Artist Statement
La Capella, June 9-August 28, Artworks from ISEA2022’s call. Public event.
Keywords: Female voice in music, Algorithmic music, Multilingualism, Self-construction, Artificial Improvisation
If the configuration of one’s voice is decisive in the construction of the body, language and its sounds are decisive in the construction of cultures. Hence the allegorical interest of D’Eco a Siringa in the sound of languages, a basic tool for communication, socialization and personal development.
D’Eco a Siringa is a sound and visual installation where resources close to artificial intelligence are applied to the composition of a musical and visual flow in continuous transformation, without formal resolving elements throughout the installation time, whatever its duration, dynamically built from a database accessible in the IP space, initially made up of materials obtained by reading words from world women’s literature, spoken by diverse female voices in as many languages as possible and constantly and dynamically maintained. At present, it contains sound samples from 60 languages.
Images are dynamically constructed from the graphic treatment of texts in various languages and alphabets, chosen according to spectral characteristics of sounds and procedures selected at variable time intervals. Its instantaneous behavior is reactive in real time to the general dynamics of sounds. Despite the continuous change in the sound and visual flow that is generated as a consequence of ethical-aesthetic reasons dictated by the need to construct works avoiding the traditional musical forms marked by patriarchy and influence them with structural characteristics of female voice, I consider the problems of the distillation of the essence and the maintenance of the identity of the work of art, which, in this case, is achieved through the intelligent manipulation of the timbral colorations of voices and the balance of the images. Hence, recordings of readings and the appearance of texts are subjected to various forms of signal processing; in particular, transposition, juxtaposition, superposition, convolution, fragmentation, granulation, filtering, and spatialization.
Claiming non-directionality as a response to the dominant orientations based on directionality, being sound and image generation continuous in real time without conclusive segmentations, as is the case of most of my installations, no one is expected to wait for any final conclusion, as happens in a traditional concert situation. https://www.sonoscop.net/jmb
- José Manuel Berenguer is coordinator and professor of Psychoacoustics and Experimental Music of the Master in Sound Art of the University of Barcelona and director of Orquestra del Caos. Founder of Côclea with Clara Garí – where he directed the Musica 13 Festival for more than a decade – and also of Orquestra del Caos, collaborator of the Institut International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges, was the designer and the first person in charge from the Sound and Music Laboratory of the CIEJ of the Fundació la Caixa de Pensions, as well as Professor of Electroacoustic Music at the Conservatory of Bourges. Former President of the Electroacoustic Music Association of Spain, he is currently President of Honour of the International Conference of Electroacoustic Music of the CIM / UNESCO, President of Quantum Art Lab, member of the Académie Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique / Bourges and of the Board of Trustees of the Phonos Foundation.
D’Eco a Siringa obtained a Ciutat de Barcelona 2020 Grant and a Research and Innovation grant from Generalitat de Catalunya.