Aargh
Aargh is an exploration into the mechanics of speech. Inspired by the famous Wolfgang Von Kempelen, I'm exploring the possibilities to create a site specific sound installation for the 11th floor of the Overtoon office building. This particular building stands high and free in the city center of Brussels. Wind has a strong impact on it. The offices are drafty spaces when you open them up on both sides. Can I use the energy created by the wind as a force or input to generate sound. And can I create anything which sounds remotely like speech. That's the focus of my research.
The Overtoon office building form the outside
11th Floor
Airflow
High-low pressure
This page to document and collect all kinds of information about my project.
Contents
Voicing
Here I'm collecting information about what I call voicing : different experiments in which I try to copy the function of the vocal cords. I'm exploring different tracks. One source of inspiration I found in the medical realm. For people who had a laryngectomy, medical companies produce artificial vocal chords or voice prosthesis. There is the
Musical instruments in which all different kind reeds --> Matrin riches installation speaking machines in which he pretty myuch copied the principles of organ techniques. reed pipes.
Wind organs and the likes
Cavity resonators
One the first experiment was based on information I found on Godfried Willems Raes' logosfoundation. For his work Whisper he used cavity resonators to produce sound. These small cavities with orifices on both sides are somehow like Helmholtz resonators. Because they can be driven with air at low pressure, I thought it might be an interesting solution to produce sound driven by the wind working on the facade of the building.
I constructed several shapes based on information I found on his site. His works are always super well documented.
This is a first batch I made.
- Cavity resonator 00.jpg
first batch of cavity resonators
- Cavity resonator 01.jpg
first batch of cavity resonators
This is second set I made with 3D printed shafts/cylinders. The closing lids I made out of piezo elements
And in the end i wasnot so happy wuth the sound produced, they have a lotof overtones, depending on th eforce of the wind. ...
- Cavity resonators.jpg
Cavity resonators
Cavity resonators
These work really well if you blow them or even better suck air true. I had them placed on the building. Still it need pretty strong wind to have them produce sound loud enough.
Whistle
Something along the line of the cavity resonators, I guess. You ever noticed whenever you force air thru a ribbed tube, you get a whistling sound. But hanging around in the office, I noticed that the duck vents, produce this sound as well --> change the shape of these vents and generate sound?
These are small objects with ribbed inner surface.
possibly of interest is this paper from https://sites.google.com/site/gunesnakib/research-interest/aeroacoustics/aeroacoustics-of-corrugated-pipes
Reed
In this particular setup I'm experimenting with different types of reeds placed vertical in front of a slotted opening. I made a construction so I could create a variable slotted opening at the and of a 100 mm PVC tube which is being put under pressure by a simple ventilator. A small strip of material is held in front of the opening. By putting tension on the strip, vibrations and frequencies change. As a reed I used different materials, like aluminium, simple Tessa tape, Wood Veneer, and a strip of flexible 3d Printed material, Ninjaflex.
mount for PVC tubing
MDF panels to create variable slot
Mount for variable types of reed
complete set with wood veneer reed
different materials
aluminium 1mm, shaped reed
flexible 0.3 mm 3D printed strips
These are some first recordings. They are quiet noisy. You still strongly hear the sound of the ventilator blowing.
This is a different construction, to be mounted directly onto a small slot made into the PVC tubing and to test with different lengths of reed for change in frequency.
long slotted
long slotted
Harmonium
A small test with harmonium reeds. Fitted into a small box which can be mounted onto the different vocal tract shapes. I'm not so happy with it, because the sound is so typically associated with the instrument.
Others
Some experiments with different shapes
- Printed vocal03.jpg
Resonators
Splab
The website Acoustic-Phonetics Demonstrations, from the Arai laboratory explains some of the main principles of acoustic phonetics. I found it really useful.
These are a few experiments with shapes based on information I found on this website. All these objects were 3d printed in grey or white PLA using a makerbot replicator 2.
japanese vowel shapes
CAD design
/O/
/E/
/A/
/I/
/U/
I printed some a lot bigger as well, just to test how this acts on the frequencies and the forming of vowels. The small shapes are normally about 16 cm long. They are in fact a reconstruction of the changing volumes the vocal cavity.
