"I was reading this catalog abut the installation artist ann hamilton and there was a section bout a piece called 'mneme" that had a turntable in it and the passage really struck me...hamilton made a recording of the "cardinal vowels"..."the hinge sounds of language, a set of eight tongue configurations, not aligned with the vowels of any particular language, but the reference points of all speech"
she had somebody spinning the record by hand so that the sounds were slurred and "animal like" with the idea that the hand and its fingers would be exchanged for the tongue...resystemizing the world of thought and experience."
Reading this email reminded me of a speech installation that was in place at the Semper Depot in Vienna.
This artist had individualized different phonics from words. It worked almost like a telegram machine. This little thing would trigger this pipe to make the sound that each little pipe-thing was assigned to. One could type anything on an old school computer that had a software that would transfer what you typed into the appropriate sound. Similar to the machine that the Deaf use when using the telephone.I have a favorite record right now that is all about how to treat and care for your dog. I don't really use the whole record so much as the first 5 seconds of the record. There is this recording of a dog, or rather a man making doggy noises, that starts with panting, then continues to making snorgling noises and whines. I find that when I use this portion of the record I can almost form interesting words, if I'm in the zone that is. If I think about it too much then it's a no dice situation.
Here are some other interesting installations from the Wein Modern. It was so great to be included in such an interesting collection of work.
This piece was interesting because it was so similar to otomos record set up:
Great minds think alike?
This piece was interesting as well. It was a hand made needle that was placed on a piece of sliced wood. The wooden turntable(?) was then hooked up to a motor and the needle sawed the grooves into the wood. By the time I saw it there had been a significant amount wood chipped off from the needle. Then the image was transfered to this TV thing. I don't know a lot about video stuff, so I have no idea how the rest of it worked out, but the presentation was interesting and slightly humorous.
After reading Tom's email I am now seriously considering buying a vinyl cutter to create my own records of sound choices. Often times when I step outside and listen to the outside noises, to me it's so interesting to listen to nature and hear the right placements of sound coming from different areas of time. Just like improvisation. I'm always so grateful when I hear it happening.
My host in Vienna, Dieter, has his own vinyl cutting machine and actually cut Otomo, ErikM, Billy and me seperate records to use for the performance. He even cut a record with a protrait of Otomos face. One thing that I found interesting about vinyl cutting machines are the mess ups. I think Dieter said that it took him about 15 trys for each one record that was meant for each artist. And we recieved 2 of them.
So my question to him was if I could have some of the mess ups. Some mess ups were recorded with too much low end so when you place a needle on the record it skips because the low end has melted the vinyl in a certain way that the needle could'nt "catch" onto the grooves.
It's like a delicious dream. The only thing I could think of after hearing about tom's disco-very is that I need to get my hands on that record. Or maybe make my own???
