Scanner interview.
by Alessandro Ludovico
<Do you think audio devices constantly connected to the net would be as intriguing as the webcams?
In a sense yes, but then again isn't it just as curious sometimes to just listen to your own neighbours through the window? I wonder who really attends to watching these webcasts, do they only do it in case they catch the glimpse of flesh, sex?
The audiospace you create is really 'physical', 'cause it involves the voice, one of the well recognized sign of the human presence. Do you work to render it as much physical as you can, or your goal is to make the voice the most abstract?
As the years have passed so my ideas about voices and the use of sound has evolved. Earlier on I would use the voices openly and bluntly almost to draw attention to the brutal physicality. Recently I have used them in more abstracted manner, processing them more and using them more as a texure, in fact such that they have become a backdrop at times to the use of my own voice in the work. So I have not left the voice behind, merely displaced it for the time being.
If you can make an object talk, which would be of your choice and why?
What a strange question - well, I often wonder how speakers remember things, the sounds they have heard, and would love to hear a speaker describe its history. Think of all the terrible sounds your poor speakers have had to endure over the years as you grew up!
Do you feel eavesdropped sometimes? When?
I think we all share this feeling at times. I realise the more public ones work becomes though the more self conscious one becomes. People you meet might already have an idea of who you are or what you do, this is an odd feeling to adapt to. I do my utmost to guard my personal space.
After 'Surface Noise', the recent performance on the double decker bus touring the tourist London, what's your next creative effort you care so much of?
I do seem to work on some grandscale quite experimental projects- for the moment I am working on London Calling, a show in the Metropolitan Museum in Korea, soundtracking the show for a royal visit by the Queen of England in April, then I am working on ideas towards a permanent sound installation in the Science Museum in London starting year 2000.
Tell me an audio art project you'd be enthusiastic to be funded for.
I am still attemping to work on a piece whereby I have access to all the undelivered mail in a city and install speakers inside post boxes to read this lost mail. it is the against the law in this country to tamper with post so I could not complete this project, but with the right resources I am sure it would be possible.
Do you think the computer speech synthesizer software could be a musical instrument of the future?
Quite possibly. remember people would never had expected computers to be producing music in the past, nor half the instrumentation we use.
What could be the interaction between literature and music in the digital domain?
I wonder...ummm. we are already experiencing the new threshold of musical exploration in the digital age and how samplers how totally changed our perception of creativity, yet the word still remains on the page and seems destined to, perhaps it needs to. I have friends who use experimental typefaces and I wonder whether this is how the text will adapt to technology, the ability to mutate and live on the page.
What you think about the generative music? Is it realistic to think it'll evolve so fast to generate soon endless melodies enjoyable by anyone?
I have yet to be impressed by any generative music, that is not to say I do not appreciate the concept, just that the final sounds are always a rather sugary disappointment. also I would question the validity of producing such software - does it imply that we all wish to become musicians, that we need this opportunity. I wonder whether if someone produced software that wrote a detective novel, a romance, a science fiction book, how people would respond? I am really not sure.
Sampling conversations might imply to changing the context of the phrases, and so their meaning. Do you care about that?
In a sense yes. that is what a lot of visual art has played with, this deconstructing an image, taking it into a new context, making you see or listen with sound in a new way, to slightly alter the sense of normality one would presume. I like to play with narrative and leave more work up to the listener. recently I have worked on several BBC radio commissions which have followed these ideas - Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice last year and currently Midsummer Night's Dream.
Would you enjoy to create artistic answer machine's outgoing messages?
Actually I still find too much pleasure in hearing other peoples messages and how they create their space.
If you could substitute the survaillance cameras placed in London, what you'd like to install there, instead?
Tiny speakers that play the sounds of other places, displacing the listener subtlely. so a quiet street could have the sound of water passing through, the countryside the sound of train passing and so on.
Could you tell me anything about your current work with Laurie Anderson? How is it evolving?
We worked on a performance piece in london 18 months ago with 100 violinists in London and I intend to work with her again to record a string quartet she has written for a new label I set up called Sulphur Inc.
January, 1999.