3937 Presentation-Henri Chopin (by Fareena Mookshah)

"Chopin began his own experiments with voice and tape by the mid-1950s, as well as to record some older sound poets, like Raoul Hausmann, one of the founders of the Berlin Dada of 1918. Chopin's work pointed the way in which technology could re-define the early sound poetry, and open it up to even less reliance on language. Whereas the Dada sound poetry still relied on letters, Chopin often concentrated on the pure essence of sounds that the voice was capable of. At the same time he started to exhibit his artwork, among which were his typewriter poems that utilize typewritten letters to create visual images."(http://www.answers.com/topic/henri-chopin)

An example of his typewriter poems which I liked was the piece called "adorable construction". He uses the typewriter as a way to show how moving the platen, although the text is pretty much going on a straight line, can create the text to be structured differently and really we get a visual of the text by the shape of the rectangle and texture as the text is overtyped on top of each other to create repetition and chaotic because it is claustrophobic and no space between the text. http://dbqp.blogspot.com/2008/01/when-sound-ends-vision-endures.html

Chopin was an advocate of interdisciplinary production and multi-sensory art, echoing Raoul Hausmann's view that "We are able to speak and write, because we hear with our eyes and we see with our ears."
(http://www.ica.org.uk/Henri%20Chopin+20563.twl)

I found this interesting because when listening to his piece, AudioPoems Part 1 and 2, I really felt that I was trying to visualize to what I was hearing so, that sense of tryign to see with our ears when we do not have a visual to reference to. Also in his typewriter poems, you could get a sense of the sound that he is trying to evoke through how the text is displayed on the page because there is a certain flow or rhythm, even though you do not hear any sound, your sight is making that connection with the flow or rhythm of the work as his piece that I have talked about called "adorable construction".

"While experimenting with visual poetry and other more traditional avant-garde forms, Chopin discovered the unique potentials of the tape recorder. With such a device, he reasoned, the poem no longer needed to be entombed within the confines of the page. He was not so much seeking the 'word made flesh' like some poets, but rather he was looking for the 'flesh which is sound': the poetic utterance stripped down to its bare essentials."
(http://www.wendtroot.com/spoetry/folder4/ng42.html)

Henri Chopin's AudioPoems Part 2 (http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html) This piece seems to really strip down the language to the basics, it reminds me of learning language again and learning how each letter makes a different sound by itself or in combination with others. It also seems to do a lot of speeding up or slowing down on the tape recorder or fast forwarding or rewinding, which creates the voice, which you essentially hear, to be low, to be repetitive, to seem that there is no words just sounds such as screaming, or seems to be stretched out as it is played over some time such as the word rouge being stretched out.

It sounds like that one piece that you showed us in class where the lady's voice sounds jazzy and musical as she is reciting words and just saying it differently and adding that with the effects of the microphone that she is speaking into. It is as if Chopin is playing with language and rather seeing how words can be made apparent and physical just with making words be more like sounds than just words that we speak or read.

I think it is interesting that he says he wants to find "flesh which is sound" because when we think of poems, we want to either create a certain atmosphere or rhythm with those words and to convey certain moods or a visual. His usage of the words he says and using the tape recorder is bringing those words from being fixed to a page where the words are structured in a certain way to hear that rhythm but this piece, when listening, is making those words be static and rather how words sound in space and more of a visual aesthetic is brought into the foreground.It reminds me of just how saying words in a certain way can have a different feel to them such as saying it fast it sounds like rushed or speaking soft would sound subdue or speaking loud might be overwhelming. Even trying to think of words that would display a certain mood, it is like rolling that word on your tongue.

1975-Henri Chopin's La Civilisation du Papier(http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html)
This piece seems to recreate a visual and an experience of being in the field in a war zone. The reason is that there seems to be sounds that resemble airplanes and vehicles or missiles that are travelling through the air. I think though those sounds are created by editing his voice in different ways but there is points that it does not even seem like a voice and seem non-verbal. It also plays with the idea of the signal and communication because there seems to be a high frequency signal that is constantly playing throughout the piece and it reminds me of trying to keep communication with people.

The reason is that sometimes you will hear the voice sound clear and other times it is interrupted by this signal which seems to suggest that communication is down or it is barely audible. This shows how he uses the tape recorder to make different uses of it and experiment with it.

It reminds me of that article called "Invisible Generation", that by making your own recordings , you can make your own meanings and make something new come out of it than just having to listen to recordings that have been recorded before. Also to record, to your own ability and freedom, you can have a better awareness of the environment. Also you hear the sounds and voices that you hear in that recording, even when being in that space when recording and can see what you missed.

Chopin shows us that language can become free and can become more of a translation of how those words we say are experienced by our senses.. such as what we see and hear and what we experience through our bodies (such as being and visualizing that you are in that surrounding that you hear in the war for example) rather than just being said and/or trying to capture it on a page.

