1

sanat ve teknoloji festivali art and technology festival

tr

Uzun hazrlklardan ve abalardan sonra bir d gerekleiyor. Trkiyenin ilk Sanat ve Teknoloji Festivalini byk beklentiler ve heyecanla gerekletiriyoruz. Beklentilerimiz byk, nk stanbulda yaayan ve alan gen sanatlara yeni bir olanaklar penceresi amann ve stanbullu sanat izleyicilerini dnya sanat gndemine yaknlatrmann tam zaman olduuna inanyoruz. Amacmz, dnyada son otuz senedir gelien Sanat ve Teknoloji alannda yaratm, dei toku ve ibirlikleri iin stanbulda ticari olmayan uluslararas bir pazar yaratmak. amber07 Sanat ve Teknoloji Festivali, yllk olarak dzenlenmesi planlanan amberFestivalin ilki. AmberFestival BS, Beden-lemsel Sanatlar Dernei tarafndan dzenleniyor. BS, 2007de Sanat ve Teknoloji alannda aratrma, yaratm ve retim srelerinin gelimesinde etkin rol almak amacyla kurulmu bir dernektir. AmberFestival BSin bu amaca ynelik etkinliklerinden sadece birisi. Deerli katk ve destekleriyle amber07yi gerekletirmemize olanak veren tm birey ve kurumlara sonsuz teekkr ederiz. Ekmel Ertan / Sanat Ynetmeni

en

amberFestival is a dream which is coming true after long preparations and efforts. We are presenting the first Art and Technology Festival in Istanbul and Turkey with high expectations and excitement. We have expectations because we believe it is high time to open a new window of opportunity to young artists who live and work in Istanbul and to bring the audience of Istanbul closer to the global art scene. This oportunity is about creating a non-commercial market for creations, exchange and collaborations in the Art and Technology field, which has developed in the last thirty years. amber07 is the first issue of amberFestival which is planned to be an annual Art and Technology Festival in stanbul. AmberFestival is organized by BIS Body-Process Arts Association, founded in February 2007 to take an active role in developing research and creative production activities in the field of Art and Technology in Turkey. AmberFestival is part of this objective but not the only one. We would like to thank all individuals and institutions which with their invaluable support made amber07 possible. Ekmel Ertan / Artistic Director

tr

festival temas.ses ve tutunma

Her trl veriyi etkin ve hzl biimde depolayan, ileyen ve aktaran dijital teknolojiler, giderek hayatmzn nemli bir boyutu ve belirleyeni haline geliyor. Dijital teknolojilerin yaratt aralarla rahat ve mutlu oluyor, bu aralar iyi bir hayat tanmlamakta kullanyoruz. Ancak ayn zamanda dijital teknolojilerin yaratt ve araclk ettii risklerle de yayoruz. Global finans, reklam ve elence dnyalarnda, salk sistemlerinde, silah endstrisinde veya cep telefonu, bilgisayar gibi gndelik aralarda kullanlan dijital teknolojiler, her birimizi ve hepimizi deiken biimlerde etkiliyor, iletiim yollarmz, konuma, grme, duyma, hatta yazma ve hissetme alkanlklarmz yeniden tanmlyor. Bireylerin ve topluluklarn, kurumlarn, hatta devletlerin kendilerini duyurabilmeleri, bir sese sahip olabilmeleri, gitgide teknoloji kullanmna, teknolojik bir varlk oluturabilmelerine bal hale geliyor. Bugnn dnyasnda ilemsel teknolojiler araclyla birer bilgi, iaret, rakam, grnt veya ses olarak hep varz ve her yerdeyiz. Bu artlar altnda bir topluluun, btnn znesi olarak syleyecek bir szmz, hayatlarmz ve geleceimiz iin nemli olaylar ve alanlarda fark yaratc bir varlk, bir ses oluturabileceimizi verili kabul ediyoruz. Oysa halimizi, duruumuzu, tutunuumuzu somutlatracak bir ses oluturabilmek verili bir olgu olmaktan ok, nemli bir soru olarak karmzda duruyor. amber07nin temas, teknolojinin arasallat bu zamanda ses ve tutunma olarak belirlendi. Dijital teknolojinin gittike artan biimde insan ve sistem ilikilerine araclk ettii dnyamzda sese ve onun sanatsal, toplumsal, kiisel veya bedensel kisvelerine ne oluyor? Sanat, teknoloji ve kltr, ayr kavramlar olmaktan kp aralarndaki snrlar dnp iie geerken, bireyler ve topluluklar olarak nasl bir sese sahip oluyoruz? amber07, beden ve ilemsellik balamnda sanat araclyla, bu ve benzeri sorular sormay ve cevaplar aramay amalyor.

festival theme.voice and survival en

Digital technologies that store, process and send all types of data efficiently and quickly are becoming crucial elements of our lives. We are happy and comfortable thanks to the tools that employ such technologies as the latter are fast becoming the determinants and signs of a good life. However, we are simultaneously living through the risks that are created and mediated by digital technologies, which are used in circuits of global finance, advertising, entertainment, health and weapons systems as well as in everyday tools such as cell phones and computers. Such technologies affect each and all of us. They articulate and redefine our ways of communication, our speech, writing, visual and aural practices and even our sensory capabilities. Increasingly for individuals and groups, institutions and even states, the capability to be heard, to have a legitimate voice has come to depend on the use of digital technologies. We all feel the need to institute a technological presence. In todays world, we are always already present as data, sign, number, image or voice thanks to the generative capacities of digital technology. Yet, as the subject of a collectivity, we all too readily assume that we are capable of producing a voice, and hence a worthwhile presence in the scenes and spheres that matter to our lives and to our future. Rather than being a given fact; the capability to produce a voice that will embody our plight, our stance in art, thought, love or politics has become a crucial question that we all face. In light of the above, amber07 takes up the theme of Voice and Survival in a world where digital technology has become instrumentalized to generate the mundane as well as the sublime. What happens to Voice, in its artistic, personal, social or physical/bodily incarnations as digital technology increasingly mediates human and systems interrelationships? What kind of Voice do we adapt to survive as individuals and societies in and through contemporary technology as the boundaries between Art and Technology transform. amber07 aims to pose these and similar questions and seek possible answers.

9
tr
9

etkileimli yerletirmeler. en interactive installations

christine sugrue francesco monico jakob leben & robertina sebjanic mariela nestora & kostas moshos martin hesselmeier & karin lingnau tanja perisic petra dubach & mario van horrik janez jansa ayegl dalg eda kaban burkaan grgn ekmel ertan burak arkan

10

hassas snrlar tr .delicate boundaries en

christine sugrue ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Hassas Snrlar insan dokunuunun bilgisayar ekrannn yaratt engeli at bir etkileimli yerletirme. Bedeni bir deiim arac olarak kullanrken birbirine yabanc sistemler arasndaki ince snrlar ve bunlar amann ne demek olduunu inceliyor. Gerek boyutta animasyonlar iinde bulunduklar sanal kutudan kp bilgisayar ekranna dokunan elin derisine geiyor ve bedenlerin dijital hayatlar iin bir alan haline geldii hayali bir dnya yaratyor. Delicate Boundaries is an interactive installation where human touch can dissolve the barrier of the computer screen. Using the body as a means of exchange, the system explores the subtle boundaries that exist between foreign systems and what it might mean to cross them. Lifelike digital animations swarm out of their virtual confinement onto the skin of a hand or arm when it makes contact with a computer screen creating an imaginative world where our bodies are a landscape for digital life to explore.

11

tr

TAFKAV. en TAFKAV

francesco monico ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

TAFKAV (Aka Hermes@Nature) bio-output elektronik mzik reten bir etkileimli yerletirme, sanat-bilim gdml bir makale, ya da kulak tkalaryla okunabilecek bir ders kitab. TAFKAV belirli zneler (bitkiler) ve insanlar arasnda meydana gelen iletiimin iirsel yorumunun sistematikletirilmesi olarak tanmlanabilir. Yorum dngs dinamik bir ilikiyi anlatr ve btnn anlalmasnn onu oluturan paralara referans verilerek (tersi de geerlidir) mmkn olabileceini, bunun ise bir tutunma yolu olarak doayla yeni bir iliki kurmak iin gerekli olduunu ileri srer. TAFKAV (aka Hermes@Nature) is at once an interactive installation that produces as bio-output electronic music, a scientific art driven paper and a text book that can be used with earplugs. TAFKAV may be described as the systematic development of a poetic interpretation of communication as text flowing between particular subjects, plants and humans. The hermeneutic circle describes a process of understanding a dynamic relationship and refers to the idea that ones understanding of the whole is established by reference to the constituent parts and vice versa for a new relationship with nature as survival in our contemporary era.

12

jakob leben & robertina sebjanic ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

.pufi

en

pufi tr

Pufi, bilgisayar paralarnn balantlar ve heykel iskeletleri gibi bamsz paralar ieren etkileimli bir sesli-heykeldir. Pufiler izleyiciyle evrelerine verdikleri sonik tepkiler araclyla etkileir; izleyicilerin hareketlerini ve varln elektronik sensrler araclyla alglar ve buna cevap verir. Pufiler insan-robot ilikisinin doas, zellikle de robotlarn grsel formunun bu ilikiye etkisi zerine bir aratrma platformudur. Buradaki ana tema, robotlarn makine gibi grlmekten kp gerek bir dieri olarak grlmeye baland noktay bulmaktr. Robot hangi zelliklere sahip olmaldr ki bir insanla etkileiminde sorumluluk, taciz, sevgi, nefret gibi duygular kurulabilsin? Pufi is an audio-sculptural interactive installation with several independent entities, joints of computer components and sculptural frameworks. The Pufis interact with the audience by means of sonic responses to information from the environment, especially the presence and behaviour of audience, which they acquire via electronic sensors. Pufis are platforms for research on the nature of human robot interaction in relation to robots visual forms and types of personalities they exhibit. The key theme of interest is discovering the point within this interaction when robots cease to function as machines and start to function as the real Other. What are the properties a robot must have so that within its interaction with a human being the functions of responsibility, abuse, love, hate, etc. are established?

13

tr

e-motion. en e-motion

kostas moshos & mariela nestora ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Kostas Moshosun performans Maria Nestoradan esinlenen e-motion adl etkileimli ses yerletirmesi, performansnn hareketlerini yakalayp dijital bilgiye dntren bir cihazdan oluuyor. Performans, bir dizi infrared sensr kontrol ediyor. Sensrlerdeki analog veri, bir arayz araclyla MIDIye aktarlyor ve MAX/MSP araclyla MIDI uyumlu herhangi bir cihaz altrabiliyor. e-motionn amac, performans kapasitesini artrarak herkese mzikal bir performans yapabilme olana sunmak. e-motion, benzer mzik aralarnn geliimini ieren Polymnia projesi kapsamnnda Mzik ve Akustik Aratrmalar Enstits (IEMA) tarafndan gelitirilmi ve Yunanistan Aratrma ve Teknoloji Genel Sekreterlii tarafndan desteklenmi. e-motion is an interactive sound installation by Kostas Moshos. It was triggered by the performer Mariela Nestora and consists of a device that captures the movement of a performer and transfers it to digital information. It functions with a series of infrared sensors that the performer can use as a controller. The analogue information of the sensors is transformed through a custom developed interface to MIDI information that is entered to a computer, where with the aid of software (MAX/MSP), it can drive any MIDI-able device. The aim of e-motion is to extend the performing capabilities and to offer the possibility of musical performance to anyone. e-motion is developed by the Institute for Research on Music & Acoustics (IEMA) in the frame of the Polymnia project that includes the development of several similar music utilities and financed by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology.

14

martin hesselmeier & karin lingnau ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

SARoskop tr .SARoscope en

SARoskop projesi, elektromanyetik dalgalarn grselletirilmesine dayanr. En fazla 25 nesnelik bir matristen oluan etkileimli heykel formundaki yerletirme, evresinden ald verilere tepki gsteriyor ve bunlar harekete ve birbirine bal salnmlara dntryor. Hareket eden mekanik paralarn sesi, izleyicinin yerletirmeyi alglayyla birleiyor ve mavi klarla birlikte kendi etkisini yaratyor. The project SARoscope deals with the visualisation of electromagnetic waves. In a matrix of up to 25 objects, the installation is composed as an interactive sculpture reacting sensitively to the data of the proximate surrounding, transforming it into movement and interdependent oscillations. The sound of the moving mechanical parts interfuses the viewers perspective on the installation and together with blue-lighted displays supports a vibrancy of its own.

15

tr

yaam alan. en place of living

tanja perisic ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Yaam Alan projesinin ana amac, network toplumunda kresel sreler zerine toplumsal ve eletirel farkndal artrmak ve katlmclarn sanat, bilim ve teknoloji ile aktif bir ilikiye gemesini salamak. Teknik olarak Yaam Alan, etkileimli bir proje, ancak etkileimlilik yaftasnn da tesine gitmeyi, ve bylelikle de mekann kendisini reaktif bir yaayan organizmaya evirmeyi amalyor. Sistem, biraraya getirilmi k-optik sensr- ses unsurlar ve izleyiciyle kurulan aktif etkileim yoluyla cevap veriyor. Bu alma, dijital teknoloji araclyla birbirleriyle srekli olarak reaksiyon halinde bulunan sktrlm bir fiziksel, kltrel ve sosyal drtler alan oluturmay ve mekandaki varlmzn alglan ve farkndaln ne srmeyi amalyor. Organik ve kltrel ritim arasndaki uyumsuzluu, insann zln ve bizi kontrol eden btn olas networkler arasndaki ilikiyi inceliyor. The main intention of the project Place of living is to increase the social and critical awareness of the global courses in network society and encourage participants to build an active relation with art, science and technology. Technically the working space of Place of living, is an interactive work, but it intends to go beyond the interactivity proclamation so that the space itself becomes a live reactive organism. It reacts in a constellation of elements: light optical sensor sound and through an interaction with the public/participant. Through digital technology, this work intends to produce a compressed space of physical, cultural and social impulses, which are continually reacting in relation to one another provoking the perception and awareness of our presence in the space. It experiments with conflict between organic and cultural rhythm, between human disintegration and all possible networks by which we are controlled.

16

petra dubach & mario van horrik ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

ar ekim tr .slow motion en

Ar ekim her biri bir ayan zerinde duran yayl bir alg, ve biraz tesindeki bir gitar amfisi/hoparlrnden oluan iki ayr ara seti ieren bir yerletirme. indeki insanlarn beden pozisyonlar ve ar ekimdeki hareketleri mekandaki sesi dntryor. Her enstrmann tellerine metal veya tahta ubuklar balanyor ve amfinin sesi yeterince aldnda, her alg dk geribildirimli bir ses karyor. Normalde sesin artmas beklenirken, tellere sarl olan ubuklar bunu engelliyor. Ayn zamanda alglarn frekanslar da birbirine karyor ve birbirinin dngsn deitiriyor. Mekandaki insanlar hareket edip yer deitirdiklerinde mekandaki ses yaps da deiiyor. The installation Slow Motion consists of two sets of instruments, each containing a stringed instrument on a stand, and a guitar amplifier/speaker at some distance. The position(s) and slow movements of people inside the installation change the voice of the space. The strings of each instrument are prepared by weaving wooden or metal sticks through them. When the volume of the amps is turned up high enough, each instrument generates a low feedback sound. Normally, the sound would escalate but the sticks in the strings prevent this. At the same time, the frequencies of both instruments interfere with each other, changing each others cycles. The complex construction of standing waves in the space will change when people take new positions or move slowly.

17

tr

brainloop. en brainloop

janez jansa ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Brainloop BCI (Beyinsel Bilgisayar Arayz) sistemi ieren etkileimli bir performans platformudur. Bu platform, kullancnn sadece baz motor komutlar beyninde canlandrarak eitli gereleri ynetebilmesini salar. Zihinde canlandrlm komutlar, bir motor-eylemin sonuca balanmadan prova edilmesi olarak da dnlebilir; nral bir balant meydana gelir ama hareketin kendisi kortik-omurilik dzlemde engellenir. Sol elini kmldat, Sa elini kmldat veya Ayan kmldat gibi motor imgelemler, d dnyaya mesaj ve komutlar gnderen kas-d iletiim ve ve komut iaretlerine dnr. Brainloopda denek Markus Rapp, fiziksel olarak hareket etmeden Sanal Google Earthde kentsel ve krsal blgeleri dolayor. Motor imgelemini kullanarak corafi blgeleri, kamera alarn ve yerlerini saptyor ve bu grnt dizgelerini sanal olarak kaydediyor. Brainloop is an interactive performance platform that utilizes a Brain Computer Interface (BCI) system which allows a subject to operate devices merely by imagining specific motor commands. These mentally visualized commands may be seen as the rehearsal of a motor act without the overt motor output; a neural synapse occurs but the actual movement is blocked at the corticospinal level. Motor imagery such as move left hand, move right hand or move feet become non-muscular communication and control signals that convey messages and commands to the external world. In Brainloop, the subject Markus Rapp, is able without physically moving- to investigate urban areas and rural landscapes as he globe-trots around virtual Google Earth. Through motor imagery, he selects locations, camera angles and positions and records these image sequences in a virtual world. In the second half of the performance, he plays back the sequence and uses Brainloop to compose a custom soundtrack by selecting and manipulating audio recordings in real time. Photo: Miha Fras, Courtesy: Aksioma- Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

18

ayegl dalg ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

zaman bir yerde tr .time, in someplace en

Zaman algs hareket ve boyutla ilgilidir. nsann zaman algs, evrenin hareket ve boyut skalas iinde, insan boyutu ve hareket kabiliyetine bal olarak ekillenir. Zaman matematiksel ve fiziksel verilere gre lebilen insan, zaman iindeki kendi algsn aan deiiklikleri fark edemez. Bu proje, bu deiiklikleri deneyimlemek zere oluturuldu. Time perception, is related with movement and dimension. The sense of time in humans within the movement of the universe and the size scale, takes shape depending on the human dimension and the ability to move. Mankind who is able to measure time according to mathematical and physical data, is unable to perceive the changes exceeding his own perception in the course of time. This project is designed to experience the recognition of these changes.

