Month: November 2022

In week 9 with Ingrid, we have discovered 8 aspects of performance such as:

Homage= pay tribute to something or someone/ getting inspiration from other artist’s works without commenting plagiarism

Materiality= creating art from materials that normally have non-art function

Embodiment= ASMR, creating intimacy with voice

Persona= creating a new persona/ adapting new voice

Modes= approaching observation mode/ documentary

Experimentation= Performance Methodology

Listening= Practice as performance

This week’s class inspired me to alternate my voice in audio paper. First of all, because my first voice recording was flat and boring. the biggest reason for the change was the fact that my topic and what I am talking about in my audio paper are very important to me and it’s bigger than the borders of human existence. It’s about equal treatment for women not only during my lifetime but until the world ends. Don’t get me wrong, I stand for everything I talk about and proudly put my name under it, I felt however that human existence is too shallow and small for such a deep and important topic as gender inequality in the sound arts/ music industry. I decided to create a new persona, that will go outside the borders of the human body and imagination, and create a big enough space, but still keep it very mine, so the listener can hear my voice. I was manipulating my voice in various ways and ended up my voice with a small mechanic/ metallic accent at the end of words and sentences( not all of them but most). I chose “robot” as sub-me, because it’s close enough to the human being, not like aliens or being outside our world, but still stronger and bigger than humans. I loved how minimalistic the effect was and still made a point of having a new robotic-like persona. The way I achieved my final voice recording was unexpected and quite accidental. Fits of all I started by working on the way I say words, making myself sound very professional, perfect, almost robotic. I worked hard on the way I pronounce each word and vocalization. I also tried to achieve the unbothered sound of my voice, and lose any feelings, which are a natural part of being human. I wanted to sound as less human as possible. When my voice recording was ready I started manipulating it, using plug-ins available in Logic. The listener can hear the small triggering of my voice and little mechanic sounds from time to time.

“Her Noise” is not just a feminist platform for female artists, it’s a platform that is supposed to get female artists closer to each other, create a safe space where beginners can experiment and ask questions, and finally force that will speak for women and face up the difficulties and inequality in the music industry for female artists. It was the first platform created and curated by women compared to only male-dominated ones. Lina Dzuverovic said during an interview that the music scene is such a male-dominated place because there isn’t freedom for women to ask questions and experiment. There was no link between female artists who know what they are doing and female artists who are just starting until “Her Noise”. It might be because of confidence level but most men’s existence in the music scene is much more normalized than the existence of women. Therefore men naturally feel more confident and free to roam around, experiment, and ask a question but women, because of the way society puts their position in the world, makes them self-conscious and afraid to ask questions said Emma Hedditch in the interview produced by Electra in 2006. Lina also said that most of the time female artists are not as well marketed or heard of compared to male artists. As a curator, the most important is to find this one person that didn’t know how to package/present their work to a wider audience and therefore they weren’t heard about. Anne Hilde Neset defines the title as strong. Word “Noise” talks about the energetic and messy nature of the exhibition and the word “Her” clearly defines for whom this platform is created because it is supposed to be a safe space for a female artist to learn and experiment. Some people might call ” Her Noise” the feminist ghetto. First of all, no one says things like that about male-dominated and male-intended platforms and secondly, a lot of men participated in an event created by “Her Noise” so it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the male part of society. Word “feminism” started to be wrongly understood and associated, which makes a lot of women feminists not want to define themselves as feminists or any feminist movements to be taken the wrong way. Exhibitions created by “Her Noise” are different from the typical ones. They are messy, chaotic, and energetic because that’s what the work behind music looks like. You can see a lot of paint, pink, glitter, and shortly things that you wouldn’t associate with the gallery but more nursery. Anne said that she was very surprised at what turns the exhibition took, and instead of a minimalistic, classic space, they ended up with a very free and dynamic show, which represents the nature of the pieces. “Her Noise” definitely made an impact with their first exhibition as it was widely reviewed by the media and also as there was a huge crowd of people who visited, even though the show happened far from central London. The strength of “Her Noise” are not only the unknown artists taking part in the show but also the archive which is constantly developed and magnified. Interviews with artists naturally ended up being documentaries. It wasn’t planned at all but thanks to that they got a strong message.