/E/_big
/U/_big
Gunnar Fant
Gunnar Fant was a professor at the Royal Institute of technology in stockholm specialized in the acoustics of the human voice. His Acoustic Theory of Speech Production. (1970) Mouton De Gruyter. ISBN 90-279-1600-4, contains calculations based on X-Ray studies of Russian articulations.
Based on his calculations, I created a second series of shapes.
/O/
/E/
/A/
/iJ/
Martin Riches
Electronics
Jeenode
http://www.digitalsmarties.net/products/jeenode
http://jeelabs.org/tag/jeenode/
Inspiration
From the book : Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff
"People have spent a great part of the 20th century obsessed with the future. We were looking forward. The rise of the digital age held the promise that the future would bring change of unprecedent magnitude, invigorated by new technologies. Computer speeds would double each year, and along with that, it seemed, anything would follow.
The future has arrived. The future is now. Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. We are no longer leaning forwards towards the future but living in an eternal present, where everything is always on and happening in real time.
It's not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerate the rate at which we attempt to do things. It's more of a diminishment of anything that isn't happening right now - and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.
Yet this now is an elusive goal that we can never quite search. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.
As a result , our culture becomes an entropic, static hum of everybody trying to capture the slipping moment.
Luigi Russolo, The art of noises
Rushkoff is referring to the 2 decennia before the change of the century. The rise of the digital era. But this same view of a future, energized by new technologies, is what drove the futurist at the end of the industrial revolution.
| roars claps noises of falling water driving noises bellows |
whistles snores snorts |
whispers mutterings rustlings grumbles grunts gurgles |
shrill sounds cracks buzzings jingles shuffles |
percussive noises using: metal wood skin stone baked earth ... |
animal and human voices: shouts moans screams laughter rattling sobs |
Russola's intonarumori which hold energy potential power promise <---> view of rushkoff about influence of technology on modern day society.<--> what would this sound like now?
Russolo categories of noises contain human like sounds --> the idea that they could be be mechanically reproduced by machines --> Von kempelen. <--> intonarumori
Speaking machine by Von Kempelen
This 18th century's Austrian inventor Wolfgang Von Kempelen is probably most famous for his invention of the mechanical Turk, a chess playing automaton, a far reaching and elaborate hoax. The story goes that he invented the mechanical turk to impress Maria Theresia, Empress of Austria, to give him the money to work on a manual operated speech synthesizer. While it took him 6 months to finish the mechanical Turk, he spent almost 20 years to develop a functional model which he considered a representational model of the human vocal tract.
However primitive this might have been --> model can only reproduce a few words --> right approach in building a resonator copying the shape of mouth and nose --> not the larynx which produces different sounds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kempelen_Speakingmachine.JPG
Jean Baudrillard, America
"There can be no silence up in the mountains, since their very contours roar. And for there to be silence, time itself has to attain a sort of horizontality; there has to be no echo of time in the future, but simply a sliding of geological strata one upon the other giving out nothing more than a fossil murmur” [America, Jean Baudrillard]
Pierre Huyghe
site specific installation for documenta kassel in which fiction and reality seem to blend, artefact and natural artefact and nature
baudrillard <--> search for sideral
The individual's ability to get a handle on the present - to experience duration, to resist the condition of time as product, ...
A time negotiated in keeping with external constraints. A fiction extended into reality. An alternate coding of temporal practice. ....
Mechanisms for reclaiming time, as it is live for the individual
The agency of the individual by working through the infinite interpretations and folds of reality that are possible at every moment, p 2 - A fiction extended into reality. p1
Snippets
Winds hitting the building and will cause pressure on one side and suction or a vacuum on the other. Depending on the direction of the wind. I would like to use this energy and forces of the winds which will have it's effects on the interior...
This is the new now. Our society has reoriented itself to the present moment. Everything is live, real time and always on. It's not a mere speeding up, however much our lifestyles and technologies have accelerate the rate at which we attempt to do things. It's more of a diminishment of anything that isn't happening right now - and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is.
People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future. We created technologies that would help connect us faster, gather news, map the planet, compile knowledge, and connect with anyone, at anytime. We strove for an instaneaous network where time and space could be compressed. Well, the future's arrived. We live in a continuous now enabled by twitter, email and the so-called realtime technological shift, Yet this now is an elusive goal that we can never quite search. And the dissonance between our digital selves and our analog bodies has thrown us into a new state of anxiety: present shock.
