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NoiseSpeech, a Noise of Living Bodies:
Towards Attali's 'Composition'
Roger T.
Dean (bio)
University of Canberra
roger.dean@canberra.edu.au
Abstract
This
article concerns the development of NoiseSpeech, a category
of sonic noise in which the impact (though not the verbal meaning)
of speech, is apparent. NoiseSpeech can be made by computer-mediated
processing of sounds, verbal and non-verbal, such that they
have some of the acoustic properties of speech. Cognitively,
these sounds often seem to be derived from speech, and notably,
may elicit some of its emotive and individual features. They
align with the underground genre of noise and laptop music,
which is continuous with some aspects of electronica and dance.
I argue that NoiseSpeech may be close to a fulfilment of Jacques
Attali's almost utopian concept of 'Composition', a kind of
music which largely evades commodification and 'announces' the
spectra of future social interactions: it invents its language
as well as its message. NoiseSpeech is possibly closer to Composition
than Atttali's originally postulated examples of Punk and Free
jazz. The article also presents multiple voices in a fictocritical
array of noisy speakers.
Our
science has always desired to abstract, and castrate meaning, forgetting
that life is full of noise and that death alone is silent (Attali, 1985:
3).
the possibility of
a superstructure to foreshadow new social formations in a prophetic
and annunciatory way. The argument of Noise is that music, has
precisely this vocation; (Fredric Jameson, introduction to Attali,
1985: xi).
I believe that the
use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a
music produced through electrical instruments. Whereas in the past, the
point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will
be, in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds
(Cage, 1961: quoting from his views of 1937).
Focuses on your voiceCancels
noiseSpeech recognitionEasy to use (advert on the internet, 2004-05-30,
for a Telex M-560 USB Digital Microphone).
Introduction
Noise is silent, since undifferentiated. Can we sculpt
information out of silence? And from the body? Speech is not silent; so it
cannot be noise. Noise cannot be commodified, since it is unproductive
and uncommunicative. But does noise evolve as we listen to it? As we tune
it? As we direct it in space? Does music emerge in the sound? Can we hybridise
Noise and Speech?
Noise is not only the confusion of communication, the
error of measurement, the hiding of signals. It is the macrocosm of all soundscapes.
Voicescapes are a simultaneous speaking of the sounds of the world and the
brain. So the voice must sometimes speak noise.
Noise is sound in which
all or a wide span of frequencies of oscillation are contained in fairly similar
abundance be it pink or white. As Roads indicated (Roads, 1996: 'colored
noise.. is a noise band centered around the ... frequency of the oscillator'
p.337). Speech is not only the sounding of language, but also the hollowing
of the frequency spectra of noise, to highlight formants, peaks in the abundance
(energy) spectrum of the sound with respect to frequency. I will discuss how
to compose and harness features of speech to entrain expressive noise: NoiseSpeech.
And how its meanings still risk subordination or suborning in the power structures
of culture, but are not profitable, nor capital-productive.
Counterintuitively,
in his book 'Noise', Jacques Attali speaks mainly of music, 'the organization
of noise' (Attali, 1985: 4). But music is, rather, the organization
of sound. Noise is both undifferentiated sound, and yet a specialised aspect
of sound, a constructor of sonic plausibility, and an ambivalent component
of recording(s). Noise is also a restriction on the transmission of thought,
or on 'channelization', the term Attali sometimes conflates with the operation
of information networks as well as their data flows. Noise is an important
genre in contemporary sound art in which music is tunnelled out of noise-like
sounds mainly by digital filtering and transformation processes; NoiseSpeech
is proposed as a new genre within noise music. Attali probably did not anticipate
that there would be such a genre as noise music. I argue that he would have
happily placed it amongst the small number of musical styles (including free
jazz and punk of the 1960s-1970s) he recognises as capable of evading commodification
and groups optimistically under his forward looking use of the term 'Composition'.
