“Being In Nothingness: The Power of Suggestion” by Paul DeMarinis

Image from YouTube

Title:

Being In Nothingness: The Power of Suggestion

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Exhibiting Artist(s):

Paul DeMarinis

Symposium:

TISEA: Third International Symposium on Electronic Art

Medium:

Series of computer-synthesised songs performed live with Power Glove controllers, touch tablets and touch-sensitive guitars

Artist Statement:

“God is perhaps not so much a region beyond knowledge as something prior to the sentences we speak”
-Michel Foucault

In many of my recent songs for synthesised voice I have treated speech melodies as musical material. By a process of computer analysis and re-synthesis I extract the melodic line of spoken language, involve it in a variety of compositional transformations, and apply the result to digital musical instruments. Along the way, the original voice becomes more or less disembodied, but retains much of the original spirit and meaning. With the computer analysis model I can alter voicing — changing the speech into drones or whispers, articulation rate — speeding or slowing the speech independent of pitch, as well as a variety of other effects (many of which sound unfamiliar but agree with the kinematics of the vocal tract). As I compose, I listen and I think. I choose vocal sources that interest me, particularly the voices of evangelists, hypnotists and salesmen because of their great confidence and enthusiasm.