George Bush<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Scitolopolotics<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
During
\nmy first semester I read about an acoustical phenomenon where when researchers
\ndivided up recorded speech so that each consonant and vowel sound was
\nseparated, and then played back the recorded speech with all of the parts in
\ncorrect order, but with each sound reversed, listeners were unable to detect
\nthe reversal. I decided that it
\nmight be interesting to write a piece that would make people aware of this phenomenon
\nby crossing the threshold of inaudible reversal and audible reversal. For my
\nrecorded speech, I decided to use the words of George W. Bush, because
\neverything he says is so very backwards.
\nI searched CNN.com for aiff files of Bush speaking and only found two
\ngood ones. One was him speaking about
\nthe ABM treaty, but my ex-wife was coincidentally working on a piece using the
\nsame piece of audio and didn’t want me to use it. Instead, I used a short speech that George Bush
\ngave on terrorism and destroying American culture. That semester, one of the students in MUSC 220 had used the
\nsame audio clip for a different sort of tape project. I had been thinking about the subtext of the speech since
\nhearing that project and about how to make Bush’s real message – his desire to
\ndestroy pop culture – clear. I
\nstarted by playing the audio file with no change, and then divided it into
\ngrains 0.025 seconds long. I
\nplayed those grains in order, but each grain was played backwards. I then doubled the grain size and
\nrepeated the process for several minutes until Bush’s speech became
\nindecipherable. At the same time,
\nI took much shorter Bush phrases, first form the text and then from other texts
\nwith similar themes and ran them through the same process. Because those clips were much shorter,
\nthey became indecipherable in much less time. These co-processes made the main process clearer and
\nhighlighted the sub-text of Bush’s speech. The speech was nominally about terrorism, but on repeated
\nlistening, it became clear that it was more about causing American culture to
\nshift rightward, to criticize Hollywood and to push the idea of individual
\nresponsibility instead of socialized responsibility. Because of the repeating of the speech, which was gradually
\nbreaking down, the friendly experiencer was listening carefully, grasping at
\nmeaning. The subtext was brought
\nto the surface in that way.<\/p>\n
The
\nsecond part of the piece uses this process but in reverse. I bought a book about lesbian
\nseparatist philosophy, Lesbian Philosophy: Explorations<\/i> by Jeffner Allen, at a bookstore in New
\nHaven. I then picked out four
\nphrases related to violence and terror and specifically picked to annoy my
\nideologically post-feminist vocal talent. The ideas expressed were as radical
\nas Bush’s but from the opposite ideological spectrum. I run the algorithm in
\nthe opposite direction, because I take the opposite view of the words. Allen also talks about violence,
\nterrorism and victim hood, but unlike Bush, everything she says is true and
\nreal. Her words are ultimately
\nempowering to her reader, giving her readers freedom instead of taking it
\naway. Her viewpoint is equally
\nextremist, but exists in reaction to the sort of evil that Bush proposes. Each
\nphrase went to it’s own channel, one of four used in the piece. The sound started completely backwards
\nand so was impossible to pick out meaning, but after a short while, the
\nshortest phrase began to be understandable. I was surprised the way it was easy to focus on one sound
\namong many as soon as words started to be decipherable.<\/p>\n
I
\nfound that the second movement made the piece much more bearable. Listening to George Bush talk about
\ndestroying culture for five minutes made me very tense, but the soothing voice
\nof Jessica Feldman reading about women uprising acted as an anecdote to Bush\u2019s
\nrhetoric. Also, it\u2019s very easy for
\noppositional political pieces to fall into negativity. Allen\u2019s words made the piece end on
\nhopeful note. \u201cTerror is negated
\nthrough the freedom of my body\u201d is the voice of sanity in opposition to
\nBush. We still know that destroying
\nour liberties is not the answer to fear.<\/p>\n
This
\npiece was first performed at the end of the Fall 2003 semester, but I was
\nrunning it on a different SuperCollider version than it was written for and so
\nit crashed between the two sections, due to a now fixed SuperCollider crash-bug
\nwith Buffers. I performed the
\npiece in its entirety for the first time at a house concert in the fall of
\n2004.<\/p>\n
This
\npiece was written with four-channel surround sound. In the first part, the main speech is sent out panned to the
\nmiddle, but the short, highlighted phrases are sent only to their own
\nspeaker. In the second part, every
\nphrase gets it’s own speaker.
\nHighlighted sounds and the final phrases get their own space this
\nway. Two channel mixes only using
\npanning were not successful.<\/p>\n
In
\nthe spring of 2005, I began experimenting with spatialization algorithms. I found that it was acceptable to mix
\nthe piece down to two channels using virtual locations for each of the four
\noriginal channels. I wrote a Class
\nLibrary to compute phase changes, delay and amplitude differences between the
\nvirtual locations and the actual, physical speakers. Using this created enough perception of space to compensate
\nfor not actually having all four speakers. I did this because I want to be able to play my pieces
\neasily and without extra hardware.
