Trikoton is a Berlin-based label that specializes in custom clothing based on (your) voice signals. The founders created a 1970s-style interactive knitting machine; a micro-controller and 24 small engines imitate a pattern card that can be controlled by live user input (that's you!) via connected computer. You can record anything you want - your favorite poem on a scarf, a sweater inspired by sounds in the kitchen, maybe a song composed for ukulele incorporated into a pair of pants - anything! Lookbook.
I read Pauline Oliveros' book Deep Listening sometime last spring, and for awhile went through this phase where I would try her slow-walk exercise in busy spaces - on the El, in the middle of Millenium Park, at the Mother's Day-themed limerick contest I attended*. The idea is that a slow walk forces you to engage with your immediate (sonic) environment. It's very specific: you're supposed to place your heel, slowly slowly let down the outside of your sole, feel your pinkie toe make contact, and then settle the rest of your foot to balance point. (Think you're doing it? NO WAY: you can always go slower.) Busy spaces, I thought, would make for the most interesting environments - and if I was doing it right, nobody would notice I was moving anyway.
I didn't usually do it right: people noticed. (It was only a short phase.)
ANYWAY: Oliveros is one of the founders of the Deep Listening Institute. You can take classes and get certified (hey!) in what amounts to focusing on the difference between involuntary hearing and selective listening. I don't know that I buy the Institute lock, stock, and barrel - but reading her book really did make me more aware of everyday sound.
Friends: this video is not terribly entertaining. But if you want a little bit of a window into the Deep Listening method / if you want to see Oliveros do her thing: this is for you.
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice as well as the image of myself, and I am going to upload it to YouTube, rip it from YouTube, and upload it again and again, until the original characteristics of both my voice and my image are destroyed. What you will see and hear, then, are the artifacts inherent in the video codec of both YouTube and the mp4 format I convert it to on my computer. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a digital fact, but more as a way to eliminate all human qualities my speech and image might have.
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson are putting together "an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia" - by which I mean: a concert that centers around frequencies audible to dogs, but not to humans. The BBC asked for a comment from Ms. Anderson, who informed them that "The show... will last for 20 minutes as...'dogs don't have a giant concentration span'."
Henri Chopin is known as the father of the Sound Poets. Sounds like a college IM team. Maybe broomball.
Sound Poetry! Think: the manipulation of the human voice, "verse without words." Right up my alley, kittens. I've embedded this video (Chopin was 85 years old, by the way), but I also recommend poking around the ubuweb page for more audio bits.
Hey guys! You don't need me to tell you this is a compilation blog: I pull already-existing noteworthy musicological things I find on the internet. I do my best to give credit where credit is due, but if something belongs to you and you'd rather not see it here - please let me know (About Mefor contact details) and I'll remove it.
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