19

tr

m.e.s.s. en m.e.s.s

eda kaban ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Proje, iinde bulunduumuz ve ounlukla gnlk hayatn aknda grmekte zorlandmz ama iinden kmak iin srekli abaladmz kalabal ele almaktadr. Bunu, belki de rutinlerimizin ilk sembol olarak grebileceimiz trafik durumunu ve trafikteki kalabal konu ederek ifade etmektedir. Tm bu bahsedilen yorucu kalabalk hissini, enstalasyon erevesinde grselletirmeye ve farkl anlamlarda hissettirmeye alr. Bunu da sergi alan iinde olabildiince ynlamalar yaparak ve makinasal olarak tabir edebileceimiz mekanik ve sistematik hareketleriyle baarmay amalar. Verilerin gncel olarak alnmasyla ve trafik durumunun dinamik olarak enstalasyona aktarlmasyla da izleyicideki bu hissi daha vurucu hale getirmeye alr. This project takes up the crowd, a social phenomenon that is hard to perceive in the flow of our everyday lives, yet one from which we constantly strive to escape. m.e.s.s explores the crowd by taking up what might be considered the first symbol of of our routine life, traffic and the crowd therein. It aims to make the viewer visualize and sense the feel of crowded traffic by creating as much mass as possible in the exhibition area, accompanied by systematic and mechanical machinic movements. The live reception of traffic data, dynamically conveys the actual traffic situation into the installation and strengthens the sense of the crowd in the viewer.

20

burkaan grgn ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

8 hertze yolculuk tr .journey to 8 hertz en

Gn getike oalan cep telefonu, laptop, LCD ve dier tm yeni teknolojik oyuncaklarn adaptrleri, mahalle trafolarnn da etkisi ile byk birer anten olan vcutlarmzda 50 Hertzlik bir etki alan oluturuyor. Bu durum vcudumuzun alageldii delta, theta, alpha ve beta gibi beyin dalgalarndan daha hzl ve yeni bir tr beyin dalgasna sebep olmakta. Kimi bilim adamlar Omega adyla anlan bu 50 Hertzlik yeni dalgann panik atak gibi birok rahatszln nedeni olmas ihtimali zerinde duruyor. Dnyada her canlnn huzur ve dinginlie ulat, insanlarn renme kabiliyetini arttran beyin dalgas ise alphadr. Bu performans enstalasyonundaki amacmz LED k ve mzik kullanarak katlmclar omega dna bilinli ve kasten tamak ve alpha huzuru ile uyank dleri tetiklemektir. The adaptors of cell phones, laptops, LCD and all other tech toys keep growing in numbers in our homes and workplaces. Acting in conjunction with neighborhood electrical converters, these devices create an influence of 50 Hertz on our bodies. This condition creates a new group of brainwaves, which are well beyond the traditional brainwaves such as delta, theta, alpha and beta. Some scientists suspect that the omega named brainwaves are hence teh cause of many ailments such as panic attack. The most peaceful brainwaves in this world, the waves that increase our ability to learn are the alpha brainwaves. In our performance installation, our purpose is to deliberately induce brainwaves other than omega with the use of LED light and music technology carrying us to the peaceful lucidness of alpha.

21

tr

buddhaya sayg. en tribute to buddha

ekmel ertan ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

Bu yerletirme zamansal ve mekansal kaydrmalarla, gerek, medya ve izleyicisi arasndaki ilikiyi sorgular. ki televizyon cihaznn kar karya ve etkileim iindeymi gibi durmas, anlamsz bir iliki biimi yaratr. Bu anlamsz iliki, aslnda gerektekinden ok da farkl deildir. zleyenin bir baka televizyon cihaz iindeki bir grnt olmas medyann izleyicisini dntrmesini ve kendi sanal domainine almasn (hapsetmesini) simgeler. Ancak simgenin hala televizyonu kontrol ediyor olmas, etkileimi sorgulatr. Bu aslnda anlamsz bir etkileimdir; iki cihaz, insan imgesi zerinden insana ait bir eylemi gerekletiriyor grnmndedir. zleyicinin bir imge veya imgenin bir izleyici olarak konumlandrlmas, dier cihazda gerek yayn srasndaki imgenin anlamn da sorgulatr. This installation interrogates the relation between reality, media and viewer through the shift in time and space. Two televisions that are looking at each other are in a meaningless relationship. This meaningless relationship is not much different than similar situations in our daily life. The image of the man on television suggests that the media transforms its viewer and imprisons him in its own virtual domain. Although the fact that the man can still control the other television might prompt us to question the supposition of imprisonment, this is a meaningless interaction in which two devices are performing a human action through the representation of a human. The representation of the viewer as an image or an image as the viewer, inspires questions on the image of the broadcast on the other television.

22

burak arkan ttn deposu.tobacco warehouse 9-17 kasm 2007.9-17 november 2007

kullanm koullar tr .terms & conditions en

Hi kullandnz servislerin kullanm artlarn okur musunuz? Servis salayclar bu metinleri yasal zorunluluktan yazarlar, ancak tketiciler hi bir zaman bunlar okuyamaz, nk ok uzun ve okunmas zor bir dille yazlmlardr. Sonu olarak bu okuyamadmz artlar kabul ederiz. Bu projede zel bir yazlm, sosyal web servislerinin kullanm artlarn okuyarak grseller yaratr. Proje, okunmayan bu metinleri grselletirerek insanlarn bu haklarn teslim ettikleri ana iaret ediyor. In this piece, terms & conditions of certain corporations are re-written using a custom typeface. The resulting images are generated by three processes: me typing the words, the program deciding on the size of each letter each time I hit the key, and the instructions for the fonts. Terms & Conditions often written for legal regulations, are never read by consumers, and as a result consumers are often exploited by agreeing on these unreadable terms. With this piece, we both recycle unread, terms & conditions texts and point to the moment where people give away their rights to the capital.

23

24

25
tr
25

performanslar. en performances
benoit maubrey sinan bkesoy daito manabe marcel.li antunez roca aye orhon ouz bykberber difzyon

26

benoit maubrey garajistanbul 9 kasm 2007.9 november 2007 20:30

geribeslemeli fred tr . feedback fred en

Benot Maubrey, elektronik giysi retip bunlar performanslarnda kullanan Berlinli sanat grubu Die Audio Gruppenin direktrdr. Bu grubun gemi almalar arasnda Audio Ballerinas, Audio Geishas, Audio Steelworkers, Bong Boys ve Audio Peacocks saylabilir. Temel olarak bunlar evreyle ilikiye getiinde eitli sesler karan amplifikatr ve hoparlrlerle donatlm elektroakustik giysilerdir. rnein, Audio Ballerinas baka elektronik gereler yannda, giysinin hareketleri ve evredeki n etkileimininden sesler reten k sensrleri kullanr (Peeper koreografi). Hareket sensrleri araclyla elektronik sesler de retebilir ve bunlar dzenleyerek mzik paralarna dntrebilir (Yamaha koreografi). Kullandklar minibilgisayar, sampler, kontak mikrofonlar, kaset, CD alar ve radyo gibi aletler evrelerindeki mekann sesleri, yzeyleri ve topografileri zerinde solo veya grup olarak alabilmelerini salar. lk olarak 1990da tasarlanan Audio Ballerinas hala aktif ve nc bir proje olarak devam ediyor. Feedback Fred (Geribeslemeli Fred) performansn, geribildirim sistemi ile srtnda amplikatr tayan sanatnn kendisi gerekletirir. Benot Maubrey is the director of Die Audio Gruppe a Berlin-based art group that build and perform with electronic clothes (past examples: Audio Ballerinas, Audio Geishas, Audio Steelworkers, Bong Boys, Audio Peacocks). These are basically electro-acoustic clothes and dresses that are equipped with amplifiers and loudspeakers and that make sounds by interacting with their environment. For example, the Audio Ballerinas use -among other electronic instruments- light sensors that enable them to produce sounds through the interaction of their movements and the surrounding light (Peeper choreography). Via movement sensors they can also trigger electronic sounds that are subsequently choreographed -or orchestrated- into musical compositions as an audio ballet (Yamaha choreography). A variety of other electronic instruments (mini-computers, samplers, contact microphones, cassette and CD players, and radio receivers) allow them to work with the sounds, surfaces, and topographies of the space around them in a variety of solo or group choreographies. The Audio Ballerinas, first conceived in 1990, is still a very active, vibrant and successful project. In Feedback Fred, the performer moves with a big loudspeaker box strapped to his back and feedback mask.

27

tr

beyond surface - below space. en beyond surface - below space

sinan bkesoy & daito manabe garajistanbul 9 kasm 2007.9 november 2007 20:30

Eser, yzey ve iinde bulunduu uzay arasndaki ilikiye ve bunun algsal krlganlna bir bak as sunar. Genel anlamda, organik balar bu ilikiyi devam ettirir ve salt snrlar yok eder. Soyut ve tannabilirlik arasnda deien ve yer yer poetik almlar yaratan ses tasarm, grsel kompozisyon ile beraber performans araclyla eitli etkileimleri aktarr. Daha nce Hamamatsu, NIME04 konferansnda ortak alma iin biraraya gelen ikili, 2007de Trkiye Biliim Derneinin katklar ile Biliim07 etkinlikleri erevisinde sunulmak zere bu eser icin tekrar biraraya gelmitir. This work concentrates on the interaction of surface structures and the space in which they exist by pointing also to some perceptual phenomena. In general terms, organic connections provide the continuity of this relationship, by canceling the absolute borders. Between abstract and acousmatic sources, the sound design also delivers poetic expressions by being in interaction with the visual design with some mathematical phenomena through the live performance. The duo has collaborated for the first time at NIME04 conference, Hamamatsu. The realization of the work has been made possible by the request of the Informatics Association of Turkey in scope of Bilisim07 activities.

28

benoit maubrey, aye orhon, ouz bykberber garajistanbul 9 kasm 2007.9 november 2007 20:30

dijital bellek tr .digital memories en

Benot Maubreynin Aye Orhon ve Ouz Bykberber ile birlikte oluturduu bu performans, Maubreynin gelitirdii ve eitli performanslarnda kulland bir giysi-cihaz zerine kuruludur. Aye Orhonun giydii cihaz, Bykberberin klarnet sesini o anda kaydeder ve Orhonun hareketleriyle kontrol ettii sesi, eitli dnmlere uratarak ortama geri verir. Bylelikle dans ile mzisyen arasnda bir det balar. Ouz Bykberber, on dakika sren bu performanstan nce solo klarnet ve bilgisayar kullanarak bir mzik gsterisi gerekletirmitir. The performance composed of Benot Maubrey, Aye Orhon and Ouz Bykberber is based upon a wearable device that is developed and used by Benot Maubrey in some of his own performances. The device, worn by Aye Orhon, records Bykberbers clarinet sound and renders it, as controlled by Orhons movements, back to the environment. This way, the dancer and the musician perform a duet. Before this ten minute performance, Ouz Bykberber performs with a solo clarinet and a computer.

29

tr

transpermia. en transpermia

marcel.li antunez roca garajistanbul 16 kasm 2007.16 november 2007 20:30

Marcel.li Antunez Roca performans, konser ve konuma formatlar arasnda gidip gelen melez bir gsteri gelitirmi. Transpermia, farkl modllerden oluuyor. Sanat birinci modlde, Fleshbots, Dreskeletons, Biometries ve Systematurgy gibi almalarn da karakterize eden mekanik zellikleri ne karyor. kinci modl almalarnda kulland imajlar ele alyor. nc modl ise, Rusyada gerekletirilen Dedalus projesi iin yapt hazrlk srecinin sonularn ve parabolalarla salanan mikrogravite anlarnda yapt mikro performanslar ieriyor. Bu mikro performanslarda, Requiem bodybot deneyine ve dreskeleton, softbot ve interaktif filmler arasnda kurulan ilikiye tank oluyoruz. Son modl, Transpermia teorisini tantyor ve bu noktada performans adeta bir konferansa dnyor. Marcel.li Antunez Roca has developed a hybrid show alternating as a performance, concert and lecture. It is structured in different modules. During the show Antunez wears his Dreskeleton (an exoskeletal body interface) and with it he samples, activates and modulates sounds as well as controls the films projected on two screens. In the first module, he presents some of the mechanical aspects characteristic of his work such as the Fleshbots, the Dreskeletons, the Biometries and the Systematurgy. The second module, takes us through recurrent images in his work. The third module reveals the end result of the process of preparation for the Dedalus project in Star City in the Russian Federation as well as the micro performances that were carried out during periods of microgravity provided by the parabolas. In these micro performances, we witness the Requiem bodybot experiment and the interaction between the dreskeleton, the softbot and the interactive films. The last module, presents the Transpermia theory and at this point the performance becomes more like a conference.

30

31

31

tr

protomembrana. en protomembrana

marcel.li antunez roca garajistanbul 17 kasm 2007.17 november 2007 20:30

Protomembranann hikayesi, Sistematurji alannda teorik bir derstir. Sistematurji ise, tam olarak ilemsel sistemlerin bir dramaturjisidir. Hikaye, adeta bir Latin-Amerikan roman gibi fabllarle dolu bir anlat rer. Performans, szl anlatya ek olarak, grafik animasyon, mzik ve k gibi eler kullanr. Genel manzaray oluturan bu eler, onlar kontrol eden dreskeleton gibi eitli arayzler araclyla etkileimli hale gelirler. Olay rgs, nnde Marcel.linin dreskeletonunu giyinmi olarak bulunduu geni bir perdede geer. Bu interaktif hikaye, grnt ve sesin yan sra, seyircilerden gnll olanlarn yz grntsn kaydedip, performansn sonraki aamalarna karakter olarak ekleyen bir kamera/ silah da kullanr. Kullanlan bir dier cihaz ise, dokunmaya kar hassas bir giysidir; drt paradan oluur ve onu giyen kullancy bir grsel ve ses arayz haline getir. Btn bu gerelerin kullanm, Protomembranay, hipnoz ve sihir alt-dallarna tar. Bu ders, Marcel.linin daha nceki ii Transpermiada balatt interaktif anlatnn devamdr. Daha nceki almalarnda yer almayan konuma, Transpermiann son modlnde, ana kahramandr. Burada interaktif grntlerin oulluu, szl anlatnn hizmetindedir. The storyline of Protomembrana, is a theoretical lesson on Systematurgy, which is literally speaking a dramaturgy of computation systems. It is used to weave a narrative full of fables, something like a Roman novel. The performance uses, in addition to verbal narration, graphic animation, music and lighting. All these scenic elements are treated as interactive elements which are controlled by means of various interfaces. Formally, the action takes place on a large screen, in front of which Marcel.l is wearing the dreskeleton, and to one side there is a table with several computers. Apart from images and sound, this interactive story, uses other devices such as a camera/gun that captures the faces of volunteers from the audience and inserts them in the performance as protagonists in subsequent animations. Another device, is a touch sensitive costume; that consists of four components that are worn by a volunteer, enabling her/him to become a visual and sound interface. At times, the use of these appliances transposes the Protomembrana performance to the sub-genres of hypnosis and magic. This lesson, is a continuation of the interactive narration that Marcel.l commenced in his previous work Transpermia. The spoken word, which was practically inexistent in his previous work, plays an important role in the last module of Transpermia. In Protomembrana, the spoken word is the ongoing protagonist as the interactive scenic polysemy is at the service of verbal narration.

32

33

33

tr

mzik performans. en music performance

daisy bolter, slak kpek, deniz erk garajistanbul 17 kasm 2007.17 november 2007 20:30

Bu vokal almann bal, bir sessiz film yldznn adndan (Mabel Normand) dn alnmtr. Ancak mabel my babel (Babilim) sznn bir ksaltmas olarak da okunabilir. nk bu 18 dakikalk performans srasnda arkc yaayan, nefes alan bir babil kulesidir: eitli dilleri birbiriyle rerek bir tiyatro, mzik ve iir karm ortaya karr. Tek bir ses araclyla be dil birbirine karr. Gzel ve absrt arasnda gidip gelen ritmik ve melodik kalplar ortaya kar. amber07nin kapan etkinlii olan bu gsteride, Fransada yaayan Amerikal sanat Daisy Bolter, stanbul alternatif mzik sahnesinin nde gelen doalama grubu Islak Kpek ile birlikte vokal yapt. 2005de kurulan Islak Kpek, Volkan Terziolu, Robert Reigle (tenor saksofon), evket Aknc (gitar) ve Korhan Erelden (bilgisayar ve elektronik) oluuyor. Mabelin ardndan Islak Kpek grubunun kendi performans ile sren gsteriye, canl grselleri ile Deniz Erk elik etti. The title of this vocal piece, is cheekily borrowed from a silent film stars name (Mabel Normand). However mabel can also be read as a contraction of the words My Babel. For in this 18-minute performance the actresssinger is a living, breathing tower of Babel : she weaves several languages together to create a mix of theatre, music and poetry. Through one voice, five languages (French, Swedish, Dioula, Indonesian and English) blend in a sort of polyglot Assimil method. Rhytmic and melodic patterns that oscillate between beauty and absurdity appear. Islak Kpek is Istanbuls well known improvised music group. Islak Kpek (Wet Dog) performed with members Volkan Terziolu, Robert Reigle (tenor sax), evket Aknc (guitar) and Korhan Erel (computers and electronics); V.J. Deniz Erk joined in with live visuals.

34

400SANYE - sanat sunumlar tr .400SECONDS - artist presentations en

in collaboration with difzyon ibirlii ile garajistanbul 13 kasm 2007.13 november 2007 20:30

400SANYE, difzyon tarafndan 10 sanat ve tasarmcnn katlmyla dzenlenen, setikleri projelerini 6 dakika 40 saniyede (=400 saniye) sunduklar bir bulumadr. Ama, mimar, medya teknolojileri ve sanat, moda, fotoraf, video, grsel iletiim tasarm gibi eitli disiplinlerde alan tasarmc ve sanatlarn ileri zerinden stanbulun zgn sanat ve tasarm dnyasnn bir kolajn yaratmaktr. Beinci 400SANYE, amberFestival ibirlii ile amber07 bnyesinde gerekleiyor. Bu kez amber07de eserleriyle yer alan sanatlar ve davetli katlmclar, kendi ilerini sunuyorlar. 400SECONDS is a designers meeting organized by difzyon, where 10 participants are presenting their chosen projects in 6 minutes and 40 seconds (=400 seconds). The aim is to create a unique collage of Istanbul design environment by interaction of various fields such as architecture, media technologies & arts, fashion, photography, video, visual communication design, industrial design, etc. The 5th of 400SECONDS is now being organized in collaboration with amber, within the frame of amber07. This time the participant artists of the festival are peresenting their work.

