Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause
Five “poetic actions in regard to machines” treat with great sensitivity the question of how technologies of all times have dictated relationships between orality and literacy, and created subsequent relationships of power. Each work is part of a discourse surrounding the culture of listening: the audible, acoustic technologies, the gesticulation of narration, the audible texture of the voice. The machines of Five Variations on Phonic Circumstances and a Pause are constituted as mechanisms whose particular use is processing sounds or, more precisely, phonic circumstances. The machines’ goal is to translate and interpret sound events – noises, orality, readings, narrations, murmurs, secrets, music – by changing them from one phonic register to another, transmuting them into text and code. These devices lie somewhere between science fiction, Victorian steam technology and the latest artificial intelligence and word processing technologies. The five variations refer constantly to a number of communication models and format transformations that create tension in the relationship between scientific knowledge and the human factor, and additionally emphasize the dislocation experience present in the expansive range of contemporary media. What part of a letter bears its sound? In what part of a musical note does the music reside? Is music a language? Can you speak of a code when speaking of poetry?
SOUND STORIES
The point of departure of “Sound Stories” is the Mexico´s strong tradition of sound effects that dates back to the days of radio dramas. “Foley artists” are specialized in using a wide variety of objects to create sound effects that on-air plots required. Sadly this language of simulacrum has disappeared with the advent of effects libraries. These four sound devices present sonic interpretations of science fiction graphic novels, each performed by a different foley artist or sound engineer, where the only rule to consider was to tell a story without the use of text. The devices has the form of one-person domes equipped with 5.1sound systems. Beneath the dome, a screen provides a visual accompaniment to the sound piece using an oscillogram for each channel. The sound´s graphic representation allows us to visualize time as the horizontal axis and amplitude as the vertical axis. These pieces seek to recall a personal experience based on a combination of sound and visual stimuli; the idea is that each user develop and build his own version of the story.
Bio
Tania Candiani (Mexico City, 1974) is a Guggenheim scholarship fellow in the Creative Arts category and she is part of the Mexican National System of Creators since 2012.
