RADIOPHONIC MONDAYS FEATURING JÖRG KÖPPL (CH)
zellen - silben (a dreaming machine)
an algorithmic composition for radio, which has been broadcast in several versions in various countries and languages. The piece has both a sound and a language layer, each controlled by a non-hierarchical algorithm built on nine interacting cells. The way these new cells interact is not so much copied from our brain as from our society, in that the cells oscillate between "stubbornness" and adaptation to the collective.
In the version for Radio Art Zone, multilingualism becomes more central, since the work is performed in a bilingual region, and Luxembourgish is in the process of emancipation from dialect to written language. Therefore, French and Luxembourgish have been added to the languages for this new version.
Context: Orpheé
A young man is sitting in a car listening to the radio. The car is not driving; it is parked in a garage. The young man listens feverishly to the sometimes absurd and sometimes poetic sentences and writes them down. It is Orpheus, the poet. The radio voice comes from another world. Unaffected, it oracles to itself. My memory of the 1949 film Orpheé by Jean Cocteau is vague, but this radio appealed to me and has become a silent placeholder for what I imagine radio art to be. Here, the radio is not a transmitting medium, but becomes an acting subject itself. There is no face behind it, no person - the voice falls together with the device. The whole balances on the membrane to another world.Szene aus dem Film Orphé von Jean Cocteau 1949 Like surreal dreams, the randomly generated sentences can serve as inspiration, as oracles that open new perspectives of thought. Dice machines for the names of God in Kabbalah and the random compositions of Cage (who worked with the I Ching) share the desire to escape one's own preconceptions.
When someone speaks erroneously, it is often not because he or she has not mastered the basic rules of logic. But because one's own needs cannot be formulated in the staked out enclosure of grammar accepted as meaningful. In the end, it is not what is possible but what is tolerated that forms the boundaries in communication.
Nine interacting cells
The controlling algorithm of the algorithmic composition is not organised hierarchically. It is made of nine interacting cells and its dramaturgy is unpredictable and yet musical. The way these nine cells interact is not so much copied from our brain as from our society. On the one hand, the cells have the tendency to move randomly up and down a frequency scale. On the other hand, they look to other cells for harmonic ratios (1:2, 1:3, 3:2, 3:4, 4:5, etc.) and sometimes adapt to them. Thus, the cells control sinusoidal generators as well as the playback speeds of nine samplers. Depending on their matches with other cells, the dynamics of each cell swells and shrinks. We can observe something similar with groups of people, who sometimes become very loud when they have synchronised. Through this principle, the samples are musically related to each other and a lively dynamic results.
Samples
As a control for sine generators, sample players and as a pulse generator for the word sequences, this principle produces an amazingly organic soundscape. The tuned and clocked samples are adapted, revised and supplemented from version to version.
Syllables
The nine cells trigger impulses in certain time intervals, which control an archive of recorded (mostly) monosyllabic words. The computer continuously creates possible sentences from the words, which offer - sometimes more and sometimes less - meaning to the listeners. The archive is organised by vowels, and the sentences by strict verse forms (e.g. A - O - EI - AU). The monosyllabicity and the selection of the words, which include slang and explicit words, create a raw and immediate character. What they tell is reminiscent of oracular sayings or dream narratives. Touching on the meaningful, they tip back into surreal scenarios. Through interactions between the different voices (languages), through changing verse forms and emotional charging, an atmospheric meta-narrative evolves.
In contrast to the efforts of "artificial intelligence", which tries to create meaningful statements with machines, zellen-silben (a dreaming machine) strives for the opposite: to productively disrupt our mental imprints.
zellen-silben (a dreaming machine) is supported by pro helvetia, swiss arts council and Caroline Döhmer, Zentrum für Luxenburgische Sprache.
This is an excerpt of zellen - silben (a dreaming machine). SONIC MATTER does not currently hold the rights to play the entire radio art piece within the SONIC MATTER_radio REPLAY option. If you're seeking further information or access to this work, you can refer to the following links:
audiokunst.ch/w02-zellen-silben.html Photo: Frederic Meyer / Drawing, courtesy by the artist | 