Attalicization 1
Music, exploring the
totality of sound matter, has today followed this its path to the end, to
the point of the suicide of form (Attali, 1985: 83).
instruments no longer
serve to produce the desired sound forms, conceived in thought before written
down, but to monitor unexpected forms (Attali, 1985: 115).
the
repetitive machine has produced silence, the centralized political control
of speech, and, more generally, noise (Attali, 1985: 122).
Noise as separation, protection, distraction
Noise separates us
from our perception of the stimulus, it immunises us. It cocoons; we
cease to be apprehensive. We are no longer the target. Noise trembles; we
relax. It distracts us from the focus of sleep: from visual sonic synaesthetic
torpor. Can a bird sing with a clarinet? Or does the bird merely dissemble,
separated from a teleological moment by an undeciphered, almost amorphous
sonic outburst, which might as well have been black as pink?
The European Community
has begun intensive noise mapping of its cities, so far most elaborated in
colorific presentations of Paris' sound waves (Butler, 2004).
Presentations, or Representations? Predictions? Noise enunciates the world.
Music announces a world of ideas. The abstraction of computer models
of sound distribution belies the capacity for annunciative disturbance. The
inner courtyards of Paris breathe their own air, relatively free from the
pressures of sonic decibels. But the inner courtyards of the sleeper or the
writer, apartment bound, do not always escape the waves of stressful pressure.
The inner courtyards of the cell, or the ear, compartment bound, do not always
escape the waves of stressful pressure. But noise confirms and supports life.
Attalicization 2
Everywhere, power reduces
the noise made by others and adds sound prevention to its arsenal. 'for
the protection of the public peace' (Attali, 1985: 122, 123).
Today, it is as if,
a background noise were increasingly necessary to give people a sense of
security (Attali, 1985: 3).
A noise
is a resonance that interferes with the audition of a message in the process
of emission (Attali, 1985: 26).
Noise as stimulation
The arousal of noise,
which is itself life. Perception leads to cognition, leads to identification,
personification, organization; maintains the organism. Why are we lost outside
the city? Is it just confidence? Or is it lack of neural firing, input stimulation,
however heterogeneous? The calm of noise. The Art of Noise. Perhaps we cannot
process, analyse, comprehend, if we lack basal stimulus, muscle tone, brain
tone, ear tone(s), speech-tone(s)...
An important issue in
the study of both communication and cognition: does a largely invariant and
undifferentiated noise background aid or impede communication? There is little
doubt that such a flow consumes neural power, even though that consumption
is gradually attenuated as the background becomes increasingly familiar, and
increasingly gives up its hidden secrets of specificity, its less than obvious
differentiations. But might the noise flow also ensure a level of attention
that facilitates the acquisition of other stimuli and messages? Kagan's children
watching flower stickers on loudspeakers in order to be persuaded to listen
to and hear their consonant sounds (Zentner & Kagan, 1996);
the noisy roar of the football crowd, the poise and excitement of the players
...
This question may have
particular importance in auditory display of time-varying data sets: the auditor
may require a basal level of attention to hear the subtle variants within
a mass of sound, purporting to make the data (or its derivatives) accessible.
This may require noise.
Attalicization 3
With music is born power
and its opposite: subversion (Attali, 1985: 6)
The game of music thus
resembles the game of power: monopolize the right to violence; provoke anxiety
and then provide a feeling of security; provoke disorder and then propose
order; create a problem in order to solve it (Attali, 1985: 28).
theoretical
music accepts noise and uncontrolled violence (Attali, 1985: 125).
Noise as Representation: Sonification
Thunder, lightning,
fire, earthquake, tremor, street, body these all entrain noise. Does noise
represent, sound signify, music narrate and direct? What are the signifiers?
Are the entrainments entamed by the body politic?