35

36

37
tr
37

atlyeler. en workshops
nancy mauro-flude johannes birringer ismail kasarc burak arkan

38

nancy mauro-flude akbank sanat dans stdyosu.akbank sanat dance studio 10-11 kasm 2007.10-11 november 2007 14:00-19:00

beden, oyun ve bellek tr .body, play and memory en

ocuklara ynelik bu atlyenin amac, disiplineraras sanat aktivitelerinde beden varln ve kullanmn arttrmaktr. eitli snma hareketleri ve altrmalar; gzlerin, kulaklarn ve zihnin, zaman-mekan dzleminde hareket ve ses ile uyum iinde altn gstermeyi amalar. alma, daha sonra ocuklarn alglarn, el-kol hareketleri ve duyulara hitap eden donat/nesnelerle balantl olarak ele alr. Buradaki yap, genel olarak beden, oyun, bellek ve varl birlikte dnmeye yneliktir. Ama, ocuklarn kendi alglarna gvenmeleri ve bu alglayn nceden hazrlanm oyun rutinleri olmadan da teknoloji, ses ve hareketin bileimine igdsel olarak ilintilebileceini grmeleridir. Sanat, bu atlyede hareket alglayclarnn vcut hareketlerinden ses ve efektler reten donatlar kullanmaktadr. The content of this childrens workshop, is geared toward amplifying body presence in relation to interdisciplinary art activities. Warm-up and exercises emphasise how the eyes, ears and mind works in co-ordination with movement, sound in space and time. Then the session revolves around the childrens sense perception in relation to the gestural movement and the sensory props, with a loose structure that aims to articulate body, play, memory and presence. The aim is to provide a situation where children can grow in confidence in how their sense perception instinctively relates to thecombination of technology, movement and sound without the use of pre-set routines. The props the artist has made and works with are Human Interface Devises [HIDs], where motion sensors are programmed to allow for gestural actions to trigger live voice and sound distortion and effects.

39

tr

mo-vi lab. en mo-vi lab

johannes birringer plak ayaklar dans stdyosu.barefoot dance studio 10-13 kasm 2007.10-13 november 2007 11:00-17:00

Johannes Birringer, dijital performans alannn nde gelen isimlerinden biridir. AlienNation Dans Topluluunun sanat ynetmenidir. Ohio Eyalet niversitesinde Dans ve Teknoloji Blmn yrtm ve Environments Lab kurmutur. Nottingham Trent niversitesinde Live Art Blmnn ve Telematics Labn kurucusudur. Uluslararas dijital performans arenasnda pek ok atlye ve organizasyon gerekletirmektedir. Mo-Vi Lab, dans, video, mzik ve programlama ile uraan deneyimli sanatlarn ve sanat veya tasarm rencilerinin katlm ile gerekleen bir atlye almasdr. Bu alma, farkl disiplinlerden gelen sanatlarn bir arada ve birlikte i retmesinin yntemleri zerine bir deneyim kazandrmay hedefler. te yandan, performans ve dans alannda video grnts kullanm zerine bir aratrmadr. Birringer, katlan sanatlarla performans, dans, video kullanm ve ok disiplinli almalar konusundaki deneyimini paylaacak ve olas ortak almalar iin yol gsterici olacaktr. Mo-vi Lab was realized with the participation of artists and art students from diverse disciplines like dance, music, performing arts, visual arts and programming. This is the first installment of a long term laboratory, which aims at developing and experiencing the methods of cooperating and creating in a multi disciplinary platform. It is also a research laboratory on usage of manipulated image and programing for real time performance. Birringer will share his experience and knowledge to initiate a cooperation among the participant artists which can lead to a multidisciplinary performance in long term.

40

41

41

tr

al sanatlar. en network arts

burak arkan it tbt lab. takla 17-18 kasm 2007.17-18 november 2007 11:00-17:00

Al sanat a zerinde yaplan sanatlara denir. A dzenleyen iletiim protokelleri ve balantlar, bu alanda en ok uralan konulardr. Al sanat, ancak a zerinde deneyimlenebilir. Dier bir deyile, bu tr sanatn varolmas ve alglanmas iin bir an varl mevcut olmaldr. Bu workshop, yaratc bir etkinlik olarak a protokolleri yazmaya odaklanmtr. letiim protokolleri, internetten sosyal alara, ulam alarndan serbest pazara kadar her tr sistemi dzenlerler. Katlmclar, workshop boyunca pek ok al sistem tasarlayarak ve beraber protokoller yazarak renecekler. Network based arts are artworks done on the network. Communication protocols and links are the most engaging topics in this field. To experience the artwork, a network would be required. This workshop focuses on the design of network protocols as a creative activity. Protocols organize networked systems ranging from low-level communication infrastructures (e.g., sensor networks, file-sharing networks, internet) to high-level organizations (e.g., markets, multi-player games, social networks). Participants learn the most through creating many examples of networked systems and authoring protocols.

42

ilemsel grsel tasarm tr .computational visual design en

burak arkan & ismail kasarc it tbt lab. takla 10-11 kasm 2007.10-11 november 2007 11:00-17:00

Processing, sanat ve tasarm bata olmak zere yaratc alanlarda alan kiiler iin gelitirilmi ak kaynakl bir programlama dili ve ortamdr. lemsel grsel tasarm, belli bir tasarm probleminin ilemsel yntemler kullanlarak elde edilen grsellerle zmlenmesi olarak adlandrlabilir. Gnmzde bilgisayarlar ve yazlm, tasarmn ayrlmaz bir paras halindedir. Herhangi bir tasarm probleminin zmnde bilgisayarn ilem gcn yaratc bir kaynak olarak kullanan bu yaklamla katlmclar, farkl bir tasarm srecini deneyimlediler. lemsel Grsel Tasarm atlye almasnda katlmclar, nce Processing gelitirme ortamyla tanp, sanatlar, tasarmclar gibi dorudan yazlmla uramayan profesyoneller iin gelitirilmi bu dilin yapsn renip, daha sonra eitli algoritmalar gelitirip programlar yazarak grseller oluturdular. Processing, is an open source programming language and environment mainly developed for the people who are working in art and design field. Computational design can be described as the discipline that searches for a solution for the design problem using computational techniques. The result of the computational design is the outcome of some processed input. By means of computational design, new techniques on interaction and generative design have developed. In this workshop, participants will be introduced with Processing development environment, learn the structure and and basics and then design using computational techniques.

43

44

45
tr
45

seminerler. en seminars
mladen dolar johannes birringer benoit maubrey dmkme

46

seminerler hakknda tr .about the seminars en

Amber07nin festival temas ses ve tutunma. Bu iftteki kavramlar yeni bir sanat kuruluu ve etkinlii olarak balang yapyor olmamzla ilgiliydi. Trkiye sanat evrelerinde yeni bir sestik ve tutunabildiimiz kadar burada kalmak istiyorduk, neden bu kavramlar festival temas yapmayalm? dedik. Varlmzn iareti olarak bir sese sahip olmak istiyorduk ve bunu etkinliimizin konusu haline getirdik. Ancak, bu znel ve basit bileenin tesinde, sesin sistematik olarak dnlmediini de farkettik. Sanki, ses hakknda pek de bir ey bilinmiyordu. Bu durumu dzeltmek iin ses hakknda parlak ve geni kapsaml bir kitap yaynlam olan tannm Slovenyal felsefeci Mladen Dolar davet ettik. Aadaki seminer sunumlarnda Dolar, sesin bildik, varln apak iareti biimindeki kavramsallatrmasn sorguluyor. Psikanaliz bata olmak zere, geni bir teorik aralar serisinden yararlanarak, sesi hep mulak ve eksik kalan esrarengiz bir engel olarak betimliyor ve bilinemezliine iaret ediyor. The festival theme of amber07s is voice and survival. The concepts in this pair resonated with our own inauguration as a new arts organization and event. We were a new voice in the Turkish art scene and intend to survive as long as we can, therefore why not pair these concepts as our festival theme? We wanted to have a voice as a sign of our presence and therefore made it the very subject matter of this event. However, beyond this subjective and straightforward component, we realized that voice is much less thought systematically. It was as if not much was known about the voice. To remedy this, we invited the distinguished Slovenian philosopher Mladen Dolar who had just written a brilliant and wide ranging book about the subject. In the seminar presentations that follow, Dolar challenges the selfevident conceptions of the voice as a self-evident form of presence. Employing a wide array of theoretical tools, chief of which is psychoanalysis, he convincingly shows that voice is a mysterious obstacle that remains forever ambiguous and incomplete, one whose significance remains undecidable.

47

tr

seste ne var ki?

mladen dolar akbank sanat konferans salonu 10 kasm 2007

Balkonundan geceye seslenen Juliet unlar syler: Bir isimde ne var ki? El deil, ayak deil / kol deil, yz deil, / ne de insann bir baka uzvu.1 Juliet karanlkta saklanmakta olan Romeoyu henz grmemitir, karanla konuur. Romeo da geceyle sohbet eden Hanmnn sesini dinler. Bu her eyden nce seslerin, karanlkta duyulan seslerin ve ayn zamanda, simgesel olarak, isimlerin sahnesidir: tam da sesler ile isimler arasndaki uyumsuzluun dramasdr. Juliet bir an sonra Romeoyu sesinden tanyacak ve birbirlerini pek de grmeden sesleriyle syleecek, aklar iin bu ses sahnesinde, bat kltrnn ak ad altnda ne anladnn byk bir blmn tanmlayan bu kanonik sahnede yemin edeceklerdir. Ak nedir? Balkon sahnesinde olan eydir. Bu sahne sesin, ses ile ismin, daha soyut dzeyde de ses ile gsteren arasndaki uyumsuzluun, ztln nasl anlald ile ilgili bir ipucu olarak alnabilir. Bu sahnede, en basit ekliyle isim dman, ses ise mttefiktir, dosttur. Yalnz adndr benim dmanm olan der Juliet. Hem isim, hem de ses, bireysellie iaret ederler; biricikliimizi, tekilliimizi pek ok farkl ekilde vurgularlar: isim, bireyselliimizin sosyale, sosyal blnme, hiyerari ve devler ana yazlmasn gsterir. sim bizi sosyal bir yere koyar. te yandan ses, sosyal alar ve onlarn ini klarndan kaabilir gibi grnmektedir. Kalpten kalbe konuur; akn malzemesinden yaplmtr. Her ses biriciktir, parmak izi gibidir.2 simden daha biricik ve tekildir, nk isim paylalr, sosyal ve ailesel kodlara uyar ve her zaman jenerik/cinse aittir: kii her zaman ya Montague ya da Capuletdir. simler oaltlabilir, klonlanabilir, hatta her isim zaten oktan bir klondur. Ancak sesler oaltlamaz; en azndan bundan bir yzyldan fazla bir zaman nce ortaya kan can skc teknolojik bulular sesin yeni kaderini mjdeleyene kadar oaltlamazd, ama bu konuya daha sonra dneceiz. sim yoluyla her zaman bir bakasn kiiletiririz. Kii, her zaman baz isimleri tayan bir grup insann, rnein bir ailenin, bir ulusun, ya da bir gelenein temsilcisi olur. Ancak ses araclyla, kii adeta yalnzca kendisini kiiletirir. Kendisini kiiletirmek, kulaa elikili bir anlatm gibi gelebilir ama aslnda kiinin kendi sesini kullanmasn uygun bir biimde ifade eder. Kii, ya da popler (ancak tartmal) etimolojiye 3 gre persona, per-sonareden gelir: bir ey araclyla, daha dorusu bir maske ya da bir azlk araclyla ses gelmesi. Kii de bir maske anlamna gelir, dolaysyla kiinin arlabilmesi iin sesin biricikliinin bir maske araclyla kmas gerekir. Ayrca Yunancada proposon, artc bir biimde hem yz hem de maske anlamna gelir. Diyebiliriz ki, maske jeneriktir; karakteristik zellikleri ve tipi vurgular, dolaysyla da isim gibi, o da bir grubu oluturur.
1 Yalnz adndr benim dmanm olan / Montague olmasan da kendisin sen. / Hem Montague nedir ki? Ah, bir baka ad bul kendine! / Adda ne var ki? u bizim gl dediimiz / Ayn gzellikte kokmaz m / bir baka ad alsa da? / Romeonun da ad Romeo olmasayd, / onda bu san olmadan da bulunan kusursuzluk / yine kalrd onda. At bu ad Romeo! / Senin paran olmayan adna karlk da / btn varln al. Ah Romeo, Romeo! Neden Romeosun sen? / nkar et baban, kendi adn reddet; / bu elinden gelmezse, yemin et beni sevdiine, / vazgeeyim ben Capulet olmaktan. (eviri Tolga Salam, 2006) 2 Bu karlatrmann gnmzde kt niyetli imalar var, nk ses kolayca biyo-gsterge olarak hayal edilebilir baz snrlardan geite retinann kontrol edilmesi gibi. Hatta Amerikal bir gmen polisini Beyefendi, masann nnde durun ve mikrofona konuun derken hayal edebiliriz. Ya da kiilerin tekrarlamalar iin tm insanlar zgr ve eit doar gibi bir rnek kayt nerebiliriz. 3 Bu etimoloji geleneksel olarak yaygn bir biimde kabul grr, nde gelen kaynaklara (Aulu-Gelle, Boetius) dayanr. Ancak bu kaynaklar da eseslilik tuzana dmlerdir. Kelime muhtemelen Etrsk kaynakldr.

48

Oysa ses biriciktir; fakat sadece maske araclyla kt iin kii, jenerik ve bireysel olann bir aradalndan sknt duyar: bu bizim zaten kiinin kendi sesini yalnzca kiiletirme araclyla stlenebileceini sezmemizi salar. Ancak Veronal aklar iin bu bir aradal bozmak, bir lm kalm meselesidir. Sesin uyandrd ve snava tabi tuttuu biriciklik, akta ortaya konan biricikliktir. Ak, tam olarak bu kolay dile getirilemez ve tespit edilemez kiisel zellikleri hedefler. Ses onun mjdecisi, teminatdr; gece iki ak sylemekte hibir glk ekmezler yalnzca sese bal kalrlarsa her ey yolunda gidecek gibidir, sorunlarn kayna tamamen isimdir. Oyunun ilerleyen blmlerinden birinde (III/3) Bu anatominin hangi alak yerine / Benim ismim yerlemi? diye sorar Romeo. Bana syle ki boaltabileyim / Bu nefret edilesi kona. Ve sahnenin aknda yazd zere, klcn ekip alak beden parasn, kendi ismini koparmaya, ismini, Babann-adn 4 hadm etmeye hazrlanr, fakat bir sonu alamaz. smi skp atmak ve sesi alkoymak isim harcanabilir gibi grnmektedir. sim olmadan da yaplabilir ama ses yle deildir: Baban ve ismini reddet sesi tamamen stlenebilmek iin mi? yleyse Julietin sorusunu geniletmemiz gerekirse, seste ne var ki? diye sorabiliriz. Ses neye tanklk ediyor? Anatomide nereyi kaplyor? Hem el deil, ayak deil, kol deil, yz deil, ne de insann bir baka uzvu. Ayrca seste ne var ki? sorusunun adda ne var ki? sorusundan farkllat nokta neresi? Burada ses ve belirten arasnda bir ikilik, bir ztlk var. Bu, temel belirten ve hatta Babann-ad ile sesi kar karya koyarak, genel tez, balama noktas ya da bu sahnenin mkemmel bir biimde ortaya koyduu ey olarak ie yarayabilir. Fakat burada dramatik bir zirve olarak grnen ey, aslnda her zaman daha mtevaz bir biimde ve balang seviyesinde srekli olagelmektedir: dile getirdiimiz hemen hemen her cmlede bu minyatr drama srmektedir. nk belirten nedir? Basit tanmn ileri srebiliriz: dilde kopyalanabilir olan eydir onun kopyas, tekrar, yinelenebilirlii konumay mmkn klar. Dilde dilbilimsel bir biimde snflandrlabilen, tanmlanabilen ve bir farkllklar ana blnebilendir; grnmez tehlike ve noksanlklarna ramen, gayet iyi ileyen bir mant ayakta tutmasyla yetinmemiz gerekir. Ancak konumay mmkn klan sesin, konumamz salayan alet ve aralar olarak sesin kendisi, konumann tam da merkezinde dursa da, dilbilimsel olarak tanmlanamaz. Saptanabilir, snflanabilir ve analiz edilebilir olan ey ise fonem, yani belirli bir ses birimidir. rnein; bir anlam retebilmesi iin belirten tarafndan yorulan, ekillendirilen ve gereken boyutlara getirilen ,bir sestir. nk ancak belirtenler, anlamn olumasn salar. Ad zerinde, belirtmek iin oradadrlar. Ses baka bir meseledir: dilin belirtme iine dahil olmayan tarafdr, Wittgensteinin merdiveninde olduu gibi, tepeye varldnda elenir. Ses biricik, tekrar edilemez ve tekildir. Dolaysyla dilbilimsel tanmlarn nesnesi deildir, evrenselletirilemeyecek olan eydir. Bunun sonucu olarak, yinelemenin ve kopyalamann ortasnda, insann tarifsiz varlnn ve akn teminat olarak ileyebilir. Bu, dilbilimsel dramann aklarn dramasyla kesitii, dilbilimin akla bulutuu yerdir. Ancak tekrarlanamaz olan bu tekliinde, ve tam da bu sebeple, hemen yok olur, unutulup gider, grnd anda kaybolur ve bundan tr de, hafza ve hatrlama yetenei sorularn ortaya atar. Burada iir ve bilind bal altnda yeni bir blm alabilir. Eer ses evrensel olann kalnts, yani evrenselletirilemeyecek olansa, bu kalnt yine evrenselin iinde iler ve onu kirletir. Bu basite belirtenin sesi dlamas ve snrlarndan uzaklatrmas deildir, ayn zamanda onu kendi doas iinde barndrmasdr. Bu, belirtenin yalnzca bir belirten, ya da farkllk ve tekrarlama varl olmas deil, kendisinin deiken ve ngrlemez bir doaya sahip olmas ve adeta ses ile lekelenmesidir.
4 Klcn ektiinde bedeninin hangi ksmn koparmay istemektedir? Zmnen fallik belirtenin fallusta olduunu mu varsayar? Bu, izleyicilerin kanlmaz bir biimde yapt spontane bir varsaym mdr? Babann-ad, fallik belirten, idi etme ve akn doasnn bir araya gelmesiyle,z neredeyse Lacann Urszenesinin bir karikatryle kar karyayzdr.

