Reading Reading is a long term artistic research
project that is through sound investigating the relations and differences
between the temporalities of reading and speaking a text. The research attempts
to investigate the experience of reading as an interface between our interior
mental state and the exterior world, asking whether what separates the two is a
temporal, flexible and virtual gap, as opposed to a fixed corporal/material border.
In this sense, the project addresses the activity of reading a text as similar
to inhabiting a place. The text is a blueprint of immaterial architecture,
outlined by the reader's gaze and inhabited by the reader's mind. The pace of
reading temporalises the printed words, while the voice materializes them.
Through reading (and speaking), the text is simultaneously being materialized
and mentally inhabited.
13. 4.–28. 5. 2023, Cukrarna, Ljubljana
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Reading Speech
Performance
How much time does it take to
think something?
How much time does it take to say
something?
How much time does it take to
write something?
How much time does it take to
hear something?”
The project Reading Speech is conceived as
a performative sound event where the performer reads written text from a
computer screen. While doing so, an eye tracker is tracing the reader’s gaze. The
software applies the duration that the eye spends on a word to the duration in
which the sound of this entire spoken word is being played back. After
concluding reading, the manipulated sound of the spoken words is played back
accordingly to the recorded eye movement.
Contrary to the controlled and loud pronunciation
of read words, this situation uncovers a cognitive and semi-conscious process
of reading as an invisible and nonlinear process of following and sense-making
that is in continuous state of becoming. Sonic embodiment and public
presentation of this transient process acts as an unconscious and unwritten
sonic composition. This composition makes audible and accommodates research
into reading speech as a non-performative activity that in its specific
temporality and non-linearity corrodes the meaning of the text, while it
articulates its hidden musicality.
Software development
: Darien Brito, Giuliano Anzani
Co-producer: Zavod Projekt
ATOL
Supported by Creative Industries Fund
NL/Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, The Nederlands
15.6.2018, EBU meeting, Radio Slovenia, NUK, Ljubljana
Review:
Uroš Smasek:
Od kovača do knapa in Brati branje, Ars RTV, 20.6.2018
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Reading Voice Multimedia installation
Reading
Voice is an installation that explores indescribable zone in between a
written word as an object in space and a spoken word as an event in time
throught the act of reading.
Using eye-tracking technology and self
developed software, the installation connects the elements of voice, looking,
written words and meaning by sonifying the gaze of the reader’s eye.
This experimental setting accommodates a
situation that brings to the fore complex temporal relations between seeing,
listening, written word, meaning, inner and external voices, that are unfolding
while the activity of reading. Activating an instance of the pre-view of a view as a temporal
interval that emerges in between sensing and making sense.
Software
development
: Darien Brito, Giuliano AnzaniCo-producer: Zavod Projekt ATOL
Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL/Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve
Industrie, The Niderlands and Mondriaan Fund, The Nederlands
26.–28.11.2018, osmo/za, Ljubljana08.–29.02.2020, gallery Errant Sound, Berlin, Germany
https://vimeo.com/396151482________________________________________________________________________________________
Reading Vito Acconci
Software, video and sound
How can one unlearn something one has forgotten learning?
Reading Vito Acconci is based on the artist’s encounter with Acconci’s text [READ THIS WORD THEN READ THIS WORD]. In
the video, the text is projected and gradually drawn over by an
animated trace of the captured artist’s gaze. The artist counts the
letters aloud in his native tongue. The animation and the sound are the
record of the cognitive activity, bringing to the fore spatial,
temporal and kinetic relations between the moving eyes and the graphic
territories of the letters. Simultaneously, the video interferes with
the field of operations taking place between the projected text and the
visitor’s gaze and inner voice. The text is broken into a string of
consecutive letters and the temporalities of looking, seeing, perceiving
and saying are differentiated. Through these strategies, the video
becomes an instrument to unlearn underlying yet forgotten rules of the
internalized and sub-cognitive activity of reading that are semantically
laid bare in Acconci’s text.