How does a professional
access quickly the information in a mass of data representing seismic exploration
of a tract of the earth's surface? Or the catastrophic real-time data of regulated
international financial transactions? Or the life-threatening data concerning
ongoing impacts of environment on aeroplanes? There is modest evidence that
sonic representation of these data (known as sonification) may be more rapidly
and sometimes more fully comprehended than visual representation (Kramer,
1994). Further interrogation of the nature and utility of sonic representations
is necessary, but the opportunity to tame sound into submissive information
channels is upon us. The differentiation of noise in space and frequency may
provide rapid access to remote data and their immediate or futuristic implications.
In agreement with Attali, the only product(ion) in this process which might
turn out to be non-commodifiable will be the sonic display technology, not
the composer, nor the performer, nor the source information.
Attalicization 4
Listening to music is
listening to all noise, realizing that its appropriation and control is
a reflection of power, that it is essentially political (Attali, 1985: 6).
a single code threatens
to dominate music. When music swings over to the network of repetition,
excluding man and his body, music ceases to be a catharsis; it no longer
constructs differences. It is trapped in identity and will dissolve into
noise (Attali, 1985: 45, italics
in original).
Music
escapes from musicians. their role is only to guide the unpredictable unfolding
of sound production, not to combine foreseeable sounds originating from stable
instruments. [The composer] ..becomes the organizer ('program-designer') of
a fluid work, creating its own signification through its history. One produces
what technology makes possible, instead of creating the technology for what
one wishes to produce (Attali, 1985: 115).
Noise as substance and substrate
Imagining noise,
entering noise, penetrating noise, exiting from it. What do we hear?
Noise is hardly ever constant, unless in a recording studio. How does a ripple
come to the surface, are there stones? What consumes noise: do the streets,
buildings, the bricks, respond? What digests noise: do the skin, face, feet,
and ears, respond? Do they transform, are they transformed? Or does the world
evolve every noise, emerging itself renewed and changed? Who or what composes?
The noise artist faces
the computer and the space, and perhaps, happily, some others' bodies also.
Noise is not often the substance of monetary gain; the composer is no longer
even a domestic employee (Attali, 1985: 15-18). The artist is
the sonic environment, perceived by whoever wishes to perceive, accessed further
by the few.
What is the noise composer-performer-improviser
doing? At an operational level, usually driving and controlling a computational
algorithm which generates and processes sound, sometimes in a cumulative manner,
though often quite monodically (generating only one stream of sound). The
sound pressure is frequently high, the frequencies ultra low and ultra high,
the tympanum stretched. Ear plugs are commonly available. Filtering even before
perception!
What algorithms are used?
Sound generation code, sound filtering code, sound file recording code, sound
file re-presentation code. In the latter, the recently recorded (or previously
stored) sound file is re-played, misplayed, misplaced, represented. Its internal
structure (and usually its order) is changed abruptly and non-linearly, before
sounding. It may be merged, mixed, challenged, transformed, through the impact
of another recorded sound file, or incoming sound stream, or even incoming
data indicating features of the environment. What is the temperature?
Are people moving how
often how fast are they also making noise is it speech is it applause is it
undifferentiated response what is needed to entrain their presence if not
attention and what will maintain the social ecology of the situation long
enough for the composer-performer to complete the process they choose or discover?
Again, what algorithms
are used? Regardless of programming platform (for example MAX/MSP, Reason,
GRM Tools, AudioMulch, Supercollider, and on Mac, PC or Linux), a common strategy
is that of looping (repetition). But the loops are coopted into transformation,
rather than becoming subordinated into Attali's monotony of repetition. Most
recently, polyphony of process and spatialisation of the resultant strands
have become important, in part because commercially accessible to the contemporary
jongleur who has become a capital-free sound-artist.
What discovery? The sound
artist can focus on the gradual transformation of a sound world which was
already familiar territory, finding and temporarily fixing on new surfaces,
new interfaces (as for example with our LowHz performing format, recording
of Ng and Dean on cd-r with (Dean, 2003)). Or they may start
avowedly with nothing, and generate the first sounds at leisure as a result
of environmental inputs, catching it for further enlargement. Starting with
noise as a major if not sole component of the sound field is a common ploy.
