Artist Statement

AV EXP (2013)

Babil-on is a performance of augmented musical theater which metaphorically describes the fate of speech. If the birth of speech is marked by the enjoyment of phontation and the purity of the vowel, then babbling creates a hiccup of excitement and laughs when in crisis. At this moment an accident occurs: the irruption of a consonant. Through contagion, burst of disruption, and a continuous stream of linguistic actions, we can eventually impoverish the vocal material. In this work the word is exhausted by pure singing that allows us a return to original breath.

• Greg Beller works as an artist, a researcher, a teacher and a computer designer for contemporary arts. He defended a PhD thesis in Computer Science on generative models for expressivity and their applications for speech and music, especially through performance. He takes part in a range of artistic projects while developing new ideas for signal analysis, processing, synthesis and control. He is currently a computer-music designer at IRCAM, France, where he works with researchers, composers and directors in the creation, the design and the performance of artistic projects.  gregbeller.com

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