whistle

Zimoun – sound installations

Michael Kontopoulos - Machines that almost fall over

live open worldwide microphones project started 2006

sound maps ( field recordings) started 2006

References

'Resonant bodies, voices, memories' edited by Anke Bangma, Deirdre M. Donoghue, Lina Issa and Katarina Zdjelar

'Playing with words. The spoken word in artistic practice' Edited by Cathy Lane (2008)

Gregory Bateson 'Steps to an Ecology of Mind' (1972)

Mladen Dolar 'A Voice and Nothing More' (2006)

Yolande Harris, Phd thesis: Scorescapes On Sound Environment and Sonic Consciousness

Dr Hartmut Obendorf, In Search of “Minimalism”— Roving in Art, Music and Elsewhere

The Voice of New Music by Tom Johnson New York City 1972-1982 A collection of articles originally published in the Village Voice MUSIC

++ tech literature

two books by Nicolas Collins Handmade electronic music and Hardware Hacking