49

iirin durduu yer de burasdr: belirtenle beraber olan sesi yakalamak; tekrarlanabilir olanla beraber duran tekrarlanamaz olan ele geirmek; belirtende klonlanabilir olanla deil tekil olanla, kanlmaz olanla deil muhtemel olanla almak. Belirtenin ikili bir doas vardr: farkl, belirten, anlam veren zelliklerinin yan sra deiken ses ekolar, titreimler, ses sirayetleri, benzerlikler, tekrar, ritim ve uyaklarda kullanlabilecek malzemeler, anlaml olann iinde beklenmedik farkl anlamlar, her ne kadar ayrlmaz biimde birbirine bal olsa da, benzetmenin tesinde benzetmeler yaratr. Bu, belirtmenin muhtemelen kendini ikiye katlad, tam da belirtme mantnn kararsz uzants olarak sese rastlad yerdir. Belirteni, yani tekrarlanabilir olan izlemek, herkese konumac olma ans verir. Konuma evrensel bir ilevdir, ancak ses ekolar ve ngrlemez kalplar takip etmek kolay deildir, evrenselletirilemez; dolaysyla airler nadir yaratklardr. Ancak, farknda olmadan herkes bir ynden air olarak kabul edilebilir, yani kii bilinaltna sahip olduu srece, kendi arzusu dnda bir airdir. Freudun anlad ekliyle bilinalt; dilin, tesadfi doasn (sesi, ekoyu, ses sirayetlerini) her yerde bulunan bir ilev olarak almasna dayaldr. Buna Freudyen srme denir, ancak tam olarak ne zerinde bu srme/kayma gerekleir? rnein anlam, tam olarak ses art zerinde kayar, nk bu noktada kelimeler belirten olarak deil, ses nesneleri olarak ele alnr ve bu ses art, ses ekolar, benzerlikleri ve sirayetleri, anlam kaymasna/srmeye yol aar. Familiar kelimesi, Millionrda bir ekosunu bulur, bylece nl famillionr akas ortaya kar (Salomon Rothschildin yanna oturduumda bana eiti gibi famillionr bir biimde yaklat PFL 6, sf.47).5 Geist (ruh) kelimesinin, Geiz (cimrilik) kelimesine benzer bir sesi vardr (PFL 5, sf.106), dolaysyla dil srmesine olanak tanr. stelik bu iki kelime arasna koca bir tarih sdrlabilir; seslerin yakn benzerlii, anlamlar arasndaki maksimum uzakla edeerdir. Freudun hearsing kelimesi etrafnda dnen gzel bir ryas vardr; kelime ryada bir istasyon ad olarak ortaya kar. Hearsing bir bileimdir. Bir ksm, Viyanadaki banliy tren yolu zerinde, ou ing ekiyle biten yer isimlerinden gelir: Hietzing, Liesing, Mdling gibi. Kelimenin teki ksm ise, ngilizcedeki hearsay (sylenti) kelimesine dayanr (PFL 3, sf. 406). Sylenti kelimesinin zdd olarak hearsing, sylentinin yan banda hearsing, sylentinin iine yerletirilmi hearsing belirtenin bilinaltnda nasl ilediini anlatmann ne ekonomik bir yolu! Sylemekteki ezgisel ve belirtene katkda bulunmayan e, ryalarn hammaddesidir, bilinaltnn meydana kt flashlar (birdenbire akla gelme) mmkn klar. Ve tabii sylenti delilleri mahkemede itiraf edilecek eyler deillerse, analizde yaplmas gereken ey, belirtmenin artklarnn belirtmenin kendisini igal ettii noktaya kulak vermek, dinlemektir. Ancak burada sz konusu olan estetik etki deildir, yani bilinalt ark sylesin de biz dinleyip elenelim demeyiz. Mesele bilgi sorusudur, bilinaltndaki bilgi ve arzu, bilinaltndaki dnce bu Freudun takn fikridir. Agambenin ok ho bir cmlesi vardr: Dilde sesi aramak, dnce denilen ey ite budur.6 Belirtene ve anlama bal olmayan ancak, belirtene kafa tutan, anlamdan kaan dnce. yleyse sorun, belirtmeyi iki misline karan e etrafndaki bilgi sorusuna younlamaktr. Bilinaltndaki bilgi, bilinaltndaki dnce, bilinaltndaki arzu, ayak basacaklar tek noktay, ses sirayetleri ve ekolar gibi krlgan bir konuda, tam da belirtenin anlam yaratma asndan hi katkda bulunmad noktada bulurlar. Anlam karsnda sesin artn dayanak noktas yaparlar: anlama vurulan sekteler, anlam kaymalardrlar. Yaplmas gereken, bu artktaki gizli anlamlar ortaya karmak deil, bunun yerine bu art olduu gibi tutarak mantn kavramaya almaktr. nk bilinalt, Freudun da iaret ettii zere, yorum sayesinde gn yzne kan gizli dncelerde yatmaz, baka tr bir anlam deildir (derin ya da gizli vb.). Bilinalt, ekilde, bozmann artnda (Entstellung) yatar ve belirtenin sesine, fazlalna tutunur.
5 Freud alntlar The Pelican Freud Library (PFL) adl kitaptan yaplmtr, 15 cilt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973-86. 6 Alnt Jean-Luc Nancy, A lcoute, Paris: Galile 2002, sf. 45.

50

Bilinalt, gizli bir anlam, ortaya karlmas gereken derin anlam deildir, ancak ve ancak bozulmu ekilde yatar. u sylenebilir: bilinalt bize dolayl yoldan bir ey sylemektedir, dolaysyla bizim iimiz, yani analitik yorumun ii, bunu dolaysz, ak ve bozmann by pass olmadan sylemektir. Ancak bu bir tuzak, bir hatadr: bilinalt bize yalnzca dolayl yoldan bir ey syler, yalnzca bozulmada, eklin artnda yatar ve ekil inat bir ses esine tutunur. Bu analitik yorumun yanl adlandrmasdr. Yaygn yorum kavramna ters der. Peine dt ey anlam deil, sesin somut rneini oluturduu kararsz nesnedir. yleyse adda ne var ki? Bir kere, Veronal aklar kukusuz fazlasyla sesin ilk anlamna, karanlkta aklarn destekleyen iirsel sese dayanmaktadrlar. Bu sahneyi, onlarn tekillii ile iirsel etkinin birletii nokta bu kadar unutulmaz yapar. Ancak seste ve dier eylerde bundan fazlas vardr. Eer el deil, ayak deil, kol deil, yz deil, insann bir baka uzvu deil ise, ses nereden gelmektedir? Ses, en sade tezahrnde, biriciklii tayabilecek bir ey gibi grnr, dar kard isellii ifade eder, dipsiz bir ie tanklk eder, bireyselliin sakl hazinesini gzler nne serer. Ancak aka ifade etmemiz gerekirse, bu da bir tuzaktr. Her ne kadar ses, yalnzca havann titremesi, geici ve yayld anda kaybolan bir ey olsa da (ve dolaysyla varl en yakalanmas zor ekilde akla getirse, ancak bunu yaparken yzeysel olmakta inat etse de), insann kendi sesinde varlk bulduu gibi gl bir mefhum vardr; sradan buradalktan daha gerek olduu kabul edilen, buradaln tesinde buradalk. Belki de, varlk bulma kavramnn kendisi, ses olmadan anlalamaz bu Derridann fonomerkezcilik kavramnn dayanak noktasdr. Varl dnmek iin bir sese ihtiya duyarz. Hatta yalnzca dnmek iin deil, kendi kendimizin varln, z-varln, bilincini deneyimleyebilmek iin kendi kendine duygulanma dayal bir sese ihtiyacmz vardr. Saf, kendine dnk duygulanm sansnda kii, kendi sesinin hem kayna hem de alcsdr; belki de bilin dediimiz ey budur.7 Sesi ruh, nefes, pozitif buradalktan daha gerek bir ey ile balayan kuvvetli bir metafor olma hali vardr. Ancak bu, buradalk kavramnn kendisini rktc, hayali, sanal bir eye dayandrr. nk ses nereden gelir? Yayld nokta ile ilgili basit bir soruda bile bir paradoks bulunur: az, bedende iinden geldiini varsaydmz akl, grebiliriz fakat ses, grnmez bir iten gelir, bilinemez bir ie iaret eder, kaynan hibir zaman gremeyiz. Bedeni olabilecek en dramatik ekilde d ve i olarak ikiye bler ve bu blnmedeki ana iletmeci kendisidir. Bu ayrm izgisinde durarak (Durmak m? Sesin ayakta durabilme olasl hi yoktur ki), ayn zamanda beden ile dilin kesime noktasn oluturur. Beden ve dilin ortaklat eydir. Dili, bedenden salnma noktasna tutturur, bedene balar. Belirten, bedensiz mantk yaratdr, ancak ses araclyla bir bedene sahip olur, vcut bulur. nk yalnzca biri kendisini kendi sesi olarak kabul ettiinde ileyebilir. Ancak bu balant paradoksaldr, nk ses, ne bedene, ne de dile aittir dilbilim tarafndan ele geirilemez, dilde onun bir paras haline gelmeden yaar ve bedenin maddi bir paras da deildir. Daha ok bedenden kan bir mermi gibidir. Ne ierisi, ne darsdr, ama tam da bu ikisi arasndaki geiten meydana gelir. ile d arasndaki blnmenin byk iletmecisidir; yeni bir ontoloji ya da topoloji gerektiren bir snr paradoksudur. Bir edebi rnek daha vereyim. Modern an afandan, Shakespeareden balamtm. Dolaysyla imdi dier utan, modern an yksek noktalarndan birinden, Samuel Beckettn The Unnamable (Adlandrlamaz) ile devam etmek istiyorum. Romeo Juliet sahnesi, ses ile isim arasndaki kartl, gl bir biimde ifade ediyor ve her ikisinin bunu takip eden dramn gsteriyordu. Beckettin metni ise, bunu tam da u noktasna kadar getiriyor: burada sz konusu olan, tam olarak sesi olmayan bir isim, isimsiz bir ses, isimlendirilemez bir ses, nk roman boyunca sesi kimin kardn ya da sesin nereden geldiini bilemiyoruz. Kayna ya da yeri bilinemeyen ses, romann tm sylemek istedii, yani roman isim konulamaz bir ses ile yryor. (unu hatrlatmak gerekir ki, Adlandrlamaz, bir lemenin son roman. Ondan nceki iki blm ise Molloy ve Malone lyor.
7 Bkz. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976, sf. 20.

51

Her blmle birlikte daha fazla ey kayboluyor ve en sonunda artk hibir karakter, kahraman ya da kurgu kalmyor. Geriye kalan tek ey bir ses.) Bir alnt yeterli olmal: Bunu sylemi olacam, azm olmadan sylemi olacam, iimde sylemi olacam ve sonra dmdaki ayn sesle syleyeceim. Belki de bu benim ne hissettiim, bir dars, bir ierisi ve ortada ben. Belki de bu benim olduum ey, dnyay ikiye blen, bir tarafta dars, bir tarafta ierisi, bir folyo kadar ince, ne bir taraf ne de teki tarafm. Ortadaym. Blnmeyim. Kalnl olmayan iki yzeyim. Belki de hissettiim bu, titretiini hissettiim bir kulak zarym. Bir tarafta zihin, bir tarafta dnya, bense hibirine ait deilim 8 Hi kimse bu kadar net ifade edemezdi: ses, blnmenin tam anlamyla kuraldr. Kendisi hibir tarafta deildir ama ayn zamanda her iki taraftadr. erisi ve darsnn kesiimindedir, ancak bu kesiime de yerletirilemez. ki taraf birletiren ve ayran incecik bir folyodur. Bir yazarn iinden geenleri takip ederek ve onlara sadk kalarak kada dkt varsaymna, yani sergilenebilir ve btnlkl bir ekle getirmeden ham halleriyle, bilinte belirdikleri ekliye yazmasna, modern edebiyatta verilen standart bir isim var: Bilin ak. Beckett sz konusu olduunda bu terim, hayli yanltc ve uygunsuz. nk bilin ak, bilinci d dnyadan temizce ayrlm bir dnya olarak en batan varsayyor. Ancak Beckettn tm yapmak istedii, i sesin bir yere yerletirilemezliini korumas, zihin ile dnya, konuma ile beden arasndaki kenarda, her ikisini keserek ve her ikisi tarafndan kesilerek durmas. teki ayrm, hemen dtaki ayrma tercme oluyor, dtaki ise itekine. Bu, bilincin tutarsz olduu anlamna gelmiyor; aksine bilinci ayran ve onu bilin yapan izginin kendisi srekli bulank ve ayrt edilemez. ki alnt arasndaki mesafeyi geerken, una iaret edebiliriz: bir taraftan ses ve isme, Babann-adna rnek tekil eden drama, te yandan isimsiz ses, dayanak noktas olmayan ses, tutunacak ya da kar gelecek bir Babann-ad olmamas ve hibir bireyselliin ifade bulamamas, yerine getirilecek ya da getirilemeyecek sosyal devlerin olmamas, yalnzca sesin devamll, ancak ayn zamanda sonuna kadar direnme etiine zorlamas Sanki isim (Babann-ad); adlandrma, sosyali tanmlama, tavsiye verme ve bir sosyal yer verme gcn ve iktidarn isme kaptrm gibidir. Kaybolmutur. Ses, yeni bir sestir, adeta modern an icaddr, modern an getirdii bir eydir. Dolaysyla Beckettin Adlandrlamaz Romeo ve Julietle beraber okunabilecek bir emsaldir. Ayrm izgisine beden veren ses, kiinin tam anlamyla kendisinin olarak sahip kamayaca bir eydir, neticede kimse kendi sesiyle konuamaz: en mahrem biimde benim olduu, benim en iteki hazinem olduu dnlebilir. Ancak, ayn zamanda kendimizin buradaln, kendilik mefhumunu bozan ve sanalla atfeden bir eydir. eriden kaynaklanarak kiinin istediinden daha fazlasn ortaya karr. Beckett, burada ok iyi bir rnektir: gnmzde insanlara, ilerindeki yazarn sesini nasl bulacaklarn reten pek ok yaratc yazm okulu vardr. Onlara rehberlik eden metafor da udur: yazda kendi sesinizi bulun, yalnzca sizin, size zg, yalnzca size mahsus olan sesinizi. Oysa ki Beckettin sorusu, bunun tam tersiydi: insan nasl kendi sesini kaybeder, nasl ntr, anonim bir ekilde yazlr, biimden kurtulmak nasl mmkn olur, nasl bir yazar olunmaz (dolaysyla yabanc bir dilde yazar ve kendini ana dilinin aldatc snandan mahrum brakr). Foucault, Yazar nedir? isimli dersinin fikrini Beckettden, kimin konutuu ne fark eder, Quimporte qui parle, cmlesinden alr. Nasl tarifsiz i hazine tuzana ve onun ikiz tuza olan yazarla dmeyebiliriz? Foucaultya gre ses, mahrem ya da hususi deil, kiinin kendi sesinde var olduu yanlgsn bozan ve bilincin iselliini rahatsz eden bir eydir. Sesin bir igalci, yabanc bir beden, protez, bedensel bir uzant, yapay bir uzuv olduunu sylemek, daha uygun olacaktr hibir zaman otantik deildir, asla sadece bir ifade deildir.
8 The Beckett Trilogy, London: Picador, 1979, sf. 352.

