Gediminas Urbonas, Nomeda Urboniene: Ruta Remake
Title:
- Ruta Remake
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Artist Statement:
Provoked by the notion of “the lack of women’s voices”, the Ruta Remake project works to map out relations concerning a politics of identity in Lithuania today. Ruta Remake unfolds as a search system that is suggested as the play between forms, ranging from the remainders of the ‘Homo Sovieticus’ through to the Modern Capitalistic Model.
Linguists, philosophers and music theorists join the Ruta Remake project to investigate the contemporary state of women’s voices. Through the shared recollections of media they build a pathway to navigate through a collection of samples that reflect social construction and metaphysical qualities, resulting in a ‘voice archive’.
Participants suggested a specific weaving pattern named Ruta (rue) that refers to a perennial plant. In Lithuania, this pattern was imbued with different meanings, to become an icon representing virginity and femininity. The Ruta pattern provides a system for sound notation, a shuttle for composing the voice threads of the archive, as lines of information and as routes, joined in patterns.
Ruta Remake employs an updated version of the Thereminvox, the TheraMiDi device, which allows a user’s hand gestures to mediate between sets of acoustic samples using two light-sensitive resistors linked through a MIDI interface. The hand’s movement within light casts shadows, and these register output and representation. In this way the TheraM/D/ based navigation turns the user into a performer, charting a path through the sound archive of voices in real time and weaving patterns to compose a sound fabric.