Software
development
: Darien BritoCo-producer: Zavod Projekt ATOL
Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL/Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve
Industrie, The Nederlands and Mondriaan Fund, The Nederlands
27.–28.12.2019, Španski borci, Ljubljana
08.–29.02.2020, gallery Errant Sound, Berlin, Germany
13. 4.–28. 5. 2023, Cukrarna, Ljubljana
https://vimeo.com/410242282________________________________________________________________________________________
Reading (as) Bodies
Multimedia installation
Reading (as) Bodies is a spatial intervention, responsive sound installation and performative setting emphasizing the notion of written text as a graphic territory and the act of reading as a bodily movement. Using tracing technology and digital sound synthesis, the installation accommodates a situation where visitors bodily inhabit the graphic representation and sonic manifestation of written text simultaneously through the processes of magnification, movement and slowing down. This situation disrupts the practice of reading and unsettles the established relations between body, text, voice, movement, space and hearing, setting the ground for an interpretative community of bodies to emerge.
Software
development
: Darien Brito, Giuliano AnzaniCo-producer: Zavod Projekt ATOL
Supported by Creative Industries Fund NL/Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve
Industrie, The Nederlands and Mondriaan Fund, The Nederlands
11. 9. 2020, Public performance with MAZE, V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam
17.–30. 9. 2021, Cirkulacija 2, Ljubljana
13. 4.–28. 5. 2023, Cukrarna, Ljubljana
https://vimeo.com/467306322
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Reading Short Sentences by Gertrude Stein
By Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Online presenttion of the project
Text
Short Sentences by
Gertrude Stein, sound, video.
Online presentation of the project
Reading Short Sentences by Gertrude Stein presents some elements of
the work. The installation is an interpretation of the written play
Short Sentences (1932) by Gertrude
Stein. The play consists of 561 mostly unrelated
short sentences. Each is spoken by a different character. The author interprets
the written play so that he allocates each sentence of the play to a unique
reader that he records. He calls this practice distributed reading. In addition
to the sound recordings of the sentences there is a video of the written
sentences that are spoken by the chorus, and the sound recording of the names
of all the characters, read by a single voice.
Online presentation includes two videos. The first video
consists of the sound recordings of the first hundred names, accompanied by the
written opening stage instruction. The second video consists of the sound
recordings of the first hundred sentences read by hundred different voices. In
between the sound recordings written chorus sentences appear in between the
sound recordings.
Distributed reading
The practice of mediated and
distributed reading involves substituting singular silent reader of the text
with plurality of unrelated, isolated and scattered partial readers. Together
they form a plurality of reading voices that transpose Stein’s written text on
the sonic realm. This brings attention to the inaccessible aural qualities of
the inner reading voice, and how it is affected when encountering plurality of
characters in the play. Do we hear the sonic quality of own inner
reading voice? When reading a play with various characters, do the characters
modify the inner reading voice, or, does the inner reading voice unify the
plurality of characters it is speaking for and lending them the selfhood of the
reader? Is this inner voice singular or are there many? Does the possible
plurality of inner voices indicate internally fragmented and plural
subjectivity?
The play as a pre-echo of the
contemporary lived reality
The final installation sonically
embodies the fragmented and dispersed nature of (overheard) voices, which evoke
situations of strangers passing by, continuous mobility, decentralization,
isolation within a crowd, discontinuity, banality and continuity of
distractions. By doing so the work acts as an imaginary re-connection between
Stein’s play and the contemporary lived reality it might be capturing. A
reality that was not entirely there yet when the play was written, but which is
intensely present in the contemporary everyday life - on a busy urban
street, in public transport, at an airport, or, zapping through TV channels,
browsing the Internet, scanning through the radio frequencies or on the social
media platforms.
Reading Short
Sentences by Gertrude Stein is a part of artistic research project
Reading Reading.