The composer-performer can then dig, with a large spade, the crude algorithms
they have constructed, until some stone takes their fancy, differentiating
itself from the smaller earth particles. Or they can recombine the noise with
other sound sources, previously available to them or newly captured, to see
whether the interaction is productive. What do they seek? They often 'Set
Sail for the Sun' (as in the improvised 'intuitive' piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen
of that name), beach tunnel ground head and perhaps only they notice when
it arrives and that they can transiently emboss it on the sound space. Or
they may use the iterative cycle of process-choose-process-choose, in the
hope that something is emergent and it always is (Dean, 2003; H. Smith
& Dean, 1997).
For the artist, a new
disorder is imposed on the starting disorder, or a new order emerges from
it. Computational processes such as evolutionary and genetic algorithms, neural
nets, and a-life (artificial life, (Whitelaw, 2004)) share with
the sound discoverer the process of selection pressure: no sound is innocent,
no changes are neutral, and some are preferred and thrive, while others are
undesired and shrivel. The problem, as in a-life visual art, is the inefficiency
of a purely computational evolutionary process, presumably due to the narrow
range of selection pressures which can currently be brought to bear within
the computer, in comparison with the density and diversity (unpredictability)
of selection pressure (and the long time frame) of 'real' biology. The composer-performer
can be much more brutal with the bruits, so that direction is achieved, and
is perceptible to the auditors. The human biological process supervenes over
the computational noise emerges as selected sound as sonification of the input
pressures as sonification of the composer-performer. Composition in Attali's
sense, has been achieved by improvisation. Information has appeared
within the noise, and the background stimulation may aid its perception and
cognition.
Attalicization 5
With noise is born disorder
and its opposite: the world (Attali, 1985: 6).
When money first appeared,
music was inscribed in usage; afterwards, the commodity entraps, produces,
exchanges, circulates, and censors it. Music is then no longer an affirmation
of existence, it becomes valorized (Attali,
1985: 36).
the
specific remuneration of the composer has largely blocked the control of music
by capital; it has protected creativity and even today allows
the relations of power between musicians and financiers to be reversed. (Attali,
1985: 40).
Music
is a foretoken of evolution on the basis of behavior
in the human world (Attali, 1985: 136).
Towards NoiseSpeech:
A new form of Composition
She spoke, but he
heard only noise, just vaguely aware that she was talking. How did he know
at all? Did she hope to conquer noise? Was she unaware her speech was not
linguistically intelligible? Noise overcame the communication line of her
speech; but speech remained detectable. What was the role of the computer?
Later, the computer
spoke; it was not the virtual electronic voice of 'Victoria', but noise. Noise
spoke: in NoiseSpeech.
If one accepts that
noise may be useful or even necessary for the successful impact of sounds
(and 'noise' prefaces the attack of many classical instrumental sounds), then
. One possibility is to focus on noise itself, as substance or substrate.
But another is to hybridise noise with other more differentiated, even explicit,
sounds. We have developed techniques for establishing differentials within
sounds which give the impression, rightly or wrongly, that they are derived
from speech. Since one can recognise such derivations, or apparent derivations,
it is likely that this cognitive step influences the appreciation of the sounds,
and perhaps even their ultimate affects. If so, NoiseSpeech would be one of
the latest examples of Composition, in Attali's sense; earlier examples being
post-minimal music, free jazz, which he discussed, and the broader field of
expressive noise itself.
NoiseSpeech is a neologism,
Google providing at the time of writing only 4 returns to this search term
(with or without capitals), three being to our work, and one providing the
third (commercial) quotation at the head of this article. In contrast, searching
for 'noise speech' (two separate words), provides more than 890,000 returns,
mostly concerning the two separate phenomena. Speechnoise returns only one
hit, the interesting Joglars website (www.cla.umn.edu/joglars), on which one
can find Radio Caterpillar, and (for example) EUY (1998) a 'Babelian glossapoetic
electromagnetic'. This concerns hybridising speech sounds with other sounds,
rather than what I focus on in this article. ISI's Web of Knowledge (since
1992, and including external collections, returns nothing for either term
or 'concept').
