Franziska Schroeder School of Arts, Culture and Environment The University of Edinburgh March 2006 The Voice as Transcursive Inscriber: The relation of

Franziska SchroederSchool of Arts, Culture and Environment

The University of Edinburgh March 2006

The Voice as Transcursive Inscriber:The relation of body and instrument understood through

the workings of a machine

Performance Background

Context

Performance Background

Theories of Embodiment

The body has been subjected toa controversial debate

Context

Hans-Joachim Hespos: “IKAS” for solo saxophone (1982)

Interplay of voice and instrument

Introduction

Hans-Joachim Hespos: “IKAS” for solo saxophone (1982)

Interplay of voice and instrument

Threshold conditions

Unusual timbral relationship betweenvocal and instrumental sound

Introduction

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Hans-Joachim Hespos - “IKAS”Hans-Joachim Hespos - “IKAS”

Hans-Joachim Hespos - “IKAS”

Performer/Instrument relationship is investigated as one marked by Gilles Deleuzes’ notion of the

workings of a machine

The machine’s function with view to “flows” and the “breaks” (coupures) in the flow

Introduction

“IKAS” requires a different vocabulary

To encompass timbre-based works

To highlight the particular workings of instrument and performer

Aim

“IKAS” requires a different vocabulary

To encompass timbre-based works

To highlight the particular workings of instrument and performer

These workings in “IKAS” are tightly linked to the sounding of the work

To provide a possible conceptual understanding for an unusual work

Aim

Instrumental Prosthesis

“Prosthesis” “prostithenai” (Gk.): pros = "to" and

tithenai = "to put, place” = to "add to”

(www.etymonline.com)

The instrument is added on to

The performer’s prosthesis

Extension:The instrument is an extension of the body


EXTENSION

Diaphragm pushes the air into the lungs

Air travels from the lungs through the vocal tract

Into the instrument’s mouthpiece

The vocal cavity is shaped to match the instrument’s specifics

A sound becomes voiced

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Voicing OneselfRelations of facing and frontality

When giving voice, I produce soundsWhen speaking, I also produce myself

Speaking establishes me as a self-producing being

Voicing Oneself “When I speak, my voice shows me up as a being

with a perspective, for whom orientation has significance, who has an unprotected rear,

who has two sides”(Connor, 2000)

“If my voice is out in front of me, this makes me feel that I am somewhere behind it”

(Connor, 2000)

The performer exposes her voice as coming from inside and going into an exterior space



Voicing OneselfThe voice becomes an “extended reach”

(Connor, 2005)

The instrument is an extension, the object with which one makes sounds

The instrument is the performer’s voice (Cumming, 2000)





E x t e n s i o n

The voice is one of the principal

‘extensions’ of man

(Marshall McLuhan, 1964)


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“Exteriorisation”(André Leroi-Gourhan, 1993)

Humans exteriorise technical forms

A transfer of our abilities to some kind of external support

We transfer our memory to books, our strength to the ox, our fist to the hammer




Stelarc:

“The Third Hand” “Hexapod” QuickTime™ and a

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The Workings of a Machine

Centrifugal way requires to be re-thought

Reconsider and re-conceptualise the use of the performer’s voice

when producing sounds

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Jean-François Lyotard

1. The Great Ephemeral Skin

“Don’t forget to add to the tongue and all the pieces of the vocal apparatus, all the sounds of

which they are capable, and moreover, the whole selective network of sounds, that is, the

phonological system, for this too belongs to the libidinal ‘body’, like colours that must be added to

the retinas,[…], like some particularly favoured smells to the nasal cavities, like preferred words

and syntaxes to the mouths which utter them and to the hands which write them.” (2004, p.2)

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Libidinal Economy (1974)




Performer-Voice-Instrument - A specific technology

Deleuze-ian machine:

“Machines are everywhere. Machines drive other machines,

while machines are being driven by machines”.(Deleuze & Guattari, 1984)

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Performer-Voice-Instrument - A specific technology

Deleuze-ian machine:

“Machines are everywhere. Machines drive other machines,

while machines are being driven by machines”. (Deleuze & Guattari, 1984)

The breast is a machine that produces milk. The mouth is a machine that is coupled to it.

The voice - The performer - The instrument - are machines connected through

flows and breaks in the flow!




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The In - terr - upt - ions of a Machine

Machines can be defined in terms of interruptions or breaks (coupures)

“every machine functions as a break in the flow in relation to the machine to which it is connected, but at

the same time it is also a flow itself, or the production of a flow, in relation to the machine connected to it” (D&G,

1984).

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Interruptions | Breaks

Breaking-downs of the machine constitute an integral part for the machine’s functioning.

The interruption presupposes or defines what it cuts into as an ideal continuity.

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Interruptions | Breaks

Breaking-downs of the machine constitute an integral part for the machine’s functioning.