52

Sesin hayaletimsi bir otonomisi vardr, hibir zaman grdmz bedene ait deildir, ses hibir zaman onu karan insann sesiymi gibi deildir, her zaman bir boluk, Verfremdung, uyumazlk vardr. Her zaman iin iinde bir vantrilokluk var gibidir, sanki vantrilokluk sesin standart kullanlma biimidir, ancak alkanlktan tr bunu gzden karrz (ya da alkanln siperleri biraz indiinde tesadfen duyarz). Bir igalci olarak ses, hayaletimsi bir doaya sahiptir, hem mahrem hem da ait bir taraf vardr Lacan bununla ilgili olarak mkemmel bir kelime icat etmitir, extimate. ki rnek vereyim. Stanley Kubrickin efsanevi filmi 2001 Space Odysseyde (2001 Uzay Odisseias) Hal 2000 isimli uzay gemisini yneten bir bilgisayar vardr. Bir noktada bu bilgisayar etrafa saldrmaya balar, dolaysyla yok edilmesi gerekir. Bu yzden kahramanmz (Keir Dullea) bilgisayarn beyin hcrelerinin yavaa, bir bir balantsn keser (o gnlerde bilgisayarlar ok byk boyutlardadr). Bu esnada bilgisayarn tamamen mekanik sesiyle konutuunu duyarz, yaam iin, affedilmek iin yalvarr. Szde ocukluuna geri dner, ocuk arklar syler bilgisayar tam da bir insan gibi lr, trajik bir insan lm gibi; yalnzca mekanik sesiyle insanl zt grnr, yapmack sesi, yapay uzants, uyumsuzluu... Gnmzde bunun gerek-yaam yks olan bir benzeri vardr, Stephen Hawkingin sesi: byk bir beyin, yaayan sper bilgisayar, gnmzn bilimsel ikonu, modern bilimdeki en zeki zihindir; ancak bedenin minimumluuna, tamamen engelli, ekip klm bir bedene skmtr ve insanl tamamen mekanik bir ses ile somutlamaktadr (ilgi ekici ama tekinsiz bir ses, zihnin bedenden gelmeyen sesi, kiisel olmamasyla ilgi ekici bir ses). Sesin bu hayaletimsi otonomisi, bu belirsizlik alan, belki de en iyi akusmatik ses olarak bilinen eyde hissedilebilir. Terim, nl Fransz somut mzik bestecisi Pierre Schaeffer ve takipisi Michel Chion10 tarafndan ortaya konmutur ve en basit ekliyle, kaynan gremediimiz ya da belirleyemediimiz ses anlamna gelir. Sesin nereden geldiini ve hangi bedene atfedilebileceini bilemeyiz. Bu ses, tekinsiz etkiler brakabilir, yerini belirlemenin imkanszl, ona zel bir g, bir tr her eye hakimiyet ve her yerde bulunabilme imkan verir. Bunun en arpc rnei, Hitchcockun Psychosudur: Film tamamen annenin sesinin nereden geldii, hangi bedenden kt sorusu etrafnda dner. Ses vardr, ancak onu reten bedeni, filmin en sonu gelene kadar gremeyiz. Ve ekleyebiliriz ki annenin sesi, herhangi bir ses deil, sese dair deneyimin balad yer, kiinin duyduu ilk sestir. Bu rnek paradigmatiktir bebein ilk ve belirleyici dnemindeki kaderini yle tayin eden anne sesi de tam anlamyla akusmatik bir sestir; bebek ilk bata ve yapsal olarak bu sesin kaynan tespit edemez, dolaysyla akusmatik ses, gerekte tekinin sesine dair ilk ses deneyimidir. Psychonun bir kssann anlatm gcne eritii nokta da burasdr. Akusmatik ses ile felsefe arasnda znde bir ba vardr. Akusmatik sz nereden gelmektedir? Kendini ilk olarak filozof olarak tanmlayan ve ilk felsefi ekol kuran kii Pisagordur. Akusmatikler onun takipileri, rencileridirler; yaklak be yl sresince retmenleri bir perdenin arkasndan ders anlatmtr. Diogenes Laertiusun (VIII, 10) bu konuda anlattklar elimizde mevcut. Buna gre, Pisagorun talebesi olmak isteyenlere ustalarnn dersleri, onu grmeden, bir perde arkasndan sunuluyordu. Perdenin arkasnda ders veren retmen, ses karan grnmez bir yaratk, dahiyane bir hareketle belki de felsefeyi kuruyordu. Perdesi ve dier elemanlar ile birlikte bu bir felsefi tiyatroydu; ancak perde be yl boyunca hi kaldrlmad iin ilk balarda felsefe, perdenin arkasndaki bir oyuncu gibi grnyordu. Bu mekanizmayla amalanan ey, yalnzca sesin grevli olduu retme iini, ilgiyi datacak herhangi bir grsel eden, hayal gcnden, herhangi bir imaj ya da grntden, retmenin davran ve bedeninden, zetle sunulan fikirlere younlamay engelleyebilecek herhangi bir eyden uzak tutmakt.
9 Aksine filmde hazrda bekleyen astronotlar en kiisel olmayan ve mekanik ekilde lenlerdir. 10 Bkz. Pierre Schaeffer, Trait des objets musicaux, Paris: Seuil, 1966; Michel Chion, La voix au cinma, Paris: Cahiers du cinma, 1982.

53

retme, fikirler, doktrin, btn bunlar, yalnzca uygun vasta olarak kabul edilen Ustasnn Sesi, ruhun vastas, araclyla verilirdi; ama, ruhu bedenden ayrmakt. Bu ayrmda ruh, seste idi, beden ise grsele aitti. Ancak talebelerin bu ekilde fikirlere daha iyi younlaaca iddiasnn yan sra, retim bu ekilde akusmatik bir sese sahip oluyor ve mstesna bir otoriteyle donanyordu. Fazladan bir anlam, ancak gerekletii sradan yer grld takdirde dalabilecek bir aura kazandryordu. Mekanizmann gzellii, basitliinde ve formel, otomatik bir biimde ileyebilmesinde yatyordu hatta bir perdenin arkasndan ders vererek insann yar otomatik bir biimde retmen, usta olabilecei de sylenebilirdi. retmenin yalnzca retmen deil, ayn zamanda usta olabilmesini salayan bir otorite fazlal vard ve bu fazlalk sunulan fikirlerin ieriinden deil, sesin grnmezliinden geliyordu. Beden, ruh iin bir utan kayna gibiydi, ancak burada bir tuzak, bir yanlg vard; nk sesin kendisi bir tr beden, hatta tersine, grnr bedenden daha beden olan bir eydi; herhangi bir bedenden daha kuvvetli ve zorlayc bir hayaletimsi bedendi. Bedensizletirilmi bedenin mecbur etmesi ve bunun akusmatik bir sesle desteklenmesiyle, retme daha ikna edici bir hal alr. Ruh, seste yeni bir beden, bir aura kazanr ve etkili olmasnn nedeni de budur. Diogenes Laertius ayrca bize yaarken dahi Pisagorun bir klt objesi olduunu ve ilahilik mertebesine ulatn syler ki, belki de bunun kullanlan mekanizmayla bir alakas yok deildir. Belki de bu, ilahi etki yaratmak zere tasarlanm bir mekanizmadr. (stelik hem ncilde hem de baka dinlerde Tanr, akusmatik ses olarak ortaya kar.) O kadar yl sonra perde aldnda ve anssz talebeler bu mucizeyi, sesin kaynan, acnas ve sradan yal adam kendi gzleriyle grdklerinde zaten bu tr bir durumda kim olsa sradan grnr, nk kiinin grntsnn sesi ve otoritesi ile boy lmesi imkanszdr ne olduu zerine ancak tahmin yrtebiliriz. Perde aldnda zavall retmenin ne duruma dtn dnp zlebiliriz, ya da tm bunlarn bir anda bir kara mizaha, hatta daha da kts kimsenin kamusal alanda itiraf edemedii bir komediye dndn tahmin edebiliriz. Eer felsefenin balangcnda bu akusmatik aygta sahipsek, o zaman felsefenin sonunda da bunu psikanalistte bulabiliriz. Analist de kiinin gremedii birisidir Freudun ynergelerini takip ederek kanepenin gerisinde, hastann gr mesafesi dnda oturmas gerekir. Burada da ama, dikkati datacak tm grsel eylerden kurtulmak ve zellikle hastann kendi davranlarna psikanalistin verecei tepkileri grmesini ve buradan ipucu yakalamasn engellemektir. Dolaysyla analist bir saf ruh, bir hayalet, grnmez bir yaratk, bedeninden yoksun kalm bir ruhtur. Ancak buradaki durum tam tersidir: Freudun mekanizmasna gre bu sefer hasta, yani zne, tm konumay yapmaldr bu tam da hastalardan biri olan Anna Onun syledii gibi konuma krdr; kiinin tedavi olabilmesi iin konumas gerekir. Dier tarafta analist, limitler dahilinde konuarak ya da hi konumayarak kendi iini grebilir. Zaman zaman snrlar dahilinde bir eyler sylese de analiz sreci, analist hibir ey sylemeden de yrtlebilir. Dolaysyla, durum tamamen tersine evrilmitir: zne konuur, ama bir reti sunmak, fikirlerini yaymak iin deil, aklna den her eyi sylemek zere konuur. Felsefeden gayet uzak olarak, bu konuma sadece bo laflar, serbest armlardan ibarettir, ne olsa olur. Ancak buradaki mesele, tekine konuuyor olduudur; retmene, ustaya, doktora, tandn sand birilerine bu Lacann mehur aktarm formldr (ve sessel ba aktarm iin ok nemlidir). Bir eyleri bilmesi gereken kii, ayn zamanda grlmemesi gereken kiidir, yapsal olarak perdenin arkasndadr ve dolaysyla her yerde ve her eye kadir grnr. Dolaysyla analist, bu tersinden Pisagor bedenlemesinde, akusmatik sese sahip yaratk deil, sessizlie indirgenmi, duyulamaz sestir; belki de sesin en saf hali, kavram haline getirilmi sestir. Akusmatik ses deil, akusmatik sessizliktir, yani kayna grlemez ve yeri tespit edilemez sessizliktir. zne, sesi ve retiyi dinleyerek deil, kendisi sessizlikle konuarak renir ve dnr onun sesini alan ve ona bir nitelik kazandran tekinin sessizliinden bir eyler renir. teki, doktrin sahibi biri deildir; zne kendi bo laflar araclyla retiye giden yolu bulmaldr.

54

Bo konumalar tekinin sessizlii ile bir dngye girerek bir retiye dnr. Ses, kt anda ortadan kaybolur. Sanki bir an geceyi aydnlatp sonra kaybolan imek gibi, anlk bir parlama olarak ortaya kar ve sonra buharlar. Srdrlebildii ve desteklenebildii takdirde, yalnzca ses kard srece etrafa hakim olabilir; o zaman tm alan, ierisini ve darsn igal etmeye, bizi korku iinde brakmaya gc yeter, ama yalnzca belirli bir sre zarfnda bunu yapabilir. Dayankl deildir, sabitlik iddias yoktur; znde fani ve geicidir. Zaman ile arasnda mahrem bir iliki vardr zamann geiini temsil eder, geen zamana tutunmann imkanszln gsterir. Dolaysyla hafza ve bellek olasl ile de mahrem bir ilikisi vardr. Onun geiini nasl telafi edebiliriz? Ses alkonabilir ve korunabilir mi? Bunun iin iki yol vardr: Biri insanlk tarihi kadar eski, dieri de olduka yeni. lki tabii ki dildir, belirtendir, isimdir. Dil, sesleri tekrarlayabilmek, alkoymak ve korumak iin devasa bir makinedir. yle syleyebiliriz: dil, sesin kendisi dnda her eyi tutabilir ve koruyabilir. Ya da daha ak ifade etmek gerekirse: Kendi mkemmeliyetsizlii dolaysyla yalnz sesteki baz eyleri yakalayabilen ve koruyabilen kusurlu bir makinedir. Ancak makinenin garip sesleri ve kk teknik problemleri, yalnzca iirin ve bilinaltnn yakalayabilecei inlemeler, zgnlkler, tuhaflklar, anormallikler araclyla sesin nlama ve yansmalarn yakalayabilir. Garip sesler ve kk teknik problemler, makinenin iinde bir hayalet, ses hayaleti varm hissi yaratt noktadr, ya da makine ruh yaratyormu gibi gelir. Yine de dil makinesi, sesin dier zelliklerini, dile dklemez gibi grnen doasn, biricikliini ve bireyselliini, ierisi ve buradalk ile arasnda bulunan mahrem ilikiyi kavrayabilme yetisine sahip deildir. Ancak bir asrdan fazla bir zaman nce imdadmza yetimi baka bir tr makine var: ses kayd ve sesin yeniden retimini salayan teknoloji. Bu teknoloji gn getike daha byk ve daha sofistike bir hal alyor; buna bal olarak da hzla bir endstri geliiyor, yle ki hayatlarmzn en gizli alanlarna kadar giriyor.11 Gramafonlar, radyolar, kaset alarlar, CDler, telefonlar, kolonlar, mikrofonlar, sinema, televizyonlar, cep telefonlar varlmza hkmetmeye balad. Gemi yzyln en bariz ve mhim zelliklerinden biri, yeni ve daha nce grlmemi bir ses deneyimini getirmi olmasdr. Ayn anda her yerde var olan bu deneyim, geri dnlemez bir biimde ses kelimesinin anlamn deitirmitir. lk zamanlarndan beri her ses deneyimi, farkl oranlarda gerek kaynaklardan gelen seslerle, teknik aralar tarafndan retilen seslerin (rnein canl kaynaklar orada olmayan ve yalnzca yeniden retilen seslerin), birbirinden ayrlamaz bir karmdr. Bu devrimin oranlar ba dndrc, etkileri her yerde ve ok gldr. Tarihte ilk kez yalnzca sesin biricikliini yakalamak mmkn olmam, ayn zamanda yaygn ve herkesin parmaklarnn ucunda oluvermitir; tekil varl ve isellii kopyalamak sradan olmutur, ya da sradan olmu gibi grnmektedir. Teknolojinin yeniden rettii ey, aslnda tam da dilin seste ele geiremedii ve tutamad zelliktir: tekrarlanamaz bir buradala tutunmas. Sesin tekrarlanamaz var oluu, kolayca tekrarlanabilir hale gelmitir. Sesi bir destee sabitlemek ve onu kopyalanabilir yapmann sonucu olarak, bir dizi baka devrim de gereklemitir: 1. sesin uzak yerlere dahi iletilebilmesi; 2. sesin ykseltilebilmesi; 3. biimlendirilebilmesi ve dntrlebilmesi; 4. her yerde mevcut akusmatik zelliinin, yani Pisagorun perdesinin yerini, marifetli kk aralarn almas; 5. kayna yalnzca elektronik aralar olan sentetik seda ve sesler karlabilmesi olana.12
11 Tarihte ilk kez Edison 1877de Marynin kk bir kuzusu var arksn kaydettiinden beri (bu kayt kayp) ve Eiffel kulesini tasarlayan Gustave Eiffel elimizdeki en eski kayd yaptndan beri (Eiffel kulesinde LAcacia isimli iiri okumu ve kendi sesinden tarihin 11 ubat 1891 olduunu kaydetmitir) hemen hemen her ey deimitir. 12 Bu devrimlerin daha ak bir fenomenolojisi iin bkz. Michel Chion, Le son, Paris: Nathan 1998, sf. 197.

55

Tm bu devrimlerin toplam, olaanst bir devrime iaret eder. Ancak, eer ou ey sesi kavramaya dayanyorsa, nnde sonunda buradalk ve bilin mefhumlarnn kendileri (bkz. Derrida), insan olmay tanmlayan kavramlar, ses ve kendilik deneyimimiz, bu mstesna dnm ile birlikte, arpc bir biimde deiti diyebilir miyiz? Gerekten ok baka bir ekilde mi insanz? Verilebilecek ilk temkinli yant u olabilir: tahmin edeceimizden ok daha az. Elbette snrsz olanaklar sunan ve daha nce grlmemi aletlerin hayatmza girmesiyle, bu cevap ok sra d grnebilir. Bu yant vermemin ilk nedeni, sesin kendi doas ile ilgili. Daha nce grdmz gibi ses, her zaman kendinde prostetik bir zellik tar. Yeni teknolojilerin, yepyeni bir ses deneyimi getirdiini sylemek, pek de doru olmaz. Daha ok, otantiklik, bireysellik, ifade, biriciklik auras altna saklanm da olsa, seste zaten var olan bir eyi, gizlice ykseltmi ve yaymtr. Kesin konumak gerekirse, sesin hibir anlam yoktur, anlamn taycs olan belirtendir. Ancak garip bir biimde tersine evrilerek, ses hibir ey ifade etmedii halde, kendisine en yksek anlam atfedilmitir (kelimelerin tesinde bilinemez bir anlam, ilahilie ykselme ya da kendi-buradal ve biriciklik taahhd olarak). Bu yapsal yanlg, sesin tm tarihine zgdr ve bozucu etkisinin stn olduka rtmtr. Dolaysyla otantik, yani gerek bir kaynaktan kan sesi, yapay bir biimde tertip edilen ve teknoloji tarafndan kopyalanan sese kar kkrtamayz. Sesin ve sesin aurasnn katkszln, lekelenmemi arln ve tekrarlanamaz bireyselliini bozan ey, teknoloji deil, sesin kendi doasnda bulunan ve srekli onun bozulmasna iaret eden bir eydir. Bu eyin varl dolaysyla ses, hibir zaman sadece buradalk iin bir vaat olmamtr, daha ok imkansz bir buradaln gstergesidir. En nfuz etmi gibi grnd noktada, ayn zamanda, yabanc bir beden, bir protez, yar yapay bir bedensel uzantdr. Teknoloji bu ynn bytm ve ona evrensel, herkesin eriebilecei gibi bir zellik kazandrmtr.13 Ancak ayn zamanda her iki tarafn da boyutlarn bytmtr: sesin prostetik zelliini elle tutulur hale getirir ve bylece yapsal yanlgy giderirken, arada at boluu, hi olmad kadar zorlu biimde ve teknik imkanlar empoze ederek rtmeye almtr. yleyse, belki de artc olan, sesin daha nce hi olmad bir biimde deneyimlenmesi deil, bu kadar kolayca toparlanabilmesidir. Yeni teknolojilerin balarda byk bir dehet dalgasna sebebiyet verdii, akusmatik seslerin ani artna ilk bata tekinsiz etkilerin byk gsterisinin elik ettii ve bunun bilimin getirdii yeni bir tr sihir gibi algland dorudur.14 Bu sefer, telefonun ilk gnlerinden bir baka byk edebi rnek verebilirim: Proustun mthi roman Kayp Zamann zindenin nc blm Guermentes Taraf (1920). Anlatc, kendisini Bir Fransz kasabasnda bulur ve bir noktada postaneye giderek bykannesiyle telefonda konuur. Bykannenin sesinin varl yle gerektir ki, buradaln bir hayaleti gibidir. Ama tam da bu nedenle ar gldr, dolaysyla hemen bykannesini grme arzusuyla yanp tutumaya balar; bykannenin akusmatik sesi, ilk kez kayna grnmeden duyulduunu, iini durdurulamaz bir hasretle doldurur. Bu yzden ani bir itkiyle acele Parise dner; bykannesine kavumak, kollarnda, imdiye kadar phelenmedii[m] ama onun sesiyle bir anda vcut bulan hayaletten kurtulabilmek iin Peki dnp de bykannesinin odasna girdiinde ne olur? lk kez ve yalnzca bir an, nk ok abuk kayboldu, lambann yanndaki koltukta oturan, krmz suratl, iman ve kaba, hasta, gndz dleri kuran tayabileceinden fazlasn yklenmi yal bir kadn grdm fakat onu tanmyordum (2001, sf. 426). Yani ses onun iini geri gelme ve sesin kt bedeni kucaklama isteiyle doldurmutu; ancak ok ge kalmt, bulabildii yalnzca tanmad yal bir kadnd. yleyse akusmatik sesin buradal rahatsz ettiini, yaayan insanlar ele geirdiini ve sonra rahatszln bir daha hi iyileemediini syleyebiliriz.
13 Bu konuda yine Beckett bir rnek oluturabilir: sesin otantikliine taklmaktan ziyade yeni teknolojileri memnuniyetle benimsemi, kasetalar kullanm (en dikkat ekici eseri Krappn Son Teybi), radyo oyunlar ve televizyon iin yazlar yazm, Film yapmtr vb. Teknolojiyi kullan tamamen ses anlayyla paraleldir, bunu kracak bir ey deil. 14 Burada Friedrich Kittlerin titiz ve kapsaml almalarn anmak isterim; zellikle de Grammophone, Film, Typewriter (Stanford UP, 1999) isimli almasn .

