‘From radios to telephones, phonautographs to speaking machines, modernity opened up a space for a range of vocal coordinates defined by electronic imagination.’ [1]
Sound poetry, later developed into Lettrism and Ultra-Lettrism, operated on two main ideas: 1. the attempt to come to terms with scientific and technological development, the humanisation of the machine, the marrying of the human to the much electronically generated sound; 2. the return to the primitive, to incantation and ritual, restoring the voice to its full physical powers as part of the body, the body as language.
‘The digital voice might be heard not just as potential revolution tied to subjectivity, but more as a signaling of its current pluralisation and post-human future.’ This pluralisation is something I’m interested in. The digital medium and identity.
Lettrism, as the name suggests, focuses on the letter. It manipulates the phonemics for literally capturing the granular and tactile intensities found within every movement of the mouth.[1] It searches for the materiality of speech beyond language. It does so by playing with glottal movements (Francois Dufrene) and breaths (Gill J. Wolman)
‘Man is a ‘sound chamber’.’ – Bachelard
introduction of tape recorder in 1950
Dufrene on Wolman in 1965: ‘the Breath alone founds the poem – rhythm and outcry, that outcry, content contained, until now, of the poem:of joy, of love, of anguish, of horror, of hate, but a cry.’ [1]
On the other hand, after having looked into the work of Cicely Berry who is famously known for developing techniques that would allow actors to better engage with the vowels in Shakespear’s work, this is the kind of contrast I was looking for. From the meticulous training of the voice to produce sounds to better suit such a specific text, to the elimination of text altogether, allowing for the voice itself to be both meaning and method.
So far I only spoke of the materiality of the voice and not really of its interaction with the advancing technology. For that I will look into the work of Henri Chopin. His most popular work is probably La Peur (Fear). After having worked with tape recorders, Chopin grew an interest in the possibility of multiplying oneself on stage, turning the body into ‘a factory of all sounds’.
Chopin performs as a live pantomime; often pretending to utter sounds heard from audiotapes, he becomes his own ventriloquist, extending and displacing his own presence on stage while punctuating through live additions the prepared materials.
Finally, a last quote I wanna keep from LaBelle’s essay: ‘Though ‘transmission-message-reception’ sought clear channels, the neo-Dada, phonetic, and sonic agitations of artists and this poets at this time were filling such channels spit, silence, cracked electronic, and broken music.’ [1]
[1] Brandon LaBelle, Raw Orality: Sound Poetry and Live Bodies