\nIf I can run all of my pieces using only a stereo speaker arrangement, I
\ncan use just the line out of my laptop and a very basic mixing board. This greatly simplifies setup and
\nincreases the number of venues with suitable equipment. It also makes it possible to create a
\nCD recording.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
State
\nof Disunion<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I
\nmade another piece with George Bush\u2019s voice in the spring of 2004. I took his weekly radio address from
\nright before the State of the Union address. Approximately half the speech was made of up lies about
\nIraq. The second half was lies
\nabout domestic issues. (Our economy
\nhas been turning around for so long now, it must be dizzy.) I started by playing the file straight
\nand then slowly added a sine-tone that was phase modulated with the same
\nfile. The sine was 480 Hz, a
\nmultiple of 60 Hz, the rate at which AC power oscillates in the United
\nStates. The second sound creeps up
\nslowly and being an octave of AC power makes it hard to hear at first. The friendly experiencer often confuses
\nthe sound for buzz from electric lights or other appliances nearby. Then, near the end of Bush’s war lies,
\nI fade out the straight sound file, leaving just the modulated version. At that point, explosive noises come
\nin. I use them mostly because I
\nthought that he kept talking about bombs, so I should include some bomb
\nsounds. Then I play phase
\nmodulated just ratios over him.
\nThe ratios are 17\/19, 19\/19, 21\/19, 23\/19, which is an otonal series
\nhigh up in a tuning lattice.<\/p>\n
The
\nresults I got out were loud and of a different character than I expected. There was massive peaking, but
\nSuperCollider uses floating point numbers for audio, not integers, so it didn’t
\nclip like digital distortion normally clips, say on DATs or CDs. I tried in vain to find the error, but
\ndecided I liked the sounds and left them as they were. A side effect of this is that it was
\ntricky to record the output straight to disk, since 16 bit linear aiff files
\nuse integers. Eventually, I
\ndiscovered a typo in the SynthDef and fixed it, but it didn’t sound as good
\nanymore, so I undid the repair.
\nThe peaking and distortion gives it it’s character and seems ironically
\nappropriate given the subject matter.<\/p>\n
I’m
\nnot sure what the piece is about really.
\nThe explosives are kind of heavy-handed and I’m not sure about
\nthem. But I don’t know what, if
\nanything, the other non-Bush sounds might mean. When I played this during my fall 2004 composition seminar, Alvin
\nLucier commented that political pieces run the risk of being heavy-handed.
\nPeople like this piece, though, so I’m keeping it.<\/p>\n
I
\nfirst played it at Open Mic Night at It\u2019s Only Natural Restaurant, where it was
\nenthusiastically received. Since
\nthen I\u2019ve played it at 21 Grand in Oakland California. It works well as a piece to bridge
\ntonal content to word content.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Further
\nBush Ideas<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As
\nI wrote my first Bush piece, the timbres of his voice began to fascinate me. His
\ninflections are almost musical.
\nWhile I disagree with nearly everything he says, he says it in a
\nbeautiful manner. Obviously, as he
\nwas born and raised in Connecticut everything about his speech patterns and
\nelocution has been learned in adulthood.
\nHe is very talented and must have a fantastic elocution coach. His voice has the musical timbres of
\nthe south and the drawl of Texas.
\nHis speechwriter’s careful word choices coupled with his pan-heartland
\naccent make him seem immediately trustworthy. <\/p>\n
I George Bush Scitolopolotics During my first semester I read about an acoustical phenomenon where when researchers divided up recorded speech so that each consonant and vowel sound was separated, and then played back the recorded speech with all of the parts in correct order, but with each sound reversed, listeners were unable to … Continue reading chapter 2 draft – George Bush<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1106"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3356,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1106\/revisions\/3356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.celesteh.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nkept on with Bush’s voice projects, including working on a tape piece with him
\nsaying "terrorist" over and over again, from different speaking
\nengagements. The inflections are
\namazing and I’d like to do something with them, and especially with the
\nphrase" in fact what the terrorists have done is caused to take an
\nassessment of what’s important" from my first Bush piece. Steve Reich\u2019s piece Different Trains<\/i> has violins playing the inflections of
\nthe vocal field recordings. Robert
\nAshley’s operas also make extensive use of inflection, replying on inflection
\nrather than using pitch much of the time.
\nI was thinking about how to do this, but there was another problem
\ncausing me to slow my efforts. I
\nwas hoping that Bush would be voted out of office in November, alas. This would have instantly made any Bush
\nvocal projects obsolete. Clinton
\nalso had a beautiful voice, but few people would currently care if I started
\nmanipulating him saying "I did not have an affair with that woman."
\nor anything else he said. Shortly
\nthereafter, I discovered Ann Coulter.
\nThis post is not Creative Commons. It is Copyright 2005 Celeste Hutchins. All Right Reserved.
\nTag: Celesteh<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"