Today instead of class on campus, we visited British Library Sound Archive. We took part in a talk guided by Tom Ruane about the history of sound formats and the British Library program called Save Our Sounds and Unlocking Our Sound Heritage. Both of these programs aimed to digitize as many physical recordings as possible to prevent them from getting ruined which will cause, the sound encrypted on them, to be lost forever. At the begging, Tom talked about the first sound recorders, and how it all began and showed us examples of what we were talking about such as Edison’s wax cylinders, Tinfoil Photograph, and Instantaneous Discs. It all started with the Phonautograph invented in 1860 by Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville. It transcribed sound waves as undulations or other deviations in a line traced on smoke-blackened paper or glass. In 1877 Thomas Edison invented Tinfoil Phonograph. In July, while developing his telephone transmitter, Edison conceived the idea of recording and playing back telephone messages. After experimenting with a telephone “diaphragm having an embossing point & held against paraffin paper moving rapidly,” he found that the sound “vibrations are indented nicely” and concluded, “there’s no doubt that I shall be able to store up & reproduce automatically at any future time the human voice perfectly.” Another one invented in 1896 was the Phonograph cylinder. these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engraved on the outside surface, which can be reproduced when they are played on a mechanical cylinder phonograph. At the same time, Emile Berliner introduced his Gramophone. The 20th century brought Lacquer discs also called acetates or instantaneous discs. Lacquer discs were used in a recording system that enabled instantaneous playback after recording. And lastly, we have a magnetic recording. Method of preserving sounds, pictures, and data in the form of electrical signals through the selective magnetization of portions of a magnetic material.

In the end, Robin showed us around the basement of Sound Archive where acetate discs and vinyl discs are dried, cleaned, and restored. Above is a picture of how the space looked. I am embarrassed to say that I have never really studied the history of sound formats or the beginnings of sound recordings. I was amazed to learn that Thomas Edison had his part in how sound is encrypted and how his invention influenced the next inventions in the sound world. I found this trip very instructive and fascinating.

Link to my playlist here: https://www.are.na/share/RIUFpMR

I had turbo tutorial today with Ingrid. She gave me a lot of sources I can get inspiration from or simply use in my audio paper. Therefore I changed drastically my playlist, first of all because the general topic of my piece has changed and secondly because sources that Ingrid suggested to me are exactly talking about aspects I am gonna focus on in my work. I was doing my research on female-artists in sound arts but I didn’t find any of the resources that Ingrid gave me and I think that if not for her I wouldn’t find them at all. Thought of it makes me really sad as it just proves how hard it is to find supporting materials and information for female-identifying sound artists from female-identifying sound artists. My updated playlist consist of:

1. Her Noise Archive: resource of collected materials investigating music and sound histories in relation to gender, bringing together wide network of women who use sound as a medium
2. Forbe’s interview on gender inequality in music industry
3. Rolling Stone’s interview on gender inequality in music industry, which features Desiree Perez( CEO of Roc Nation)
4. Sonic Cyberfeminism created by Annie Goh and Marie Thompson, which provide an opportunity to critically reflect upon cyber feminism and contribute to current activism, and debates concerning sound, gender and technology.
5. Quotes from book “Breast and Eggs” by Mieko Kawakami
6. Quotes from book “Kim JiYoung, Born 1982” by Cho Nam-Joo
7. Bechdel at LCC by Ingrid Plum, which seeks to bridge the gap in skills sharing for non binary, female, and trans students, and provide a safe space for discussion
8. Grapefruits magazine created by students of the master programme Klang and Realitat at the RSH Dusseldorf which focuses on women and people who identify as women, who have been affected by lack of visibility- historically and at present
9. song “Breakfast” by Dove Cameron

INTRO sound and introduction to my audio paper same as before just little changed for the purpose of new topic, which is gender inequality in sound arts and music industry. Second paragraph will be all about statistics, surveys on gender inequality with my thoughts in between + interview female artist that I know about this problem. Third paragraph is about what has to change in sounds arts/ music industry to create safe and equal space for women + interview with female artist about this question. Fourth paragraph is imagination/realization, which is developing my surrealistic idea of creating “realization” pill that would destroy sexism, objectification, discrimination and sexual harassment; followed by ASMR-like sound piece in the background. Lastly lullaby song that I have created and sang: “now dream, dream your dream little girl”.