As a result , our culture becomes an entropic, static hum of everybody trying to capture the slipping moment.
when things begin accelerating wildly out of control, sometimes patience is the only answer. press pause..
instead of cultural comparison the dessert offered an absolute renunciation or sweeping away of culture
People spent the twentieth century obsessed with the future.
The individual's ability to get a handle on the present - to experience duration, to resist the condition of time as product, ...
A time negotiated in keeping with external constraints. A fiction extended into reality. An alternate coding of temporal practice. ....
Mechanisms for reclaiming time, as it is live for the individual
Tijdens mijn residentie bij overtoon, wil ik een in situ werk ontwikkelen voor het torengebouw waar overtoon gevestigd is. Meer specifiek voor de 11de verdieping. Deze oude kantoorruimte wordt door het collectief W.O.L.K.E. als tentoonstellingsruimte beschikbaar gesteld. Tijdens een vorig project dat ik realiseerde in deze ruimte, viel me op hoe bijzonder onderhevig deze is aan de invloed van wind op het gebouw. Horizontale wind veroorzaakt vóór het gebouw een overdruk en naast, boven en achter het gebouw een onderdruk. Tijdens mijn residentie bij overtoon wil ik graag de mogelijkheid onderzoeken om die energie te meten en/of te gebruiken in een in situ klankinstallatie.
Centraal in dit nieuwe werk staan tijd, perceptie en de beleving van tijd. Thema’s die ook aan bod kwamen in mijn voorgaande installaties. Ik wil die thema’s verder uitdiepen in deze nieuwe installatie en vind hiervoor mijn inspiratie in onder meer :
- Douglas Rushkoff's boek : “Present Shock”
Volgens de Amerikaanse schrijver Douglas Rushkoff heeft onze maatschappij zich onder invloed van de technologische ontwikkeling volledig geheroriënteerd naar het nu. We leven in ‘eeuwig nu’. We verkeren in een soort van ‘Present shock’ waarbij we krampachtig trachten het nu te beleven.
- The Art of noises, futuristisch manifest door Luigi Russolo,
Wat Rushkoff beschrijft staat in een schril contrast met de ideologisch visie die Russolo in zijn futuristisch manifest verwoordde. De vraag stelt zich hoe zijn Intonarumori vandaag de dag zouden klinken, 100 jaar na het schrijven van zijn manifest.
- Wolfgang Von Kempelen
Opvallend aan Russolo’s manifest, is dat hij bij het categoriseren van nieuwe klanken, ook menselijke klanken een plaats geeft. Hij was er dus wel degelijk van overtuigd dat hij aan de hand van technologie menselijke klank kon reproduceren. De 18de eeuwse uitvinder Wolfgang Von Kempelen was een van de eerste die een sprekende machine ontwikkelde. Een toestel dat via een blaasbalg en een riet enkele woorden kon vormen. Hoe eenvoudig zijn toestel ook was, Von Kempelen toonde er de principes van de die, en legde hiermee de basis voor synthetische spraak.
- Untilled, Pierre Huyghe’s, Documenta 2012 Kassel
Tijd is een weerkerende thema in het werk van de Franse kunstenaar Pierre Huyghe. In veel van zijn projecten onderzoekt hij de mogelijkheid om als individu vat te krijgen op het nu. Om tijd opnieuw te beleven of ervaren als ‘duur’, onafhankelijk van enige conditie van tijd als product. Zijn installaties zijn mechanismen om tijd terug op te eisen.
- Jean Baudrillard’s boek, America
“There can be no silence up in the mountains, since their very contours roar. And for there to be silence, time itself has to attain a sort of horizontality; there has to be no echo of time in the future, but simply a sliding of geological strata one upon the other giving out nothing more than a fossil murmur”
What follows are a few things which inspire me. A few ideas about the relation between technology, art, time, sound,... which I think are interesting to explore during my residency at Overtoon.
- Douglas Rushkoff's 2012 Book, Present Shock,
- The Art of noises, by Luigi Russolo,
- A Speaking Machine by 18th century inventor Wolfgang Von Kempelen
- A quote by Baudrillard
- Untilled, Pierre Huyghe's contribution to Documenta Kassel
The agency of the individual by working through the infinite interpretations and folds of reality that are possible at every moment, p 2 - A fiction extended into reality. p1
