Sonic Presences: A performative approach to resonant-sounding beings
My singing practice aims to explore how the vocal apparatus can be treated as a producer of modular sound designs in real-time. The focus is on the technical aspects of voice and sound, as well as the production of sounds that are not assigned to the humanoid vocal capacity while developing a hybrid work with technology. Movement between quasi-humanoid, animalistic and robotic vocal gestures. Morphing between vocal capabilities of parametric and synthetic sound production throughout the body. Moving singing and voicing as a process of research into non-human and post-materialist voices, acoustic ecology and post-apocalyptic destruction. Transitions between electronic and organic bodies, exploration of intensity production based on spectral and materialist performance practice.
I intend to connect the human and the machine. Always starting from the body and its all-too-human voice, I perform live electronics to create multiple vocal polyphonies, materially expanding the bodily sphere. The voice is a channeler of somatic, psychosocial and spiritual symptoms, as well as their creator and reformulator. I reformulate human and biological capacities, common sense, myths and traditions using various technologies and technical processes.
25.9.2024, 19:00, online (click for the Zoom link)
AGUSTIN GENOUD
I am a performer, musician and academic working in the fields of contemporary voice and posthumanism. I build systems and design processes that extend and transform vocal production. Through machinic and animalistic gestures, I produce extended vocal techniques that modulate and disrupt the sounds humanly assigned to the vocal tract. I facilitate collective spaces such as workshops and practices on processes of dehumanisation of the voice and deterritorialisation of voice and sound.
I have been commissioned with opera pieces for the New Opera Festival (#UmweltKapital - 2020), the Queer Art Festival (Ópera Periférica - 2021), and an hour-long radio art piece for the Radio Art Residency Weimar (2023).
I was heard and gave workshops at Documenta 15 (Kassel), Bauhaus University (Weimar), MusicMakersHacklab @CTM Festival (Berlin), Festival Ruido (Bs. As.), Wavefarm (New York), Tsonami sound art festival (Valparaíso), PROA 21 (Bs. As. ), Sonandes sound art biennial (La Paz), Terén pole performativního umění (Brno), Studio für Elektroakustische Musik (Weimar), Razzmattazz (Barcelona), Búnker (Torino), International Festival of Experimental Music (Sao Paulo), Sound Art Center (Bs. As.), CCK (Bs. As.), Teatro Colón (Bs. As.), among others.
I teach and research at the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (New Media Department) & Universidad Tres de Febrero (Sound Art Specialisation). I've given workshops, lectures and presentations at the Free University (Berlin), Bauhaus University (Weimar), Studio for Electroacoustic Music (Weimar), Metabody Symposium (Santiago de Chile).
Secondary sources
Technical
Almaghrabi, S. A., Clark, S. R., & Baumert, M. (2023). Bio-acoustic features of depression: A review. Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, 85, 105020.
Chiba, T., & Kajiyama, M. (1941). The Vowel: Its Nature and Structure. Tokyo: Tokyo-Kaiseikan.
Dudley, H. (1938). System for the artificial production of vocal or other sounds (US Patent 2339465). Bell Telephone Labor, Inc.
Dudley, H. (1940). The carrier nature of speech. Bell System Technical Journal.
Dudley, H., Riesz, R. R., & Watkins, S. S. (1939). A synthetic speaker. Journal of the Franklin Institute, 227(6), 739-764.
Fant, G. (1971). Acoustic theory of speech production: with calculations based on X-ray studies of Russian articulations (No. 2). Walter de Gruyter.
Helmholtz, H. V. (1895). On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (3rd ed.). Longmans, Green.
Max Kohl AG. (1909-11). Price list No. 50, Vols. II and III. Physical Apparatus. p. 459. Vibration microscopes. Sound Analysis and synthesis.
Pantalony, D. (2009). Hermann von Helmholtz and the Sensations of Tone. In Altered Sensations (pp. 19-36). Springer, Dordrecht.
Artistic, conceptual
Edgerton, M. E. (2015). The 21st-century voice: contemporary and traditional extra-normal voice. Scarecrow Press.
Isherwood, N. (2019). The Techniques of Singing/Die Techniken des Gesangs. Bärenreiter-Verlag.
Jarman-Ivens, F. (2011). Queer voices: Technologies, vocalities, and the musical flaw. Springer.
Kim-Cohen, S. (2013). Against Ambience. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
LaBelle, B. (2014). Lexicon of the mouth: Poetics and politics of voice and the oral imaginary. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Oliveros, P. (2002). Quantum listening: From practice to theory (to practice practice). Culture and Humanity in the New Millennium: The Future of Human Values, 27-41.
Oliveros, P. (2005). Deep listening: A composer's sound practice. IUniverse.
Prado, M. (n.d.). Geotraumatic evacuation of the voice.
Wishart, T. (1996). On sonic art (Vol. 12). Psychology Press.
On the mnemonic territorialisation of birds through the voice
Dalziell, A. H., & Magrath, R. D. (2012). Fooling the experts: accurate vocal mimicry in the song of the superb lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae. Animal Behaviour, 83(6), 1401-1410.
Kaplan, G. (1999). Song Structure and Function of Mimicry in the Australian Magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen): Compared to Lyrebird (Menura ssp.). International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 12(4).