Performed at home in South Liverpool and broadcast live on August 6th 2024 on WGXC 90.7FM’s Audio Buffet.
One important thing that emerged from the residency at the pervasive media studio was the fact that the whole system was important, the system was ‘the thing’. The ‘voice’ at the end of it was not ‘the thing’, just an expression of the system itself. So, the different elements that combined at that moment, the devices, sensors, bodies, networks, and speakers, became a body of sorts. With that in mind, I wanted the work to join into a larger system that allowed the voice to extend and multiply. I made a proposal to WGXC at Wave Farm in Accra New York – to do an hour-long live broadcast of the sounds of our home running through the first Vocifier pure data patch – and they accepted – giving me a slot on their Audio Buffet show.
I was still wrestling with the ridiculousness of suggesting that a voice could emerge from a non-human system, but was excited to discover Music and Metamorphosis in Graeco-Roman Thought by Pauline A. LeVen. It was great to read LeVen’s analysis of the role of musical metamorphosis in ancient texts, and how the shifting ontological states, between animal and human, were used as a way of challenging the rigid hierarchies of Graeco-Roman societies and posing or testing speculative alternatives. It provided a useful point of reassurance that I wasn’t on a fool’s errand, or maybe I was, but maybe the fool is useful?
Titled ‘Home Song #1’, the broadcast involved sensors attached to the fridge, router, a radiator pipe, and the washing machine, all running through the Vocifier pure data and across the network to WGXC’s live stream, then onto FM.