Names: Sher Doruff
In Order of Appearance:
Zala Česnik, Karmen Keržar, Katja Gabrijelčič, Špela Škulj, Hotimir Knific, Gal
Škrjanec Skaberne, Kai Ottenheim, Taja Rajterič, Andreja Rauch Podzavirnik,
Jaka Šimenc, Omar Ismaila, Nina Smerkol, Špela Trošt, Leon Curk, Luka
Zagoričnik, Domen Pal, Tomo Per, Primoż Čučnik, Enej Grom, Tao G. Vrhovec
Sambolec, Olja Simčič Jerele, Alejandro Ramirez, Maxim Tyminko, Martijn
Tellinga, Sonja Vulpes, Tomaž Grom, Laurie Cuitmans, Maja Šučur, Koen
Nutters, Yannis Kyriakides, Aria Trošt Bargalini, Katarina Schwarzbartl, Becket
MWN, Ana Pepelink, Arnisa Zeqo, Mirko Lazović, Bennett Hogg, Boris Baltschun,
Irena Tomažin, Doug Barrett, Lore
Gablier, Gabriel Paiuk, Agata Stoinska, Mario Assef, Andrea Knezović,
Bojan Fajfrić, Maia Elisabeth Sørensen, Milena Bonilla, Alena Alexandrova,
Vincent Verhoef, Jonas Kocher, Anne LaBerge, Huib Haye van der Werf, Klaas van
Gorkum, Rune Peitersen, Edwin Zwakman, Elena Biserna, Nadim Abbas, Riccardo
Massari Spiritini, Barbara Lüneburg, Marko Ciciliani, Matteo Casarin, Mika
Cimolini, Natalia Domingez Rangel, Nathan Michelle, Sylbee Kim, Tjaša
Podgornik, Hannah Cheney, Guy Koeningsteen, Heman Chong, Rumiko Hagiwara, John
Grzinić, Ana Nikitović, Uroš Veber, Stefan Thut, Marlies van Hak, Nicolas
Pelzer, Raviv Ganchrow, Panayotis Leftheris, Doris Prlić, Anže Sekelj, Dacho,
Robert Pravda, Mint Park, Taku Mizutta Lipitt - DJ Sniff, Sander Breure, Iratxe
Jaio, Anna Orlikowska, Lucas Norer, Sascha Pohle, Tina Dolinšek, Christina Li, Maria Lalou, Xander
Kaskens, Jessye Luk, Magdalen Wong, David Drum.
Produced by:
Sploh Institute and Projekt Atol Institute, Ljubljana SLovenia
Project supported
by:
Ministry
of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana, Mondriaan Fund – NL.
21.–22. 1. 2021, internet platform
17.–30. 9. 2021, osmo/za, Ljubljana
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Unvoiced Territories (2021)
Mobile application launch and intervention in public space
Unvoiced
Territories is a sonic situation in outdoor public spaces and their
virtual shadows that outlines a zone for experimental wandering,
lingering, reading, contemplating, surveillance, mapping, movement,
listening, sounding and voice. To inhabit and activate the work, visit
the geographical location of the work and download the mobile app
Unvoiced Territories.
The app will be published on 30 . 9 . 2021.
The
first edition of the project takes place in central Ljubljana,
Slovenia, between three bridges, Tivoli park, the train station and
Križanke.
Text that only appears on the app is digitally inscribed
onto public space accompanied by mediated sound to establish an
invisible spatial setting in the city. Self-developed software maps the
text onto the ground and also to prerecorded voices who read it – such
that the letters on the map correspond to their speech sounds. Visitors
can traverse the text written “on” the city, as their tracked phones
emit the phonemes according to their movements over the text.
Intervention:
30. 9 .2021 at 18:00
Gathering place: in front of Moderna Galerija, Cankarjeva cesta 15, Ljubljana.
Intervention will move through the city and will last for approximately 1 hour.
Application Unvoiced Territories is published and available online (GooglePlay/AppStore) on 30.9.2021.
Unvoiced
Territories is a part of artistic research project Reading Reading
(2017-). The project investigates the experience of reading as an
interface between our interior mental state and the exterior world,
asking whether what separates the two is a temporal, flexible and
virtual gap, as opposed to a fixed corporal/material border.
Credits:
Unvoiced Territories (2021)
Project by Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Software development:
TeaTracks (Jan T.v. Falkenstein)
Audio DSP based on work by Jushua Parmenter
Built with JUCE, OpenStreetMaps, Mapbox and Flutter
Voices:
Rada
Kovačević, Brigita Gračner, Špela Trošt, Luke Thomas Dunne, Erika
Johnson Debeljak, Dalibor Novaković , Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec.
Produced by:
Sploh Institute and Projekt Atol Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Project supported by:
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, City of Ljubljana and Mondriaan Fund, Netherlands
Video:
https://vimeo.com/715964234
30. 9. 2021, public space, Ljubljana