56

Ancak sarsc etkiler ksa sryor ve her ey hzla yeni bir normallik haline evriliyordu; yeni sesler yaam dnyamzla btnleiyordu. Belki de zc olan, ounun pek de zc olmamasyd. Yine de, eer gndelik deneyimimiz, yeni seslerin byk basknn grnrde kolaylkla yutmu gibiyse de geleneksel standartlar asndan dnldnde, bu olaanst bir sihir baarsdr yeni olaslklar (Lacanc psikanalizin ekonomik terimini kullanmamz gerekirse), byk tekinin tarihi kaderini gerekten etkilemi ve bu kaderde belirli kaymalara sebep olmutur. Farazi olarak denilebilir ki teknoloji, byk tekinin heybetli bir uzantsn tekil eder. Byk teki kavram, ilk olarak dilin, sembolik dzenin vb.nin byk tekisi olarak ortaya konmutur, rnein ilk byk sesi aklda tutma, istif yapma ve saklama makinesi gibi. teki, dili ayakta tutan otoritedir ya da daha ok otorite varsaymdr , dilin yasa ve anlamn garantiler, nk bu tr bir garanti varsaym olmadan, bir dil konuulamaz. Bu ilk anlamyla ses, bahsedilen korumadan kaan ve belirtme mantn atlatan bir ey olarak sunulur (yalnzca garip sesleri ve kk teknik problemleri araclyla dolayl yoldan arlabilir). Sesin yeniden retilmesi teknolojisi, tekrarlanamaz olan (grnrde) tekrarlayarak ve sesin doal snrll olan mesafeyi ortadan kaldrarak, tekini ziyadeletirmi ve hatta daha da itiraz edilemez hale getirmitir. Sesin var oluunun tekillii ve biriciklii, tekrarlama imkanyla budanmamtr; daha ok, tekrarlama onun egemenliini glendirmitir: her ses-buradal, artan bir biimde yapay, hayal rn olmutur ama byk tekinin buradal, zaten bandan beri, her zaman bir hayal rndr. Hayal rn olduu gzmze arptndan dolay deil, dolayl bir inan anlamna geldiinden ve bu yzden saldrya daha ak olduu iin daha az inanrz. Hatta ok byk bir hipotez ne srmeye teebbs edebiliriz: tekinin sembolik otoritesinin d (pek ok ynden tarif edilebilir bir ey) tekini zayflatmam, aksine daha baskc, daha her yerde ve daha ele geirilemez yapmtr. smin d bataki mekanizmamza dnersek Babann-ad sanki tekrarlanabilir, artk isim tarafndan ynetilmeyen ve erevelenmeyen bir takm sesler ve onlarn yaylmas ile dengeleniyor gibidir. Sessel teki, sembolik tekinin yerine gemi gibidir. teki, sembolik olandan daha sesli bir hal almtr, artk Babann-adna ve Sahibinin Sesine bal deildir. Bir kpein fonografn silindirini incelerkenki mehur fotoraf, yirminci yzyln en simgesel ikonlarndan biri, yalnzca burada bulunmayan Ustann bizi kopyalanm akusmatik sesiyle idare ettiini deil, ayn zamanda Sahip (Usta) figrnn de deitiini gsterir. Seslerin remesi hem onun otoritesini zmtr, hem de daha yaygn ve ba edilemez yapmtr.15 Fakat bu hi de teknolojinin yaylmasna ve lmcl tehlikelerine kar (rnein Heiddegger tarz) bir at deil. Her ne kadar sesin yeniden retimi teknolojisi, byk tekiyi kuvvetlendirdi, yaygnlatrd ve paralanmasn zorlatrdysa da, ayn zamanda onun hakkndan gelecek tam tehizatl yollar da yaratt. Bulunmann canl halinin kayb iin yas tutmak gerekten yersiz, nk bulunma, her zaman sesin bozucu doasn perdeleyebilmek iin kullanlan gemie dnk, bir mittir. Ancak simulakrann artndan, kopya ve rprodksiyonlarn bitmeyen zincirinden duyulan post-modern zevk alma hali ad altnda sesin (yeniden) retilmesindeki yeni imkanlara ve yeni seslerin bolluuna sevinmek de eit derecede yetersizdir. Her iki tavr da, -her ne kadar burada karikatrletirilse de, birbirinden zt ekillerde sesten vazgemektir; biri onun (kayp) bulunma halindeki kklerine tutunur, dieri prostetik doasn takdis eder. Burada gerek duyulan ey, en zor stratejidir: erevesini kiinin yalnzca tahmin edebilecei ve ncesinde hibir rnei olmayan bir hafza politikas, ses politikas.
15 Sesler duymak her zaman psikozun bir gstergesi olarak alnmtr. Yalnzca deliler kayna olmayan sesler duyabilirler. Sessel tekiye geile psikotik damarn sradan gndelik yaamn bir paras haline geldii bir koulun ortaya ktn iddia edebilir miyiz? Seslerin okluunun, hakkn kaybeden Babann-adnn yerini tutan bir ey haline geldiini syleyebilir miyiz? Babann-adnn, tekinin otoritesinin belirteninin hakkn kaybetmesi, Lacann psikoz tanmdr.

57

Anlk sesin uzamas ihtimali, grdmz zere, hafzann imkandr da. Yeni teknolojilerle ses, gerekten de bir iz brakr; teknoloji, genilemi bir hafzadr, szde bir kesinlikle her eyi anar. stelik, yalnzca dilin yapt gibi belirtme srecini deil, tnlar, ahenkleri, sesin maddeselliini, zndeki acayiplikleri ve anlamszlklar da lk kez olarak gerekten de sesi, istee bal olarak tekrarlanabilen, kolayca ele alnabilen ve maniple edilebilen bir nesneye dntrr. Tekrarlanamaz buradalk, kendisinin ei olarak onu canl olarak saklayan, yeni bir nesne-ses dolaysyla glgede kalr. Bilgisayar teknolojisinin icadyla, hafza, daha usuz bucaksz bir biimde geniler, her ey kaydedilebilir ve bizim tasarrufumuzda istiflenebilir. Ancak, hafzann her zaman birebir kaydetme ve saklamaktan daha fazlas olduunu biliyorsak, grnrde her eyi saklayabilecek bir hafzann snrsz olaslklar, hafzann iini her zamankinden daha g bir hale getirir diyebiliriz. nk dil iin, ses kaydnda sesin dnda her eyin kaydolduunu syleyebildiimiz gibi, bunun iin de benzer bir ey syleyemez miyiz? Yeni ses-nesnelerinin istiflenebilmesi, sesin imkansz deneyimini ve zel topolojisini (bu zel topoloji, sesin belirtenden daha fazla objektif kalntsyla rtmesini engeller), daha da elle tutulabilir bir hale getirir. Ses artk bilinemez, mitik, kayp bir buradalkta deil, onun uygun rprodksiyonu olduunu iddia eden yeni ses-nesnesinde, sabit seda-imajnda yatar. Peki, eriimimizdeki tm aralarla (hem dil, hem de teknolojilerle, hem ilerinde hem dlarnda) alacak bir hafza olabileceini, ancak yine de ne belirten ile ne de kaydedilmi ses ile rtmeyeceini tasavvur edebilir miyiz? Hem belirtenlerin, hem de kaydedilmi seslerin objektif izlerinde srar eden, onlarn duyulamaz art, ne sadece bulunan ne de sadece bulunmayan, ancak onlara da indirgenemeyen bir ses objesi, dnebilir miyiz? Nasl olur da objektif bir iz olarak durmayan, fakat ayn zamanda baka bir alemde mitik ve mistik bir varlk da olmayan bir eye gvenimizi nasl srdrebiliriz? Hafzamz nasl elimizden karmayz? itilemez olan nasl duyulabilir? Bu sorular tereddtte brakmalym.

58

sahibinin sesi tr
mladen dolar kasa gallery 11 kasm 2007

Mehur ve pek ok defa yorumlanm pasajlardan biriyle balamak istiyorum, Walter Benjaminin 1940 Nisanndaki lmnden nce tamamlad son yaz olan Tarih Felsefesi zerine Tezlerin ilki ile: Hep sylenegeldiine gre, bir otomat varm ve bu yle yaplm ki, bir satran oyuncusunun her hamlesine, kendisine partiyi kesinlikle kazandracak bir kar hamleyle yant verirmi. Geni bir masann stndeki satran tahtasnn banda, srtnda geleneksel Trk giysileri bulunan, nargile ien bir kukla otururmu. Aynalardan oluan bir sistem araclyla, ne yandan baklrsa baklsn, masa saydamm gibi grnrm. Gerekte ise, masann altnda satran ustas olan kambur bir cce otururmu ve kuklann ellerini iplerle ynetirmi. Bu mekanizmann bir benzerini, felsefe alan iin tasarlayabilmek olasdr. Bu balamda, srekli kazanmas ngrlen, tarihsel maddecilik diye adlandrlan, kukladr. Bu kukla, bilindii zere, gnmzde artk kk ve irkin olan, kendini gstermesine de izin verilmeyen teolojiyi de hizmetine ald takdirde, herkesle rahatlkla baa kabilir.1 Bu ad km noktay, bu evrensel biimde kuatlm mabedi tekrar ziyaret etmek, neredeyse utan verici. Slavoj Zizek bu rnei, deolojinin Yce Nesnesinden (1989), bal da Kukla ve Cce (2003) olan kitabna kadar pek ok defa kulland. Ben de ses kuramna bir giri olarak kullanmaya alacam, ancak dorusunu sylemek gerekirse, aradaki balantnn hi de ak olmadnn farkndaym. Benjaminin bu tuhaf kssa ya da metaforla (eer yle ise), tam olarak ne anlatt konusunda ok speklasyon yapld. Tarihsel maddecilik ve teolojiyi, geici olarak bir kenara brakrsak, yle bir muammayla kar karya kalrz: Bir kukla, onu oynatann, kelimenin tam anlamyla iplerini ekenin, hizmetlerinden nasl yararlanabilir? Burada kukla kambur tarafndan ynetiliyor gibi grnr, ancak ikinci aamada, kuklann kendi amall ortaya kar. Artk, efendisinin iplerini idare etmesi gerekir. Metaforun kendisi, ayn otomat gibi bir ikiyzllkle donanm gzkmektedir, fakat nce metaforun gerek iki anlamllna bir gz atalm. Satran otomat, 1769da Wolfgang Von Kempelen adnda Avusturyal bir saray memuru tarafndan yapld.2 Gerekten de, bir elinde nargilenin marpucunu tutarken, dier eliyle de hamle yapan Trk kyafetinde bir kukladan ve makinenin iini saydamm gibi gsterirken, ierideki insann oynarken grnmemesini salayan bir aynalar, tuzaklar ve tertibatlar sisteminden oluuyordu. Otomat, byk bir n kazand ve birok nl rakibini yendi (bunlar arasnda iyi bir satran oyuncusu olmasyla bilinen Napolyon da vard; ancak bu oyunda pek varlk gsteremedi vezirle solo hcumlar ve savunmann ihmali, belki de Waterlooya doru gittiini gsteriyordu). Kempelenin lmnden sonra, otomat Mlzel devrald ve uzun bir Amerika turnesine kt; bu turne srasnda makineyi gren Edgar Allan Poe, Maelzelin Satran Oyuncusu (1836) adl nl denemesini yazd ve hepsinin bir sahtekrlktan, bir numaradan ibaret olduunu syledi.
1 Walter Benjamin, Pasajlar, stanbul: YKY, 2002. (eviri Ahmet Cemal) 2 Tom Standagen yazd Trk isimli kitapta (New York: Berkley Books, 2002) satran makinesinin geni ve ok keyifli bir hikyesi bulunabilir. Burada bu tarihten de faydalanyorum. Ancak ilgin bir biimde Standage, Benjamine hi atfta bulunmuyor.

59

Ancak satran otomat, bu icadyla mehur olan Kempelenin ilgisinin gerek oda deildi. Onun baka, ok daha byk ve iddial bir taknts vard: konuma makinesi, yani gerekten insan sesini ve konumasn taklit edebilen bir makine yapmak. Bu, 18. yzylda byk merak uyandran bir problemdi ve aydnlanma ryalarndan biriydi. Yzyln en byk matematikisi Euler, konuyu fizik biliminin en nemli problemi olarak gryordu: insan aznn akustik retimini taklit edebilecek bir makine nasl yaplabilirdi.3 Az, dil, ses telleri, diler nasl oluyor da, bu basit tehizat, hibir makinenin taklit edemeyecei kadar karmak ve ayrk sedalar retiyordu? St. Petersburg Kraliyet Akademisi, 1780de dll bir yarma at: sesli harfleri retebilen ve fiziksel zelliklerini aklayabilen bir makine yapmak. Aralarnda (bugn hala Mnih Alman Mzesinde bulunan) die Sprech Maschineyi (konuma makinesi) yapan Kempelenin de bulunduu pek ok insan, bu zorlu devi yapmay denedi. Makine, bir tarafndan akcier grevi yapan bir kre, dier tarafndan da, az grevi yapan kauuk bir boruya bal olan, tahta bir kutudan oluuyordu ve konuurken elle ayarlanmas gerekiyordu. Kutunun iindeyse, dier elin idare ettii bir vanalar ve kanallar serisi bulunuyordu. Biraz altrmayla, hayret verici efektler retmek mmknd. Bir tann 1784te belirttiine gre: Bir insan azndan kmayan ilk insan sesini duyduumuzda ne kadar bylendiimize inanamazsn sevgili dostum. Sessiz bir dehet ierisinde birbirimize baktk ve o ilk ann dehetiyle tylerimiz diken diken oldu4. Kempelen 1791de yazd, Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst Beschreibung einer sprechenden Maschine (nsan Konumas Mekanizmasyla Konuan Bir Makine Tasviri) adl kitapta, icadn ayrntl olarak anlatt. Kitap, icadn teorik prensiplerini ve pratikte gerekletirilebilmesi iin gerekli bilgileri veriyordu. Ama kitapta herkesin inceleyebilmesi iin ayrntlaryla aklanm olsa bile, makine ancak Freudyen daarcn tekinsiz szcyle tanmlanabilecek etkiler yaratt. Bir makinenin, yalnzca mekanik yollarla ses ve konuma gibi sadece insana zg bir eyi retebilmesindeki aralkta, gerekten de bir tekinsizlik vard. Sanki yaratlan efekt, kendini mekanik kkeninden kurtarp, bir art deer gibi, tam da makinenin iindeki hayalet gibi ilemeye balyordu; sanki sebepsiz bir efekt, sebebini aan bir efekt varm gibi grnyordu. Ve bu da sesin en etkileyici zelliklerinden biriydi: bir sebepsellik ihlali oluturmas, sanki kayp balantnn yerine kendi geecekmiesine sebepsel bada bir aralk, boluk yaratmas. Makinenin taklit yetenekleri olduka kstlyd. Almanca konuamyordu; anlalan Franszca, talyanca ve Latince ok daha kolayd. Elimizde makinenin daarcndan rnekler var: Siz benim dostumsunuz - Sizi btn kalbimle seviyorum Leopoldus Secundus Romanum Imperator Semper Augustus baba, anne, karm, kocam, kral Parise gidelim vb. Eer bu szleri bir serbest armlar listesi olarak okusaydk, acaba makinenin bilind hakknda ne dnrdk? uras kesin ki, konumann iki temel ilevi var: sevgi ilan ve hkmdara vg. Makinenin, hitap eklinde ima edilen bir duyguyu mekanik olarak retmesi, her iki fonksiyonu da, daha ilgin klyor. Bu minimal daarck, bir ballk duruu sergiliyor, makinenin sesi soyut sevgiliye ya da mevcut hkmdara balln, teslim oluunu ilan ediyor: sanki ses makineyi zneletirirmi, sanki btn bunlarda bir ifa varm, makinenin o anlalamaz, mekanik yapsna indirgenemeyecek bir isellik sergileniyormu ve bu zneliin ilk kullanm da kendini tekinin merhametine brakarak, insann en iyi sesle ya da sadece sesiyle yapabilecei bir eymi gibi. Bu durum sesi, ak ve politikann (Badiounun genel prosedrlerinden iki tanesi) ana noktas haline getiriyor bir vaat, bir duyuru, armaan, ya da ar olarak ses, tam da bu noktada, mekanik olarak retildii iin, bir aknla yol ayor ve ses ile znelik arasndaki yakn ilikiyi sorguluyor.
3 Eulerin, her bir tuu konuma seslerinden birine tekabl edecek bir piano ya da piyano yapma hayali vard. Bylece kii, piyano alar gibi tulara basarak konuabilecekti. 4 Alnt Brigitte Felderer, Stimm-Maschinen. Zur Konstruktion und Sichtbarmachung menschlicher Sprache im 18. Jahrhundert, iinde: Kittler, Macho & Weigel (ed.), Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Stimme (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), 269.

