#non-lingual

[hareki]

Tai hak Hu

Hai nan Mu.

Papi po,

Kuki şo,

Çoki poko!

Pul pul brakhama nam,

Bal bal bobo piçiku.

Popo piçiku, çikirt zibert.

[doranedwardsmajorproject]

Without words

Imagine a drawing of an apple. It symbolises an apple but is not an apple itself. It could provide information about its specific variety, but it could not communicate the general concept of apples. It points only to the object that it represents, as it is seen.  

In language acquisition, we begin by learning nouns to conceptually distinguish one thing from another which, according to Vigotsky (1962, 5 quoted in: Sacks, 1991, 49-50), enables the generalising of concepts into groups such as species. But, this process requires a “generalized reflection of reality” that leads to a “dyalectic leap” between sensation and thought. Vigotsky describes this process as “the essence of word meaning”. As the toning results for singing lyrics of well-known songs show, words, with their potential to trigger emotion, are referential and therefor allow thought to construct an abstract interior representation of reality where time, space, objects and subjects are manipulatable. One can, if they will, “turn the universe symbolically inside out” (Church, 1961, 94-95, quoted in: Sacks, 1991. 44).  Based on this description, it is safe to state, therefore, that language and thought has the potential to transport us far away from the present moment in our bodies and the world in time and space. But, even without language, the voice conveys significant emotional information in the content of its articulations (e.g. pitch, intonation, rhythm) which, in speech, are as important as the words that it carries (Frank et al, 2015,92-113). It is important to highlight that toning is not a method of communicating emotion to another person–similarly as meditation is not a technique designed to intellectually engage with emotion in an attempt to find a solution—and therefore shows that the embodied voice has other modalities.

[doranedwardsmajorproject]

Voice, feedback and sculpture - new direction

My initial proposal to create a film with interviews on compassion and a soundtrack I create with my voice through learning Gregorian chant has felt forced. I want my work to flow and accept the work I have done previously, allowing it to grow.

By continuing to explore audio feedback in line with my previous work What is Here and live improvised performance. The research and writing is still under way, but my dissertation uses chanting, ‘toning’, non-lingual vocal sounds to demonstrate the healing power of the voice when used to create vibration in the face bones, chest and stomach. It stimulates the energetic system, deactivates the emotional area of the brain and induces relaxation, improved blood pressure and connection in groups. The dissertation also takes its point of departure from the conceptual basis of language; a system of signs that brings one from a perceptual understanding of the world into a conceptual, multi-temporal, imaginary and ultimately dualistic experience of the world and ourselves. Whilst verbal language is important to us in many, many respects, it is also not direct experience and therefore leaves us just behind the fact. Oliver Sack’s quotes Joseph Church in Seeing Voices to demonstrate the difficulties in understanding oneself and the world for non-lingual congenitally deaf people in a world of verbal communication;

‘Language opens up new orientations and new possibilities for learning and for action, dominating and transforming pre-verbal experiences… Language is not just one function among many… but an all-pervasive characteristic of the individual such that he becomes a verbal organism (all of whose experiences and actions and conceptions are now altered in accordance with a verbalized or symbolic experience) […]

Language permits us to deal with things at distance, to act on them without physically handling them. First we can act on other people, or on objects through people… Second, we can manipulate symbols in ways impossible with the things they stand for, and to arrive at novel and even creative versions of reality… . We can verbally rearrange situations which in themselves would resist rearrangement… we can isolate features which in fact can not be isolated… we can juxtapose objects and events far separated in time and space… we can, if we will, turn the universe symbolically inside out.’

By using a contact mic and a surface transducer to resonate objects into feeding back, I will explore this perceptual, vibratory voice by way of creating metaphors with the materials used. The initial idea being to encase the transducer and contact mic inside non-firing clay to see how it might feedback through different stages of formation.

[doranedwardsmajorproject]

Metaphor (everything is poetry)

Drawn line is a trace of existence

Voice is a trace of breath

Breath is a wave with no beginning or end

Memory is a finger drawn across a frosted pane of glass

Language is a ghost of the first impression

‘Levy-Bruhl […] describes how the Tasmanians “had no words to represent abstract ideas … could not express qualities such as hard, soft, round, tall, short, etc. To signify hard they would say: like a stone; for tall, big legs; round, like a ball; like the moon; and so on, always combining their words with gestures, designed to bring what they are describing before the eyes of the person addressed” (Levy-Bruhl, 1966).’

(Levy Bruhl in O. Sacks, Seeing Voices. P. 50-1)

Using metaphor to describe the intersubjective connection and healing of the group toning setting allows for people who have not had this experience to relate what they see and hear to the world translucency of the paper connotes memory, fragility; marking the page records a moment; tracing the voice draws another line to water, or wind; Intermittent object feedback longingly and tenderly marks the connecting of two elements that form an infinite loop and sonically render the in-between.