ba-b&l
Intersculpt:Ohio01
Archetype Gallery
Firefly Building, Dayton, Ohio
16 November, 2001 - 31 January, 2002.
This site-specific sound installation utilises digital recordings from texts about the development of language in ancient Mesopotamia, which have then been sliced into phonemes and layered in order to create a real time mix- resulting in a kind of a capella techno music. The sound is presented via custom designed/built speakers that do not deny the "objectness" of the technology used in the delivery of the work. This work fuzzes the boundaries between art, language, industrial design and music and was created using 3-dimensional computer files, stereolithography, urethane reproductions, speaker/amplifier equipment, original sound design and 3 CD players.
"Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
Genesis XI, 7.
"Computers speak machine language, it's written in ones and zeroes - binary code. At the lowest level, all computers are programmed with strings of ones and zeroes. When you program in machine language, you are controlling the computer at its brainstem, the root of its existence. It's the tongue of Eden."
Neal Stephenson in "Snow Crash".