Wolfe has compared the
acoustic features of music and speech signals, arguing that they show 'complementary
coding' (Wolfe, 2002, 2003). For example, the pitch and rhythmic components
of music are categorised, notated and open to precision; those of speech are
not, and variability is common, rather than precision. Conversely, plosive
and sustained phonemes are implicitly or explicitly notated and may be categorised,
whereas articulation and components or instrumental timbre are not. Plosives
constitute varying formants, which are not widely used in music; consonants
involve categorised timbre components (which are hence notated), whereas it
is not common for transient spectral details of timbre to be categorised or
notated in instrumental music. Some of these distinctions are more tenuous
in computer music, a fact which gives encouragement to the Compositional
and cultural endeavour we are discussing here.
Evidence from cognitive
psychology is limited in addressing the question : 'what kinds of sound seem
like speech' while not necessarily being overtly verbal? The classic paper
is that of Remez ((Remez, 1981), reviewed (Remez, Rubin, Berns, Pardo, &
Lang, 1994)) which shows that three formants are needed for a signal to be
recognized as speech like. Using sine wave 'speech', it was shown that the
formants need to be within the frequency range of 250-3000Hz, and that instructions
to participants could enhance identification of the speech-like quality. This
has been argued as evidence of the engagement of a unique 'speech mode' of
cognition. It remains under discussion whether speech or vocalisation is 'privileged'
in this way; brain magnetic resonance imaging does not reveal areas specifically
engaged by speech (e.g. (Joanisse & Gati, 2003)).
A considerable body
of work has been expended on both speech synthesis and speech recognition,
which can be described only briefly. For example, a suite of software for
speech synthesis has been developed at IRCAM, Paris, and phase vocoders are
commonly used as voice modifiers (analogue and digital). One influence on
such work has been the modelling of the vocal tract as a series of filters,
taking account of the complex vocal techniques of singers such as Tuvans;
it may be important that larger numbers of filters are used in speech synthesis,
whose frequency spacing relates to that of the cochlear membrane of the ear.
Miranda and others have
evolved software for extracting prosodic components from speech, and these
have also been used as compositional bases (Miranda, 1998, 2001, 2004). Others
have studied speech/noise chimera (like the hybrids discussed above), in which
both components retained integrity, but the impact of each is affected by
the other. Conversely, automated speech recognition (within sound files)
by computers, depends on a large number of features: for example an effective
method using around 15 features of the sound signal has been described (Scheirer
& Slaney, 1997). The concept of NoiseSpeech which we have described above
is distinct from any of these approaches. The cultural capital developed in
NoiseSpeech has so far resisted extensive commodification.
I will summarise some
of the technologies which have allowed us to generate NoiseSpeech in real-time
improvisation, and hence also as pre-recorded material and composition. In
the beginning, she spoke, but he heard only noise, the noise of talking.
Such conversion of speech into noise can be achieved when a speaker is detected
by a microphone, whose signal is transmitted to another compartment, another
physical space, and rather than being simply sounded, is taken into a digital
instrument, triggering or generating a complex sound whose envelope is a direct
reflection of the speech, but which is not talk. During a continuous speech,
the processed sound quite rapidly takes on the impression of a narration,
and hence of speech.
More generally and flexibly,
we have found there are several categories of mechanism for the production
of NoiseSpeech. One may commence with a recording of speech. This can then
be processed (live or in a recording context), so that phonemes or subphonemes
remain detectable, but no words are. However, this is no closer to undifferentiated
noise than is a recording of a composed language, known only to the speaker.
Further processing can remove completely the detectable phoneme components,
yet leave formants, and envelope cues, which suggest speech.
