Wiretongue : an incantation for artificial voice

Wiretongue, 1997
1 : Immanent : 6’43”

2. : Arrival : 6’50”

3. : & Departure : 5’08”

We are surrounded by oracles. Not the ones that tell you of fame, fortune and love on the distant horizon, but disembodied voices telling you your immediate future. They tell you important things like when your trains about to depart, what gate your plane is leaving from and when the elevator doors are about to close.

Wiretongue – an incantation for artificial voice by sound artist, Sophea Lerner, is an exploration of the immediate future and how we move through public spaces guided by chattering computers, rattling lifts and other talkative machines. The composition is uttered in three parts – Immanent, Arrival and Departure- and also carves a place for the human voice, which performs imitations of melodies found in the recording environments.

Vocal performances Gretchen Miller and Sophea Lerner.

https://soundproof.upho.net/

First Broadcast : The Listening Room : ABC Classic FM : Monday 27 September 1999

Wiretongue – an incantation for artificial voice
by Sophea Lerner

We are surrounded by oracles. Disembodied voices speak to us about what will happen in the future – not the distant future but an imminent moment.
So that what happens now is superceded by anticipation…
They tell us important things that we really need to know about the immediate future such as: The train is about to depart, the plane at the gate is about to start boarding. The doors are about to close, perhaps forever, and we must be on the right side of them when they do!

Wiretongue is an exploration of the immediate future and how we move through spaces where this ‘nearly-now’ is voiced to us by chattering computers, loquacious lifts and other machines. The human voice has its place in the program, performing imitations of melodies found in the recording environments, as well as more ecstatic vocal expression located soundly in the present.

Vocal performances Gretchen Miller and Sophea Lerner
Studio ventriloquy John Jacobs
Studio recordings Andrei Shabunov
Realisation Sophea Lerner

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Wiretongue (Immanent Arrival & Departure) by Sophea Lerner

a few program notes…

WIRETONGUE (18’45”) I IMMANENT (6’43”) II ARRIVAL (6’52”) III &
DEPARTURE (5’07”)

The title refers to either the tongue made of wire which wags inside an
electronic mouth or to the tongue spoken in the wires, or to the wires
speaking in tongues…

Wiretongue is an exploration of the role of synthetic voices in the
definition of public space and time, juxtaposed with the role of ones
own voice as a very different index of ones presence in space and time.
The three movements of the work correspond to the figures of Immanence
Presence and Vanishing correspondingly.

We are surrounded by oracles, disembodied voices speak to us about what
will happen in the future – not the distant future but an imminent
moment. They unfold a present in which what happens next is preceded by
an sense of expectation; in which what happens now is superseded by
anticipation… They tell us important things that we really need to
know about the immediate future such as: The train is about to depart,
the plane at the gate is about to start boarding. The doors are about to
close, perhaps forever, and we must be on the right side of them when
they do! The immediate future and this ‘nearly now’ is voiced to us
electronically as we move through public transit spaces leaving a void,
a scarcity of any real ‘present’.

Our own voices however resonate from within, they do not come to us from
somewhere else, but rather, they go away, and are already gone as we
hear them. The now of our own voice is very different to the received
immanent now of artificial voice. We hear our own voice from within. It
indexes the interiority of the body before it indexes the body in space.
Our artificial announcements, arriving monotonously and thinly through
the limited bandwidth of the electro- acoustic apparatus, with their
limited range of prerecorded or over repeated intonations, are firstly
indices of the separation of body from space, and secondly underline the
disjunction between the voice moment of our own body and the misaligned
now of these oracular technologies.

process…

I made recordings over the period of two years of various transit spaces
and the voices in them. My initial intention was to place more emphasis
on the content of the electronic utterances and to use a wider variety
of contexts including commercial information points and automated
telephone services. As recording progressed my focus narrowed and the
spaces around the voices took on a much more important role in my ideas.
I gradually chose to abandon the ironic stance I had begun with and my
goal shifted from highlighting the bathetic contrast between these
contemporary oracles and the power of voice on ancient oracular
traditions, to examining the experience of presence and voice in these
spaces. The reason for this: It seemed a more interesting proposition
for a sound work as it demanded some analysis of an experience of
listening rather than simply an analysis of words served on a bed of
interesting noises. So I concentrated on recording voices which had
specific relationships with the ways the space itself was used and
experienced, particularly spaces of transit and the roles of the voices
in directing the movements of people through those spaces.

I wanted to look at the gap firstly, between the presence of the space
resonating and the amplified electronic voice with the presence of the
body in that space; and secondly, between the present of the anticipated
arrival, departure or closure with the present of the uttering body
whose voice goes away. I introduced the performed vocal elements and
filtering processes as materials to bridge these elements.

I went through all the material in detail logging melodic elements in
the location recordings, notating them and copying them to CD as a guide
track for studio vocal performance. These vocal versions were then
reinserted on parallel tracks and synced with the original source sounds
on the digital workstation. I also recorded sung versions of a two part
melody and vocal samples to reconstitute denser passages via midi which
were unsingable due requirements for breath. To these performances,
variously modified by technology and technique, I added a third type of
vocal material referring to voice as an index of ecstatic presence.
Non-verbal utterances requiring intense physical concentration. This is
the voice that goes away before fully releasing it’s meaning, or that
speaks in tongues.

Next I generated several more tracks of synchronised material using
effects and processing. Firstly creating filtered versions of the
melodic elements from the original recordings using software that
allowed me to colour in the frequencies I wished to keep on a sonogram
and cut the rest away leaving very condensed melodies with no space
around them and which were rhythmically identical to the original. Other
processes included infinite and other delays to freeze and repeat
moments and rhythms. At this point I had about 40 tracks x 50 minutes of
material which I then reorganised horizontally before condensing and
mixing.

Very early in post-production the ideas were clear enough that I was
able to map the form of the piece in a sort of diagrammatic score. This
was a guideline, a starting point not a rigid formula. It was written as
a map of the ideas in the piece rather than as a representation of the
sounds themselves. In the studio the five sections collapsed to three as
some elements became knitted together rather than stand separately. I do
not consider the score as a particularly useful accompaniment to
listening but it was a useful accompaniment to composition and I include
it as an appendix to these notes.

sources…

Wiretongue was produced between March 1st and May 8th 1999 using the
following recordings and equipment:

Lake Michigan and Bridges over the river Chicago, USA September 1997
Lake near Oulu, Finland October 1997 Kansai Airport Osaka, Japan September 1998
Manchester Piccadilly train station, UK September 1998
Various U-Bahn Trains and stations, Berlin, Germany September 1998
Narita Airport Tokyo, Japan October 1998

Location sound was recorded with a Sony MS979 mic. with a Sony MZR 4
minidisc & an OKM II Soundman binaural microphone with a Sony TCD 7 DAT
recorder. Post-produced at Phonebox Productions and at UTS in the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences sound studios on a 32 track
ProTools system. Voices were recorded in the ABC radio drama studio 256
with Neumann U89 microphones. Additional pre-processing of some material
was done in ABC radio production studio A54 using a variety of analog
and digital effects units including a Sony V77 and Lexicon Super Prime
Time.

credits…

First broadcast on The Listening Room, 9pm Monday 27th September 1999,
ABC Classic FM, 92.9 FM

Location Recordings, Editing, Filtering,
Arrangement & Final Mix Sophea Lerner
Vocal Performances Gretchen Miller & Sophea Lerner
Studio Recordings Andrei Shabunov
Studio ventriloquy John Jacobs

Thanks to: Gerhard Eckel, Birgit Sohns-Taha and James Hurley.