60

Burada, hikayenin can alc yerine geliyoruz. Kempelen, 1780lerde byk bir Avrupa turnesine kt ve seyircilerine bir ifte atraksiyon sundu: bir tarafta konuma makinesi dier yanda da satran otomat. Bu ikisinin sralamas ok nemliydi: Konuma makinesi dier mucizeyi tantmak iin kullanlyordu ve otomatn benzeri, tamamlaycs, ya da adeta aperatifi haline geliyordu. Sanki karmzda iki paral bir aygt, konuan ve dnen makinelerin platonik yarlarnn oluturduu ikili bir yaratk varm gibiy-di. kisinin arasndaki fark didaktikti: ilk olarak, satran otomat mmkn olduu kadar insana benzer ekilde yaplmt, derin dncelere dalm gibi yapyor, gzlerini yuvarlyordu. Konuma makinesi ise, mmkn olduu kadar mekanikti, ancak mekanik doasn saklamaya almyor, aksine bunun altn aka iziyordu. Cazibesi de burada yatyordu: nasl oluyordu da bu denli insan-d bir ey, insani bir etki yaratyordu? nsan-benzeri dnen makine, insan-olmayan konuan makineyle dengeleniyordu. kinci olarak Kempelen, satran makinesinin bir hileye dayandn itiraf ediyor ama bunun ne olduunu aklamyordu (hakikaten de bu srrn mezara kadar gtrd). Konuma makinesi ise bir sahtekarlk iermiyordu, herkes makineyi incelemekte serbestti; hatta herkesin kendine de bir tane yapabilmesi iin kitapta makinenin mekanizmas dikkatlice aklanyordu. Trk satran oyuncusu esiz ve esrarengiz olarak kalrken, konuma makinesinde yinelenme, taklit ve evrensel bilimsel prensiplere dayal olarak seri retim amalanmt.5 nc olarak, iki makinenin arasndaki bada bir teleoloji vard. lk olarak, zayf anlamda, konuan makine dnen makineyi takdim etmek iin kullanlyordu; nceki sonrakini mmkn ve kabul edilebilir klyor, ona inanlrlk veriyordu. nk konuan makine gerek olarak, dnen makine ise bir olaslk olarak sunuluyordu tabii ierdii hileyi de unutmadan. Ancak burada gl anlamda da bir teleoloji vard, bu da ikinci (dnen) makinenin ilk makinenin vaadini gerekletirmesiydi. Dnen makinenin sadece konuan makinenin bir uzants olarak grld bir perspektif almt. Buna gre; sralamada ilk olan konuan makine, nihai amacna (telos) dnen makinede ulaacakt, ya da daha da tesinde, ikisinin arasnda yar-Hegelyen kendinde durumundan kendi iin durumuna bir gei vard: Konuma makinesinde kendinde olan ey, dnme makinesinde kendi iin haline getirilmeliydi. Bu dzenlemenin ana fikri, yle okunabilir: konuma ve ses, gizli dnce mekanizmalar sunar, konumay mekanik biimde ncelemeleri gerekir, dnce ise bylece antropomorfik bir maskenin ardna gizlenir. Dnme, gerek kuklay, yani konuan kuklay saklayan antropomorfik kukla gibidir. Nargilesi ve dier zellikleriyle Trk klkl kuklann saklad ey, barnda barndrd cce ya da onu yneten szm ona insan benzeri beyin deil konuma makinesidir; bu gsterilerde otomat nceler ve herkesin grebilecei ekilde sergiler. Dnen makinenin iplerini elinde tutan minyatr usta odur. Birinci makine, ikinci makinenin srrdr ve ikinci makine, yani antropomorfik kukla, kazanmak istiyorsa ilk makinenin hizmetlerine bavurmak zorundadr. Burada bir paradoks var: kuklann iindeki ccenin de bir kukla olduu ortaya kyor, antropomorfik kuklann iindeki mekanik kukla Ve dnme makinesinin srr da; kendisi dnmeyen bir ey olmasna ramen, insani fiillerin en insanisi olan sesi reten, bir isellik etkisini yaratabilen bir mekanizmaya dayanmas. Mesele sadece makinenin dncenin gerek srr olmas deil, nk zaten konuan makinenin kendisinde bir ikilik, bir yarlma mevcut: makine bir ka anlaml kelime ve ksack cmlelerle konuma retmeye urayor, ama ayn zamanda konuma ve anlamn tesinde sesi de retiyor, bir artk olarak sesi.
5 Byle de oldu: 1838de Charles Wheatstone, Kempelenin retilerini izleyerek, konuma makinesinin bir benzerini retti. Bu makine Alexander Graham Bell zerinde yle derin bir etki yaratt ki, bu uran telefonun icadna kadar ilerletti. Burada Charles Babbagen 1819da satran otomatn grdn ve bu muammay takip ederek ilk hesap makinesini yaptn da eklemeliyiz. (Standage, 138-45).

61

zleyicilere en cazip gelen nokta da budur: kayt kalitesi arkaik olduu iin sylenenlerin ne olduunu karmak zordur ama herkesi byleyip evrensel bir hayranlk uyandran ey, tam olarak da yaratt evrensel insanlk izlenimiyle, sesin kendisidir. Ses, kusursuz bir mekanik sebepsellik tarafndan retilmez; nedenselliin kendisinde meydana gelen esrarengiz bir sramaya, bir ihlale, ses etkisinin kendi sebebinden fazlalna dayanr ve ayn zamanda o ihlalin meydana geldii alan igal eder. Il ny de cause que de ce qui cloche Sadece ilemeyende sebep vardr. Tam olarak: sadece aksayanda bir sebep vardr6. Sebep, sadece nedensellikte oluan bir arza noktasnda ortaya kar, bozulmu bir nedenselliin sonucudur ve buras Lacann nesneyi yerletirdii yerdir. Ancak sahte antropomorfik tavr karsnda, bir dnce kaldrac da vardr Agambenin gzel cmlesiyle: Dilde sesi aramak: dnce denilen budur7. Dil ve anlam aan aramak. Buradaki amacmz iin, Benjaminin tezini esnetebilir veya dntrebiliriz: Eer tarihsel materyalizm adl kukla, kazanmak durumundaysa, sesin hizmetlerinden faydalanmaldr. Bu da bir ses teorisi, bir nesne ses, Lacann obje a (objet a) adn verdii eyin en nemli cisimlemelerinden biri olarak, ses ihtiyacna delalet eder. I nsan sesini (voice), iinde bulunduu sedalar (sound) ve grltler okyanusundan ayran, onu sonsuz akustik olaylar silsilesi iinde zel bir yere koyan ey, anlam ile olan isel ilikisidir. nsan sesi, anlama doru iaret eden bir eydir, iinde adeta anlam bekleyiini ykselten bir ok var gibidir; insan sesi anlama doru bir almdr. phesiz ki, her trl sedaya, bir anlam yklenebilir, ancak herhangi bir sedann kendisinde, bir anlam yok gibidir. Oysa, insan sesinin anlamla yakn bir ilikisi vardr, o kendinde bir ey syleme amacn barndran bir sedadr; isel bir amall vardr, gerekten de kendini ifade eden bir iselliin varsaymn da beraberinde getirir. Kii, iaret etme amacyla, bir sr baka sedalar karabilir ancak bu durumda niyet, salt birer ara gibi kullanlan bu sedalarn dnda grnr; ya da bir dublr, sesin metaforik ikamesi gibi grev yapar. Sadece insan sesi, anlam aralarna oturan bir znellii, aracyla bir olmu niyeti artrr.8 nsan sesi, dier sedalar karmaas iinde duyulduu anda, onlar arka plana atar, asl kahraman ortaya karan bir dekora dntrr. Anlamla bu olan bu ba, sesin spontane isel teleolojisini oluturur: ses anlamn zirvesine doru kn bir aracdr, ancak Wittgensteinn merdiveni gibi, zirveye kar kmaz atlmas gerekir. Ses, sadece bir ara, anlam ise amatr. Bu, spontane bir kartlk dourur: ses, anlamn maneviliinin karsnda maddi olarak grev yapar. Bu maddiyat ideallie, manevilie giden yolda yok edilmesi gereken bir aratr. Sesin isel teleolojisi, btnlkl bir teoloji vastasyla kullanma sunulabilir. Benjaminin kssasn kullanmzda ses retimi, teolojik kamburun yerine konulmutu, ancak ses, gerekten de teolojinin gizli srama tahtas olarak da kullanlabilir. St. Augustine, nl vaazlarndan birinde (no. 288) u iddiada bulunuyor: Vaftizci Yahya sestir ve sa da sz, logos. Gerekten de bu, metinsel olarak Aziz Yuhannann ncilini izlemektedir: en bata sz vardr, ama szn kendini ortaya koyabilmesi iin bir aracya, Aziz Yuhanna biimine brnm bir haberciye ihtiya duyulur. Haberci, kendini lde alayan ses, vox clamantis in deserto olarak tanmlarken, sa, Sz ile badatrlr.

6 Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 1979), 22. 7 La fine del pensiero, alnt J.-L. Nancy, A lcoute (Paris: Galile, 2002), 45. 8 Franszcadaki vouloir dire ifadesi kullanl bir kelime oyunudur: sylemek ister sesi, yani sese ikin bir vouloirdire vardr. Derrida erken dnemdeki en iyi kitaplarndan birinde, La voix et le phnomnede (Paris: P.U.F., 1967), ksaca anlatmak gerekirse, sesin olaylarn vouloir-direi olarak ilediini syler.

62

Ses, Sz nceler ve onun akllln mmkn klar. [...] Ses nedir, sz nedir? Sadece yanklanan ve bir anlam vermeyen, baran fakat konumayan birinin azndan kan ve bir anlam olmayan bu sedaya ses diyoruz, sz deil [...] Ama sz, eer adnn hakkn verecekse, anlamla yklenmeli ve kulaa seday sunarken, baka bir eyi de akla sunmal. [...] imdi bu cmlenin anlamna dikkatle bakn: O artmal ben azalmalym (Yahya 3, 30) Nasl, hangi sebeple, ne niyetle, nasl oluyor da ses, yani Vaftizci Yahya, biraz evvel ortaya koyduumuz farka ramen O artmal ben azalmalym diyebiliyor? Neden? nk, Sz bydke sesler siliniyor. Ruh, saya doru ilerledike ses fonksiyonunu kaybediyor. Bylece sann artmas ve Vaftizci Yahyann silinmesi gerekiyor.9 Yani sesi, bir nesne olarak, kendi bana bir mevcudiyet olarak ayr bir yere koyacaksak, onu, spontane bir ses teolojisi (Szn tecellisi olarak ses) ile el ele giden spontane bir teleolojiden de ayrmamz gerekir. Sanki asl teolojiyi nceleyen ve hazrlayan bir dilbilimsel teoloji vardr. Ters tarafa doru ilerleyerek yolumuzu bulmamz, anlamn zirvesinden sadece bir ara olarak grnene inmemiz, sesi anlamn dnda, ya da anlamn kr noktas olarak yakalamamz, dildeki sesi, anlam alanndaki bir duraksama olarak aramamz gerekir. II Bu ses fazlasna bakmann, eitli yollar vardr ve bunlarn ilki de bu fazlay, estetik bir nesneye evirmektir. Dilin, anlam retme fonksiyonundan ayrd seda etkileri mevcuttur ve bunlar da bir ses estetiinin temellerini oluturabilir. Bunun en kolay ve muhteem rnei, Roman Jakobsonn 1942de sava srasnda, yapsalcln efsanevi doum yerlerinden biri olan New Yorkta verdii konferansn bal olabilir. Jakobsona genel bir dilbilim krss verilmi ve o da ie, yapsal dilbilimin ve fonolojinin temel talarn aklamak zere, Ses ve anlam zerine alt ders vererek balamtr. Hararetle konferans bekleyen izleyiciler arasnda, Lvi-Strauss da vardr. Lvi-Strauss, daha sonralar Jacobson dinledikten sonra, farkl bir adama dntn ve onun fonolojisiyle karlamasnn kendi projesinin merkezini oluturduunu syler.10 Alt ders, ancak 1976da Six Leons sur le son et le sens (Paris: Minuit) ad altnda yaynlanm ve beklendii gibi, nszn de Levi Strauss yazmtr. Bu balk, yanltc basitliiyle, belki de yapsalcln kaderini zetlemektedir. Kitabn Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning (Seda ve Anlam zerine Alt Ders) adyla yaynlanan ngilizce versiyonun bal (1978 ylnda MIT tarafndan yaynland), tabii ki kesinliiyle, her eyi berbat eder. Franszca balk dorudan sorunun kendisine gitmektedir: Sedalarla nasl anlam oluturulabilir? Sedalar nasl anlaml bir hale getirilebilir? Anlam ve seda arasndaki balant, dili tanmlar ve fonoloji de bununla uramak, mekanizmasn ve operasyonunu aklayabilmek iin, devrimci bir aratr. Sedalar, diferansiyel bir matriks kalbna konularak fonemleri, kendi balarna herhangi bir anlam tamayan ayrk niteleri retir. Fonemler, sadece diferansiyel kartlklardr ve bu yzden de seslilie kar kaytszdrlar. Sedalar, ite byle anlam kazanrlar, ama insan, hala bu aklamann zarif sadelii ve ortaya konuunun gl karsnda akna dner. Fonolojinin, beeri bilimleri, doa bilimlerinin ayrcal olarak grlen sklkla donatacak manivela olduundan bahsederken, Lvi-Straussun aklnda bulunan tmdengelimci glk de budur. Ancak tekrar dinleyin okumayn, gerekten dinleyin demek istiyorum: Six leons sur le son et le sens. Jakobson, mehur kariyerinin belki de yarsn, sadece dilbilimin standart konularna deil, daha kk bir ilgi alanna, iire hasretmiti.
9 Michel Poizat tarafndan alntlanm, Vox populi, vox Dei (Paris: Mtaili, 2001: 130). Vaftizci Yuhannann sa ile olan ilikisine, ses makinesinin dnce makinesini ncelemesi ile ayn yapsal ilevi yerine getirir diyecek kadar ileri gidebilir miyiz? Yani, Vaftizci Yuhannann sann gizli teolojik kuklas, Szn ses-ccesi olduunu syleyebilir miyiz? 10 Fonoloji, nkleer fiziin doa bilimleri asndan oynad yaratc rol, sosyal bilimler asndan oynamaktan kanamaz. (Lvi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958, 39).

63

Sedalar nasl anlam kazanr? sorusu, onun iin bir baka soruyla geniletilebilirdi: Dil nasl iirsel etkiler brakabilir? Bu nasl iler? Dil, sadece anlam retmeye yaramaz, anlam retirken ihtiya duyulandan daha fazla anlam yaratr ve dilin sedalar, anlamn aar. Bunun en basit kant, balktaki kelimelerin seimidir: Jakobson sz konusu olduunda, drt kelimenin banda, bir kelimenin ortasnda ve bir de baln sonunda tekrarlanans aliterasyonunun, kesinlikle bir tesadf olduu sylenemez. Ayrca ngilizce ve Trke evirilerde kaybolan leons ve le son cinas da, rastlantsal deildir. Balk (Churchillin kulland baka bir cinastan faydalanrsak), alliterations artful aid (aliterasyonun sanatsal yardmcs) sayesinde ortaya kmtr. Elbette sedalarn bir anlam vardr. Ancak balk, ayn zamanda sedalarn anlam atn, hibir anlama gelmeyen bir seda-art olduunu bizlere gsterir. Bu, artk orada elenceli olsun diye, gzel olsun diye, ya da haz versin diye bulundurulur. Peki, aliterasyonun anlam nedir? Aliterasyona bir anlam yklenebilir mi? Sanki burada baln grnr anlamndan baka, bir de gizli mesaj vardr tesinde deil, tam da onunla ayn yerde. Balk, alt ders olduunu duyurur, ancak baln kendisinden karlmas gereken, yedinci bir ders daha vardr. Peki, bu ders nedir? Baln kendisinin, iki farkl yne gittiinden bahsedilebilir. Bir tarafta, anlam seviyesinde, fonolojinin yolunu aar. Yani dilbilimsel sedalara yaplan muamele, sesleri fonetie dair ieriinden yoksun brakr ve onlar salt ayrmsal varlklara indirger. Dier yandan, fonetie dair ierik seviyesinde, sedalar indirgenmek iin deil, korunmak ve zerine dnlmek iindir. Seda ekolar yapabilirler; mzikleri duyulabilir, yanklanabilir, anlam reten zelliklerinden farkl olarak seda sanat iin materyal tekil edebilirler. Balktaki sedalar, fonolojik anlamda birbirine uygun sedalar deildir, anlam asndan uygunsuz birer artktrlar. Sanki anlamsz bir toplama, dilin birincil ilevine bir katk, ya da daha iyisi, fonemlerin parazitleri gibidirler. Burada, duymak (hearing) ile dinlemek (listening) ve meaning (anlam) ile sense (anlam)11 arasnda geici bir snr izilebilir. Ksaca anlatmak gerekirse, duymak meaningi, yani dilbilimsel anlamda ortaya karlabilen ifadeyi takip eder; dinlemek ise daha ok sensei, yani anlamn tesindeki seste kendisini bildiren eyi aramaktr. Duymann etrafnn anlamak ile sarl olduunu syleyebiliriz (dolaysyla Franszcadaki entendre ve entendementn ikili anlamlarn, yani duymak, anlamak ve akl manasndaki kullanmlarn grebiliriz). Bylece, duyulan anlaml olana (meaningful), iitilebilir olan anlalr olana indirger; bunu yaparken de, dinlemek baka bir eye, zerine karar verilemez, krlgan, tarifi zor ve sese bal kalan bir sensee doru alm ifade eder. Sense Deleuzen The Logic of Senseteki kullanmyla ereti bir ba kurarsak, kendisinin bir baka kullanmna, yani be duyuya ve sensual (tensel) olana da iaret eder [sensitive (hassas) ve sensible (makul) eklindeki kullanmlarna imdilik bakmyoruz bile]. Sense ve sensein, yani anlam ve duyunun (iitme duyusu) eitlenmesi, zannediyorum ki yapsaldr; anlam ve duyu (sense and sense) eklinde de okunulabilecek olan seda ve duyu(sound and sense) formlnde oktandr bulunmaktadr. Dolaysyla ses, kendi yardmyla oluan anlamn dumannda yok olmaz ve buradan, sesin en basit geici tanm yaplabilir: ses, belirtme ileminde anlama katks olmayan taraftr, bir belirtende, ifadenin etkisine raz olmayan her eydir.12 Belirten ile ses arasnda, bir kartlk vardr: belirten, anlama katlan sesin bir parasdr, ses ise (ok anlaml olabilecei halde) tam da bir anlama gelmeyendir Jakobsonn balndaki s aliterasyonu gibi.

11 .N: ngilizcedeki meaning ve sense kelimelerinin her ikisinin de Trke karl anlamdr. Burada yazarn yapt ayrma sadk kalabilmek adna metinde kelimelerin ngilizce asllarn brakmay tercih ettim. 12 Jacques-Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan et la voix, iinde, Fonagy et alii, La voix. Actes du colloque dIvry (Paris: La lysimaque, 1989, 180).