Conversely, one may
commence with a recorded sound file or live sound stream which has nothing
to do with speech, or commence even with a noise stream. Several approaches
seem to provide NoiseSpeech from such materials. Cross-over high pass filtering
of speech sounds can remove the detectable words, yet leave the impression
of speech (compare filters at 1, 3, 5, and 7kHz, where once 3kHz is reached
the speech is no longer intelligible as words, but remains speech-like). The
importance of high frequency components of speech sounds is also indicated
by cognitive studies which show that they assist the for location of individual
speech streams amongst many (as is needed when one listens to an individual
in the midst of a mass of others in a social environment). There are thus
two different functions of the high frequency components of speech: to convey
a speechlike impression regardless of whether there are detectable words,
and to assist location of individual speaking voices, and hence the identification
of the words uttered.
Convolving speech or
filtered speech with noise can also create the impression that the resulting
sound derives from speech, even when words are absent. Phase Vocoding, with
appropriate parameters of time stretching and frequency/partial distribution,
is also successful, as one would expect from its common use in muzak and other
sound worlds, and hence its familiarity and association with speech and vocalisation.
Similarly, frequency filtering so as to superimpose specific speech formants
is powerful, achieving apparent success even with pure noise sources (no speech
sound component included).
Formants
to be used may be identified from vocal sounds, by spectral analysis
(for example using the software Audiosculpt, or the fiddle~ object
in MSP). It is interesting that formants vary very much between
different speakers, genders, and between vowels and consonants,
between speech and vocalisation: different formant structures
give different speech (or vocal) impressions. A Fast Fourier Transform
followed by its applying its inverse for resynthesis using the
same or a different sound source can be an effective way of achieving
such formant superimposition. Envelope transformation is a third.
Some very simple MSP sound performance patches we have written
which are basic implementations of these processes are shown in
Fig. 1 and 2 (click here to listen to Speak
NoiseSpeech as a .wav sound file). In performance,
we use more elaborate versions (my ensemble austraLYSIS, and particularly
its format LowHz, have been active in the noise genre since 2000
(Dean, 2003), and developing NoiseSpeech since 2003; see also
www.australysis.com).

Fig.1. NoiseSpeech1.
Click the image to see a larger version. An MSP (Max Signal Processing)
patch for making NoiseSpeech. A speech sound file, chosen by the
'open' command, or by default that named 'isthatyou' (supplied
with the MSP programming platform), is processed in either of
two ways. Left Hand side: the file is sfplay~ ed, into a fast
Fourier transform (pfft~) crossover filter. The frequency of crossover
can be chosen by the performer, and the relative volumes of the
sound components below and above that crossover can be set. The
gate~ objects determine whether the output of either component
(below/above) pass through the IO object to the dac (digital to
audio converter) for sounding. Right Hand side: sfplay~ can be
convolved with a noise~ source. Some of the information described
in the patch is from the MSP tutorial documents.

Fig. 2 NoiseSpeechffb2.
Click the image to see a larger version. An MSP patch for bandpass
filtering a sound source. In this case, noise is passed through
an fast Fourier bank (ffb) of 3 filters, whose parameters are
set by frequencies, breadths of frequency, and gains, chosen from
parameters defined by Miranda for a female voice speaking the
'a' in the word car. Some of the information described in the
patch is from the MSP tutorial documents.
Is it plausible that
Speech characteristics can emerge from complex noise (or other more differentiated
sounds), with such simplicity? As mentioned, earlier evidence suggests that
a 'vocal' sound can indeed be constructed by means of 3 or more formants,
spread appropriately across the frequency spectrum. Our introspective experience
is consistent with this, even in more naturalistic musical environments than
have been tested empirically. As Wolfe argues (Wolfe, 2003) 'The ability to
discern a set of harmonic frequency components as an entity, and to track
simultaneous changes in that set, is an ability to discern one voice or cry
from a background sound. It is also much of the ability to follow a melody.'
This points to the ecological value of such capacities: for example, they
permit identification of an individual organism, which may be valuable in
societies before and beyond the human. Clearly, considerable cognitive research
remains to be done in this respect, but the outlook is promising.