The interruption presupposes or defines what it cuts into as an ideal continuity.

The mouth not only sucks the milk of the breast, but it also cuts off the milk from the breast.

The Voice cuts into the Instrumental Space

Voice as interfering with, or distorting the instrument?Example 1.1:

Voicing of the consonants “t” and “z” in combination with an (any) instrumental sound

CO

NSO

NA

NT IN

TER

FER

EN

CES


Example 1.2:

A “w” with added “u”.The consonant “w” restricts the air-flow in the throat.

CO

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NT IN

TER

FER

EN

CES




Example 2.1 and 2.2:

The sustained multiphonic sound (in itself already rather unstable sound in terms of air column vibration!) is interrupted by a “Flutterzunge”

High “f” (held quietly) becomes ‘disturbed’ by the consonants “w” and “ws”

Added marking of “locker” (light or loose) contributes to this paradox. INTER

RU

PTIN

G

STA

BIL

ITY




Example 2.3 and 2.4:

A 10 second sustained “e” is cut off by the consonants “t/k”

Vowel Series: Primordial, a violent, loud (“fff”), breathless scream

Hespos marks ”fürchterlich” (horrible or fearsome) and “mit starrer Kehle” (with rigid throat) ! A tense and rigid climax!

INTER

RU

PTIN

G

STA

BIL

ITY




Example 3.1:

The consonants “t, p” and “z” are produced away from the instrument

VO

CA

L

SO

UN

DS

O

NLY



Produc tive Interruptions

www.public-health.uiowa.edu

A Deleuze-ian reading exposes these interruptions as productive:

“the breaks in the process are productive, and are reassemblies in and of themselves. Disjunctions, by

the very fact that they are disjunctive, are inclusive”

(D&G, 1984, p.42).

Interruptions condition continuity



Produc tive Interruptions

www.public-health.uiowa.edu

The voice-machine does not extend into the instrument-machine, but the

voice-machine cuts off the instrument-machine

Threshold that marks the space between the performer (mouth/lips)

and the instrument (reed)

The space “in-between”, or the junction between the machines, where

the machines connect, becomes the focus

A Paradoxical Resting Closure

A trill starting from very quiet (“pp”),diminuendo-ing into even less, into nothing.

A Paradoxical Resting Closure

A trill starting from very quiet (“pp”),diminuendo-ing into even less, into nothing.

Hespos marks “rauschig verblasen”

“verblasen” - the German prefix “ver-“ = “mis”, or “wrong” [ver-kehrt (wrong), ver-ändert (changed), ver-kommen

(degenerated)].

“verblasen” implies to “mis-blow”





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IKAS - a schizoid work par excellence

Voice as disturbance in itself



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The voice is not simply an “emission of the body”,but a “straining of air”



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The voice is not simply an “emission of the body”,but a “straining of air”

It is a “striving, and a disturbance”; one that “subjects the world to strain”

(Connor, 2005)



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“brings about transverse

communication, transfinite

summarization, polyvocal and

transcursive inscriptions on its own

surface, on which the functional breaks

of partial objects are continually

intersected by breaks in the signifying

chain, and by breaks effected by a

subject that uses them as reference

points in order to locate itself”

(D&G, 1984, p.43).



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“IKAS” exposes the breaks in the workings of the performer-voice-instrument machine

“IKAS” lays bare those workings



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“IKAS” exposes the breaks in the workings of the performer-voice-instrument machine

“IKAS” lays bare those workings

PERFORMER:Search for new ways of playing such a work

A re-orientation is required

A search for conceptual ways of playing is demanded that may not be readily at hand

ReferencesConnor, Steven (2005). The Strains of the Voice, text for the exhibition Phonorama: Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe.http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc

Connor, Steven (2000). Dumbstruck - A Cultural History of Ventriloquism, Oxford University Press.

Cumming, Naomi (2000). The Sonic Self: Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1972/1984). Anti-Oedipus; Capitalism & Schizophrenia”, Athlone Press.

Leroi-Gourhan, André (1993). Gesture and Speech, trans. A. Bostock Berger, Cambridge: MIT.

Lyotard, Jean-François (1974/2004). Libidinal Economy. Continuum, London/New York.

MacLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge and Kegar, P.

Turner Victor (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ.

URL’S

Etymonline: www.etymonline.com

Stelarc: www.stelarc.va.com.au

SCOREHans-Joachim Hespos (1982)

“IKAS – ein entrée für altsaxophon”, Hespos Edition, Delmenhorst, H 028 E.

.



Franziska SchroederSchool of Arts, Culture and EnvironmentThe University of Edinburgh

[email protected]

www.ranjiv.com

Documents

Franziska Schroeder School of Arts, Culture and Environment The University of Edinburgh March 2006 The Voice as Transcursive Inscriber: The relation of