Henri Chopin's method of his work, (he quotes): "To make an example that I know well, since it is about my work, it is now thirty years that I do not write any scores before assembling an audio-poem. It is just by heart and using only my memory that I conceive the expressions of my body. basically through my mouth with its breathing etc., which become my only solid score. There, I discover a world without limits, from prattles to phonic lacerations. All this happens on, and with the help of, a Revox tape machine, with the addition of sound effects like echoes, changes of speed, larsen effects, until the final editing through sound collages". "He refuses to filter and modulate the sounds, a process which would make them mechanical and sterile.The recording machine materializes the voice, the breath, which is often used as noise and which is part of our life since birth." *directly cited.(http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html)

So again his work and sound pieces are about how his voice is coming through and is used to structure those pieces and really is a recording and editing of how his body is experiencing his voice at different times that becomes layered in its final editing. He is showing us how language can be free and not bounded as it can be such as how words can be gendered for example. Also how we probably speak when we are born where language is not really bounded or defined for us since we do not have knowledge of that as babies, but really trying to voice either we're hungry by either crying so vocalizing our emotions. It is about recording the sounds that have been around us and making it visible and recording as it is actually in that space.

In 1923, he wrote on Richter's G magazine that "the only logic sound poetry is the one that cannot be written". Even though Chopin accepts the importance of the destruction of the word, at the some time he understands the limits of Dadaism's utilization of the letters of the alphabet, as there exist innumerable sonorous subtleties we use when we communicate which our alphabet cannot express. (directly cited)
(http://www.ubu.com/sound/chopin.html)

Again this shows his method of working with that using his memory, and expressions of his body such as breathing and the sound effects, it captures what the subtleties of language such as in his piece, La Civilisation du Papier, the effects of his voice create a different visual and bodily experience of that setting than reading a description or the history of war and even war poems might not be able to capture fully because it is on paper and fixed. Instead his way of vocalizing language to me is giving language substance, physicality, life, and rather it is static and moving which I think language can be at the same time if it wasn't constrained such as gendering language.

Henri Chopin's Live Performance in France in 2005
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg3NrR7_jYk
It shows again how he records when he is breathing into the microphone and making that sound be audible and visible. Also as he is adding effects and also playing the multiple recordings simultaneously as another recording is added into the mix, it makes the breathing become more of an effect. It makes it sound macroscopic in that it is bigger than that space and is something from breathing that we do not hear to something that sounds like it is the sound of an airplane taking off.

Question: How do you think of language, is it free or bounded or poetic or rhythmical, expressive? How does Chopin's method of using his voice or breathing makes you think of language now in that it doesn't have to be tied down to words. Instead it can be vocalized or expressed through the body such as screaming or crying or even body movements like shrugging your shoulders to say I don't know.

Initial Thoughts /12/10/08/

When I think of our blogs for this class, I think of an online diary. This reminds me of those artists who thought that it was essential that everyday life should be accessible throught the net, even though some things you think you would want to keep private if you write in a journal.
The first phase of our project triggered me to do something that was familiar to me and that integrated many things that I've learned throughout the years and surprisingly it can connect to this class. An example is when we were shown a work by the artist named Sterlac, who controlled the body movements of the volunteers due to the volume of the electric shock ,that runs through the bodies of the volunteers, through controlled mechanisms. This made me think about how the body can also become genders which we can see through cyborgs, which is a combination of man and machine. I want to link the word, computation, to Sterlac because it reinforces that idea of control, efficiency, and results from a series of specific commands or instructions. The design and outcome of Sterlac's project is designed to have an expected outcome. This is what Sterlac's project emphasizes. The person that controls the body movements is in control and choice and there is an expected outcome by Sterlac. Also the project is designed in a specific way to eliminate the volunteers to have their input, since their movements are controlled and are involuntary.
This also connects how the body is constantly changing and is adapting to new situations. It's also in a flux, cyborgs are an example, of being in the middle of genders and are constantly deconstructing the cultural constructs that try to contain the body. This idea is contrasting computation in the sense that the body isn't being organized and fitted nicely into one, specific gender. (These are some of the other themes that I have learned and remembered from other classes) Also the viewer and/or user is changing as the context of the work alters. An example is in a chatroom or facebook, we can create multiple identities, fake identities, avatars, or a community online such as joining or creating groups or networks. The user and/or viewer is changing if they're in a chatroom or being in a virtual game.
I hope that my project triggers and portrays some spontaneity and interaction since the links would not be visible and the viewer can create their own context through highlighted words and find surprises on their own. I want to mix organization and clutter to have a different aesthetic value. I hope that the quotes, as I found and thought, emphasize the connections and tensions of interactivity, viewpoints, where and how is art is placed within technology from different contexts, and where and how the artist and viewer or subject(s) are placed within technology and art from different contexts.