Case Studies
Each of the artworks discussed in the following section contributes to the making and receiving of sound art and/or film in its own particular way and provides an example of the technically mediated human body, where organic and technical agents interact. The corporeal practice from which they emerged finds its counterpart in a mode of reception that prioritizes sensory experience over signification. Rather than being stable and static, these works are in constant flux and thus testify to a dynamic concept of materiality, informed by becoming rather than being.
Speleological Audiographies
Henri Chopin, whose career as a sound poet spanned more than six decades, was one of a handful of avant-garde poets, musicians and artists who were intrigued by the creative opportunities arising from the recent commercial availability of tape recorders in the second half of the twentieth century. Chopin's method of engaging with the body through vocalization and sounds stemming from the inside of his body significantly shifted the focus in some circles of the avant-garde away from language, representation, and signification, giving rise to a heightened emphasis on sonic materiality. Chopin is known primarily for his poésie sonore (sound poetry). He recorded and manipulated not only vocal sounds but also the sounds of the bodily organs and cavities that precede articulation. Some of his pieces, which operate with electro-acoustically amplified bodily sounds, have titles as programmatic as Le corps (1966, The Body), Mes bronches (1968, My Bronchi), Le bruit du sang (1969, The Noise of Blood), or La digestion (1974, Digestion).
For Chopin, the tape recorder was pivotal in all stages of production, from primary audio creation (taping his bodily sounds) to playing the audio track in his live performances. Recorded sounds can be amplified, slowed down, and sped up, and have echoes added when edited into sound collages. Austrian poet and performance artist Christian Ide Hintze’s conversation with Chopin reveals that the artist appreciated certain imperfections in his technical equipment. Chopin clearly preferred old, worn-out, second-hand tape recorders to newer, more professional ones. Thanks to his tinkering skills, he discovered straightforward means to achieve extraordinary solutions to compositional problems. One example is the production of his multi-layered pieces. To prevent recordings from being deleted when recording over pre-recorded tape, he developed an unpretentious but efficient method: With the help of matchsticks, he blocked the machine’s erase head.[5]
Besides being intended to be experienced through recordings, Chopin’s compositions were also meant for live performances, which were delivered in a distinctive manner. During his performances, Chopin’s physical body engaged in a dialogue with his taped recordings, which functioned as an audiographic score.[6] He would play back a previously-taped piece while accompanying it live with expressive gestures and vocalizations.[7] According to literature and film scholar Kiene Brillenburg Wurth, “Chopin’s performances render [the] impression of a body listening to itself visible” (Brillenburg Wurth 2013: 209). In his body-related pieces, Chopin’s preoccupation was the usually inaudible soundscape of the inner body, including the sounds of his cavities such as the stomach, lungs, gullet, and larynx. This is why Brillenburg Wurth calls him a “speleologist” (Brillenburg Wurth 2013: 194), a term typically understood as someone who explores caves. Chopin went to great lengths – and physical discomfort – to access his inner body. As he confided to Ide Hintze, in the process of making Mes bronches, he affixed two microphones to his chest, four to the lower edge of his rib cage, and one within his bronchial tubes, a process that he remembered as being “insanely painful.” Despite his small frame, the power of his breathing warranted its recording, as the results revealed. After listening to the sound of his taped and amplified bronchi, he was delighted and chose to leave it as it was and to avoid any manipulation. Chopin utilized three distinct microphone types for the recording of Mes bronches: Standard microphones, contact microphones that transduce audio vibrations through physical contact with solid objects (in this case, his rib cage), and miniaturized microphones capable of being swallowed and withdrawn via a thread.[8]
The nearly six-minute-long Mes bronches commences with a deep, resonant sound that evokes the distant rumble of thunder and the rough scraping of an object being dragged over a washboard. As it progresses, the sound gradually becomes louder, more energetic, and higher in pitch, culminating in a crescendo in the middle section, where a faint whistling can also be discerned. In contrast to the dominating tonal continuum, occasional percussive hammering and tapping sounds occur irregularly with some reverberation. Eventually, the intensity fades away, leading to a gradual conclusion. In addition, the tape recorder contributes its own noise by bringing in slight feedback, clipping, and tape hiss.[9]
Although “undoctored,” the recorded sounds are far from representing bronchial tube sounds (at least as far as one can tell without medical expertise). This heavily textured soundscape presents a broad spectrum of sounds, from low to high frequencies. Inaccessible to a referential “reading,” they call forth haptic listening. What these sounds do to the artist’s body is described by social scientist Cédric Jamet: “Under scrutiny of both microphone and tape, the body is liberated through its sounds and presented as a fleeing, plural, rhythmic entity that infinitely recreates itself and whose complexity cannot be accounted for by fixed identities and shapes” (Jamet 2009: 136).
Chopin’s poésie sonore drew heavily from his traumatic experience of World War II, particularly the atrocities he witnessed during the war’s final stages. As a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, Chopin was compelled to endure a dreadful “death march.” As per Frédéric Acquaviva, quoted by Brillenburg Wurth, it was during this fateful journey that Chopin listened to the sounds of his fellow marchers – sounds that would forever shape his artistic work (Brillenburg Wurth 2013: 198). Chopin’s exploration of raw, concrete sounds mined from his own body, which he considered a complex and never-ending sound factory (Chopin 1967: n.p.), was a way of criticizing the dominance of language in our culture. In particular, the “Word” was his enemy. It signifies almost everything Chopin opposes, as becomes clear in a manifesto from 1967:
The Word has created profit, it has justified work, it has made obligatory the confusion of occupation (to be doing something), it has permitted life to lie. The Word has become incarnate in the Vatican, on the rostrums of Peking, at the Elysee, and even if, often, it creates the inaccurate SIGNIFICATION, which signifies differently for each of us unless one accepts and obeys, if, often, it imposes multiple points of view which never adhere to the life of a single person and which one accepts by default, in what way can it be useful to us I answer: in no way. (Chopin 1967: n.p.)
Another concept Chopin seems to distrust is singular and exclusive authorship. As literary critic Zoë Skoulding pointed out, Chopin’s expression during performances was “one of astonishment, as if the sound does not come from him but from cosmic forces that threaten to overwhelm him, or as if he has seen a ghost” (Skoulding 2020: 138). This description suggests that Chopin believed in a sort of co-authorship with – if not indebtedness to – the sonic material that arose from the creative act. Watching the artist at work gives one an idea about the ethical issues inherent in his performances, which display a posthumanist impetus avant la lettre, that challenge the centrality of the human subject.
Chopin’s insistence on using obsolete, rudimentary equipment – and his occasional rough handling of his recording apparatus, such as poking his fingers in and out of the tape path or otherwise “molesting” the machine – exemplifies a sound aesthetic rooted in the spirit of bricolage. Larry Wendt, proponent of the use of "low-tech" and "repurposed" electronics, notes that this rawness can “be seen as a rejection of the limits which producing a pure sound puts on sound poetry” (Wendt 1985: 17). It can also be understood as an artist’s fundamental relationship with his materials.