sound

Assignment 2: Talking in the Library

default: write a poem                                                
due week 5 (3/21 + 3/23)


Not everyone knows what a wonderful space the Old Library is for sound!  And not everyone agrees on the fine acoustics!  Street noise was considered enough of a nuisance for sliding doors to be installed, altering the visual and soundscapes.  This assignment invites you to write and perform a work using language or language-related sound in provocative / evocative relationship with the Old RISD Library.  You may use any available part of the Library, on the understanding that it is shared with 48 class members, and many other students, in many other classes, and otherwise.  Sound work can be live or recorded.

In this assignment, please consider carefully

• human voice
• environment
• spoken language
• collaboration

All poetry is rooted in voice.  Many forms of poetry are designed specifically to be spoken (email me if you would like models); much poetic technique relates to sound (rhythm, rhyme, assonance, consonance, onomatopoeia).  Tone, volume, pace, delivery, address, auscultation: these are all open to experiment.  Also prohibitions to speech, in libraries, and society.

Thinking of whatever approach to sound / language is most interesting and apt, write an assignment which can be completed in one week (for presentation on Wed 3/21 and Fri 3/23), focusing on sound / language and our Library. Then complete the assignment.  Collaborative work is encouraged.

some links
ubuweb sound
caroline bergvall
flub + utter


Blue Books


from Kevin Cochran

In the introduction to Yingelishi it says --

Turn your head slightly to the left,

     and you hear English,

          slightly to the right,

                          Chinese,

                                  straight ahead, neither,

                                              both.

I found this to be a perfect description of my experience listening to Yingelishi. If I focused just right, I could hear the English, especially when reading along. If I listened passively, it became Chinese. This playing in and out of languages was far more interesting to me than the words themselves. I wonder what this project would be like when taken through this filter 2 times? 10 times? 100 times? It would be infinitely more interesting as 1 sentence processed 100 times than as 100 sentences processed once.

Sound Writing

• low frequency high volume
• multiple speakers
• surround sound
• fuzz of speaker left of projector
• library sound
• library silence
• music
• could I rap
• ambience
• away from music
• echolocation
• evoke with sound
• binaural sounds
• syncopated sounds
• loud
• quiet
• footsteps
• scare people
• please people
• make people experience
• let them choose to experience
• headphones
• speaking
• let everyone make the noise
• direct the audience like an orchestra
• oppose audience to each other
• performance
• something static--as in it stays
• noise detection
• plays your sounds back
• warps your sounds
• Yingelishi -- records your voice, attempts to transcribe, attempts to translate, reads aloud, retranscribes, retranslates, reads back in original language--ALWAYS FAILS

from Elizabeth Conrad 

• pages turning - timeline (old book to new)
• people studying together
• "I am interested in exploring the idea of silence or the soft spoken"
• "If I write a poem can it exist in silence, only on the page?"