This work is not without
its creative context, of course. An ecological perspective on sound has emerged
from the soundworks and ideas of Schafer, Truax, Westerkamp and many others,
while there are major contributions to the use of digital manipulation of
speech for music generation by pioneers such as Dodge and Lansky. We have
also developed a technique of voicescape production for use in sound technodramas
(for radio and cd), in which an 'ecological' (c.f. (Keller, 2000)) and spatial
component is superimposed on voices, in controlled ways, which may be realistic
or anti-realistic (H. A. Smith & Dean, 2003).
Attalicization
6
the origin of music
should not
be sought in linguistic communication (Attali, 1985: 25).
the value of a sound,
like that of a phoneme, is determined by its relations with other sounds,
it is, a relation embedded in a specific culture (Attali, 1985: 25).
music could be lived
as composition, in which it would be performed for the musician's
own enjoyment, as self-communication, with no other goal than his own pleasure,
as something fundamentally outside all communication, as self-transcendence,
a solitary, egotistical, non-commercial act(Attali, 1985: 32).
Only
the network of composition is order-producing by nature, for in the absence
of any a priori code music creates an order for the observer (Attali, 1985:
33).
composition
necessitates the destruction of all codes (Attali, 1985: 45).
we create
our own relation with the world and try to tie other people into the meaning
we thus create. That is what composing is. inventing the message at the same
time as the language (Attali, 1985: 134).
Noise as annunciation,
prediction
Noise spoke, it enunciated.
NoiseSpeech raved of abstractions outside the terrain of spoken language.
It entrained the attention of its auditors. It then announced new paths across
the surface, and predicted subcultures beneath. The structure of the world
was changed, as new sounds emerged and enveloped us. We could now speak also
through noise. We make possible the technology. The technology does not make
us.
The implication that
NoiseSpeech can be a functional sub-genre within improvised noise performance
is exciting. The opportunities of the resultant Composition are obvious, and
the possibility that they in part derive from the recognition of 'attempted'
speech is also apparent. Making sense becomes occasionally replaced by making
NoiseSpeech, which takes sound through noise into music, and which predicts
new spectra, new improvisation, Composition. Noise sonifies Speech; the listener
predicts meaning. This music has cultural control, and it is not readily subordinated
into a commercial transaction, so it may retain that control for some time.
Attalicization
7
['theoretical music']
exists, imposes itself, without seeking to meet listeners' demands. it has
no market or financial base other than patronage, public or private {Attali,
1985 #1023: 116, 117; addition to text shown in brackets}.
The only possible challenge
to repetitive power is the conquest of the right to make noise, in other
words, to create one's own code and work, without advertising its goal in
advance; that is, the right to compose one's life (Attali, 1985: 132).
[Composition
is] to exchange the noises of bodies, to hear the noises of others in exchange
for one's own, to create, in common, the code within which communication will
take place {Attali, 1985 #1023: 143; addition to text shown in brackets}.
Acknowledgements: An
earlier version of the ideas in sections 6 and 7 was presented at the International
Conference on Music and Gesture, University of East Anglia, August 2003. The
valuable advice and discussion of Dr Kate Stevens, MARCS Auditory Labs, University
of Western Sydney, and Dr Anne Brewster, School of English, University of
New South Wales, is much appreciated.
Note: Because of restrictions
with HTML coding, elisions have been made in some of the quotations from Attali,
where words or phrases have been omitted.
References
Attali,
J. (1985). Noise: The Political Economy of Music (translated by B. Massumi). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Butler,
D. (2004). Sound and Vision. Nature, 427,
480-481.
Cage,
J. (1961). Silence. Middleton: Wesleyan
University Press.
Dean,
R. T. (2003). Hyperimprovisation: Computer Interactive Sound Improvisation;
with CD-Rom. Madison, WI: A-R Editions.
Joanisse,
M. F., & Gati, J. S. (2003). Overlapping neural regions for processing
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