(1:15 min SD preview)
map of 5.1 surround panning
sketch of the black box in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark
Lucy is a about an experience of the body
and
self-consciousness through the voice. The video portrays a character in
a black void singing. The voice escapes the body (the image) and
travels in the actual space (soundsystem) surrounding the audience. The
numerous layers of voices accumulate; floating in the air creating a
musical composition while the image illuminates and fades with the
placement and volume of the sound. I recorded the voices very close up,
to capture the physicality of it or what Roland Barthes would call the
“grain of the voice”. The voice fills the space and enfolds the
audience while the image is distant. The installation space is a black
box the only light shining coming from the projector and the projected
image. When the viewer enters the completely dark space, he looses the
sense of his body and in a way becomes disembodied. I’m
fascinated with the idea of the disembodied voice. I experience singing
as a direct expression, without a filtering process, where it feels
almost as if the voice comes directly from the self, through the body
as an instrument. I imagine that the voice represents the “self” or is
an extension of it. The voice as an invisible being; removed from
the body and projected without its source could be associated to
ethereal elements like the soul. In film the disembodied voice can be
used as a tool to represent an all-seeing being. According to Michel
Chion (1947), the “acousmetre” in film is an unseen mystery character
that is represented only by the voice. The word acousmatic is an old
word; it’s meaning being “sound that is heard without its cause or
source being seen”1 and was adopted by Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) to
designate this form of listening. The origin of the word acousmatic
traces back to ancient Greece and refers to the followers of Pythagoras
called the acousmatiques. His pupils had to “spend five years in
silence listening to their master speak behind a curtain, at the end of
which they could look at him and were full members of the sect.”2
Because the “acousmetre” is not bound to a body and is represented by
the voice, it adopts the same powers as sound, being omnipresent,
invisible, and knows and sees all due to its association with the eye
of the camera. When its body is revealed and the voice is seen coming from the
mouth, the “acousmetre” loses its powers and
becomes a mortal as it has been assigned a body. This is what Chion
calls the “de-acousmatization” and for example is exactly what happens
in the scene from The Wizard of OZ (1939), when it turns out that the
wizard is really just a man hiding behind a curtain. In the work
LUCY I explore the idea of the “acousmetre” where the portrayed
character desperately struggles to control and embody the voice or
where perhaps it is the voice that is seeking the body.
1 Chion. The
voice in cinema, p.18
2 ibid.
p. 19
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