64

Jakobsona gre, anlama katlmayan ey, iirsel etki yaratabilecek bir materyal olarak ele alnabilir. Tekrarlarn, ritimlerin, uyaklarn, seda ekolarnn, metrik desenlerin ve iirin bysn yaratan tm karmak tehizatn kayna olarak, i grebilir. Ses, dilin gnderme yapma ve bilgi verme ilevlerinden ayr bir estetik etkinin kaynadr. Dilbilimsel olandan farkl bir tr kodlama, kurma problemini ortaya atacak olan yan etkisidir. Sade anlam ve gndermenin tesinde, kelimelerle mzik yapmann peindedir. Sadece ksaca unu syleyebilirim ki Operann kinci lm13 isimli kitap, bu yn detayl olarak inceliyor. Eer iir, sesi anlamn tamamlaycs yapyorsa, o zaman ark sylenirken ses, tek bana n plana ktnda, bu mantk en u noktasna gelir: ark, sesi anlamn aleyhine olacak ekilde ne karr. Sesin ilgi dankln, ciddi bir biimde alr ve belirtenin aleyhine deitirir sesin ipleri ele almasn, sadece belirten ile ifade edilemeyecek olann taycs olmasn salar. Konuamayacan eyleri arkyla syleyebilisin. Anlam karsnda ifade, anlamn tesinde ifade, anlamdan ok ifade fakat ifa-de ancak anlam ile arasnda bir gerilim olduunda ileyebilir, nk belirtenin tesine gemek ve tesini aa karabilmek iin, yine belirtenin snr tekil etmesine ihtiyac vardr. Ancak ark sylemek, ses zerinde fazlasyla durduu iin, bir feti objesine dntrerek tapnmak ve hrmet etmek istedii sesi, kaybetme riski tar. Bu, belki de sesin nndeki en byk duvardr. En yaknndaki yakn ilgi ve estetik beeni, paradoksal olarak, sar olan kulan sese doru evirmenin bir yoludur.14 Sesi arka plandan n plana getirmek, yapsal bir yanlsama gerektirir: ses, gerek ifadenin oda gibi grnr, sese derinlik baheder. Hibir ey anlamna gelmezken, aslnda yaln kelimelerden fazlas anlamna gelmeye balar; srrna eriilemez, dil ile kaybedildii varsaylan kk anlamn taycs haline dnr. Doa ile, yani kayp cennet ile, ban koparmaz. te yandan da, dili ters ynde amaya alr: lmszle ulama, ampirik, dolayml, snrl, sradan olann stne kma sz verir. Mziin, doa ve ilahilik arasnda belirsiz bir ba olarak yksek kabul gren rol de, buradan gelir. Sembolik ve arketip arkc Orfeus, ark sylediinde, arknn amac, vahi hayvanlar evcilletirmek ve Tanrlar yola getirmektir. Bu balanty en ak biimde, Musevi dini ritellerinde kullanlan ofar gsterebilir. ofar, mziin en temel eklini, belirten yasann temeli ile balar; sesin, bu sfatla anlamdan yoksun bir buradalk iinde grnd ve otoritenin saf kayna olarak iledii bir andr. Bu, Lacann kendisinin de, obje sese giri olarak setii yoldur.15 ofar, ruhu dayanlmaz derin bir duyguyla doldurmasyla nl en eski flemeli alglardan biridir; uzun, srekli sedalar karr. Melodi deil, yalnzca boa grlemesini hatrlatan uzatlm sedalar vardr. Peki, bu muazzam g nereden gelir? Lacan, Freudun Totem ve Tabu mitinde bunun srrn gren Theodore Reike bavurur: kiinin, ofarn sedasnda Babann sesini, ilkel gebe kabilenin len balca babasnn ln, hem onun Yasasnn temelini mhrleyecek hem de Yasaya musallat olacak art tanmas gerekir. nananlar cemaati, onun sesini duyarak kendi akitlerini, Tanr ile ittifaklarn kurar ve Yasaya boyun ediklerini, uyduklarn gsterirler. Bu srada en saf haliyle yasa, belirli bir ey emretmeden nce ses ile somutlar; ses kendinde tamamen anlamsz olduu halde, bsbtn itaat etmeyi emreder. Yasa metni, ancak vefat etmi babann kalntlar araclyla, yani pek de lmemi taraf, lmemi kalnts araclyla otoritesini kazanabilir: sesiyle. Babann sesi, varln kantlarken ayn zamanda yokluunu da kantlar, nk imknsz bir buradaln, Yasann imknsz kkeninin yerine geer ve bylece kk olmadn gizler. ofarn sedas, desteini ncilden alr; burada belki de en nemli rnek, Musann Sina Danda yasa tabletlerini ald kurucu andr.
13 Slavoj Zizek & Mladen Dolar, New York: Routledge, 2002. 14 Bkz. Miller: Eer mzik icra ediyor ve mzik dinliyorsak [] obje ann sesi olarak adlandrlmay hak eden eyin sesini susturmak iindir. (a.g.e., 184). Ancak buna, hemen bu tavrn her zaman elikili olduunu eklemek gerekir: mzik hem sesi uyandrr, hem de onu saklar, fetiletirir, ama ayn zamanda hi kapatlamayacak olan boluu aar. 15 Lacan, Langoisse (ed. J-A. Miller, Paris: Seuil, 2004, 281f). Bu 1962/63teki onuncu seminerdir.

65

ofarn sedas, o an oradaki halka, Tanrnn varln kantlar, nk halk, yalnzca bu emir veren korkun sesi duyabilirken, Musa Tanr ile konuur ve Onun sylediklerini anlayabilir. Dolaysyla ofar, Yasaya bal, ieriksiz bir sestir, Yasann metninin temelini oluturur. Bu balang annda ses, belirten ve onun yasas arasnda, bir ayrm vardr; ancak sesin olmad hibir yasa yoktur. Metne otoriteyi veren ey sestir, bylece onu yalnzca belirten deil, bir fiil yapar. Dolaysyla, iir ve mzikten sonra burada karmza, bir nc kullanm daha kar: emir veren anlamsz varlk olarak ses, yani szden izole edilmi, ancak ayn zamanda sz, logosu, yasay tam da o ayrmda kuran bir ses. Anlamn anlamsz kurulumu, yine teolojik bir ara olarak iler ses, Yasann teolojik kamburudur, aslnda hi de gizlenmi deildir, tpk Kempelenin ses-makinesi gibi, vitrindedir. Lacana gre balangtaki bu ayrm, nesneyi tm belirsizlikleriyle sunar, hem anlamn artlarn, hem de krlma, durma ve kesintilerinin artlarn oluturur. Ses hem alma hem de kapanmadr. III imdi, sese tamamen farkl bir adan, ses etii bal altnda yaklaalm. Ses ve bilin arasnda ba kuran bir konuma figr, ya da bir metafor, vardr. Garip bir biimde, etik her zaman ses ile ilikilendirilir. Ses, hem popler fikir yrtme pratikleri, hem de byk felsefi gelenekler erevesinde, ahlaki sorular zerine yrtlen tartmalarda, hep yol gsterici bir metafor olagelmitir. Ses, yani ahlaki uyarnn i sesi, yalnzca bir metafor mudur? Metafor oluu, belki de phelidir ve sorgulanmaldr. Kiinin gerekten duyduu, ses midir? ses, gerekten bir ses midir? Ya da asl ses, kendini hi ampirik ekilde da vurmayan bir ses midir? Kiinin duyabildii sedalardansa insan sesine mi yakndr? Ve neden ses? Ses ve bilin arasndaki ince ve inat ba nedir? Etik, sesleri duymakla m ilgilidir? Bunun ksa tarihini hatrlayalm.16 Her ey, en bilinen ses ile balar, Sokratesi her gittii yerde takip eden daimon, yani Sokratik ses ile. Savunmasnn nl bir noktasnda Sokrates, mahkemenin nnde unlar syler: lahi ya da doast bir deneyime maruz kalyorum ocukluumun erken dnemlerinde balad bana bir tr ses geliyor, geldiinde yapmay nerdiim eylerden beni caydryor ve beni hibir zaman harekete geirmiyor. (31d) Ses, bu daimon, Sokratesn glgesi, koruyucu melei gibidir. Burada, sadece ksaca drt noktaya deineceim: (1) Sesin kkeninin, ilahi ve doast olduu varsaylr, bilincin en derinlerindedir ancak bunun da tesinden kaynakland dnlr, atopikal (o yere ait olmayan) bir sestir, hem en mahrem olandr, hem de baka bir yerden gelir. (2) stelik, kural koyan bir ses deildir, ona ne yapmas gerektiini sylemez, kendi kararlarn, kendisinin vermesi gerekir. Bu ses, yalnzca koruyucu ve caydrcdr, onu yanl yapmaktan uzak tutar ama iyiyi nasl yapaca konusunda da tavsiye vermez. (3) Bu, kiinin tartabilecei bir ses deildir, yani mesele tartmak deildir. (4) Bu sesin, Sokratesi aktif siyasete katlmdan vazgeirdiini de belirtmemiz gerekir: ses, cemaatin mspet yazl kanunlarna kar ahlaki kanunlara dairdir; ses, yazl olmayan kanunlar destekler. Blnme, ses ve metin arasndaki ayrma dayanr. Ahlaki meselelerde, kat bir rehber olarak vicdan sesi, tm bir gelenek tarafndan sahiplenilir. Ses, ahlaki tlerin taycsdr; dolayszlyla mecbur brakr ve buyurucudur; kii sesi susturamaz ve reddedemez, ya da bunlardan herhangi birini yaptnda, sonular felaket olur. Sylemsel tartmalar engelleyen bu ses, sylemin, artlar ve eksilerin, karmlar ve dorulamalarn karmaklnn tesindeki ahlaki kararlar iin, salam bir zemin sunar. Salt emir veren otorite, szm ona muhakkaktr. Bu mekanizmay, en saf biimiyle Rousseaunun mile kitabnn La profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard (Savoy Papaznn nan Meslei) isimli blmnde grebiliriz.
16 Bunun iin iyi bir kaynak vardr: Bernard Baas, De la chose lobjet, Paris: Vrin, 1998.

66

Blm, Rousseauya gre, ahlakn mantkl, kat ve dirayetli temelini ierir. Rousseau, bu blmde lmsz ve ilahi sesten, doann gizli sesinden ve yanlmaz i sesten bahseder (mile IV, sf. 372-8). Dier sesler, yani nyargnn kulak trmalayc sesi ve vcudun sesi, onu bozmaya alr (vicdan ruhun, tutku bedenin sesidir, sf.372), ancak o kendini zorla kabul ettirir, sz sahibi ve yanl seslerin karsndaki doru ses olur. Kii, ahlak hakknda ne kadar ok fikir yrtrse yrtsn, salam bir biimde sese ve sesin tad dolaysz sezgi ve duyguya, salam bir biimde ayaklarn basmad takdirde, bu fikirler temelsiz kalr. Bu satrlar, Kantta da bulmak garip, hatta semptomatik olabilir. Garip, nk ahlak sorusunda Kant, Rousseaunun tam tersi bir kampa der: salam zemin, ancak ahlak kanunlaryla salanabilir, evrensellii ya da evrenselliinin yasaklan, tamamen resmidir. Her ahlaki hareket, evrensellik testine tabi tutulmaldr, ses ya da ahlaki duygulara, hi yer almaz (stelik Kant ahlak, ahlaki duygular zerine ina etmeyi sert bir biimde eletirir). Her ahlaki hareket, yalnzca akla dayandrlmaldr, ancak akln bile ses ile dolduu bir noktann geldiini grebiliriz. Kiinin mutluluunun, en yksek ahlaki hedef olduu nermesi Kanta akl almaz bir fikir gibi grnr. Konuyu tartrken, eer irade ile ilikili olarak akln sesi, en sradan insan iin bile bu kadar ak, keskin ve fark edilebilir olmasayd (... die Stimme der Vernunft in Beziehung auf den Willen (ist) so deutlich, so unberschreibar, selbst fr den gemeinsten Menschen so vernehmlich)17 bu nermenin, ahlak tamamen yok edeceini syler. Yanl ahlak taraftarlar, kafas kark kurgularn, ancak cennetsel sese kulaklarn tkadklar srece devam ettirebilirler. Dolaysyla, yalnzca kalbin, ya da doann sesi deil, akln da sesi vardr. Akln sesi, sessiz olduu halde yine de o kadar yksektir ki, insan ne kadar kuvvetli barrsa barsn, onun bastramaz ve susturamaz. (Kant ile garip bir uyum iinde Akln sesi sessizdir, ancak duyulabilir olana kadar byle kalmayacaktr der Freud.) Ancak Kantta ses, daha incelikli bir ekil alr: Sokratese gre ses, onun yalnzca yanl yapmaktan imtina etmesini salar; Rousseauya gre, ilahi ve doal ses, zneye nasl davranacan gsteren bir rehber, her durumda ona yol gsteren bir pusula gibidir. Kanta gre ise ses, hibir ey yapmay ya da yapmamay emretmez; yalnzca isteyen bir sestir, iradeyi akla ve ahlaki kanunlarn resmiliine, kategorik buyrua, tabi klmaya alr. Akln sesi, yalnzca akla teslim olmak konusunda bir ihtarda bulunur, bakaca bir ierii yoktur. Resmilii dayatan, tamamen resmi bir sestir. Akln kendisi gszdr (Fakltelerin atmasnda Kant, bu fikri gayet detayl bir biimde gelitirir), akln sesi, sessiz de olsa, gszn gcdr, akla uymaya bizi tevik eden esrarengiz bir kuvvettir. Son olarak, zelde bir ey sylemeyen, fakat saf uyar olmakta srar eden ses, son ve belki de en saf halini Heideggerde bulur. ok ksaca: Varlk ve Zamandaki Gewissen tartmasnda, vicdann var olusal-ontolojik temelleri (#55-60), vicdann arsnn tm fenomenolojisi bulunabilir (der Ruf lk, yakar?) Vicdan, alcsn ne yapmaya arr? Kesin konumak gerekirse hibir ey. ar hibir ey sylemez, dnyevi olaylar hakknda bir mesaj iletmez, syleyecek hibir eyi yoktur. Alcnn kendi iinde bir monolog balatmas iin de abalamaz. arlan benlie hibir ey arlmaz, ancak benlik kendisine, yani buradaln en yerinde olaslna arlr. ar benlii bir mzakereye deil, kendi olmann en yerinde kapasitesine davet eder. Daseini en yerinde olaslna tevik eder. Vicdan, ayrcalkl olarak ve inatla sessizlik eklinde konuur. (#56, sf. 273, yazarn evirisi) Dolaysyla saf bir ar vardr, hibir ey emretmez ancak, yalnzca bir davet ve teviktir; kiinin kendi buradalnn kapallnn dna kabilmesi iin, bir buradala alma arsdr.
17 Critique of Practical Reason, New York: Macmillan, 1993, p. 36.

67

Ve sorumluluk kavram etik, ahlaki sorumluluk tam da bu arya bir yanttr. arya yant vermemek mmkn deildir, kii her zaman arlr. Sorumluluk kavramnn ekirdeinde ses vardr; bu sese bir yanttr. Hem ses nereden gelir? Buradalmzn en temelinden, ama ayn zamanda bizi de aar, bizde bizden fazlasdr, en mahrem olann tesidir. (Der Ruf kommt aus mir und doch ber mich. Es ruft, wider erwarten und gar wider Willen. # 57, sf. 275) Mahremiyetten gelen ar srekli unheimlich, tekinsiz, olarak tarif edilir. ar, lk, ses, yalvarma bunlarn tmnn uygun yeri, Freudun kelimeye ykledii tm karmaklkla sylemek gerekirse, tekinsizdedir: ayn anda hem en mahrem hem de dsal olanda, iteki dsallkta, istimlk edilmi mahremiyette (intimacy), yani extimacyde (das Unheimliche kelimesinin ngilizceye uncannyden daha iyi bir evirisi). Yani ar, gstermeye davettir; tam da kendine dnen bir monologa kar duran Buradala altr. nsann, kendi iinde olan, fakat kendine mal edemedii eye tutunur. Ses, saf farkllktr ve zdnmsellii engeller.18 Tm bu abalar araclyla, bir taraftaki ses, sesin saf ihtar ve buyurucu tns ile dier taraftaki sylemsellik, tartma ve baz tavsiye, yasak ve ahlaki yarglar arasnda, bir kartlk ortaya kyor. Tuhaf bir biimde, burada yine (nesne olarak) ses ile belirten arasnda, bata yaptmz ayrm buluyoruz. unu diyebiliriz ki, ahlakn bu biimde ele alnnda, belirtme zinciri kendisi araclyla ve kendinde devam ettirilemez, bir tutunma/dayanak noktasna, belirten olmayan bir eydeki kke ihtiya duyar. Ama nesne, yani bir ey sylemeyen ses, bunun araclyla sesini ykseltir, kaamayan mutlak bir davet, susturulamayan bir sessizlik olur. Peki, ne tr bir temel? Bu ilahi bir g, ilahi olduu iin de yanlmaz olarak dnlebilir, dolaysyla salam bir garantidir. Ancak, zneyi sorumluluktan kurtaracak ve onu emirleri yerine getiren biri haline dntrecek olan da, bu ak olumlu ses olacaktr. Bu tuzaktan korunmak iin, sesi hibir ey emretmeyen ve hi garanti sunmayan saf bir davet olarak grmek gerekir. Bunu anlamann mmkn olaca yollardan biri de, bunu etik alannda ifade iermeyen telaffuz olarak ele alnan saf telaffuz olarak ses ile ilikilendirmektir.19 Bu noktada, asl nemli noktann, ahlakn mihenk tann bulunduu sylenebilir: ifadeyi kiinin kendisi salamaldr. Ahlak kanunlar ertelenmi cmle gibidir, phede kalm bir cmle, zne tarafndan, onun ahlaki kararlar ve hareketi ile tamamlanacak bir cmle. Telaffuz oradadr, ancak zne ifade etmeli ve bylece telaffuzu stlenmeli, ona cevap vermeli ve onu srtlamaldr. Dolaysyla, ses etii ile ilgili olarak, sesin yine asl rol oynadn ve var oluu, itibaryla belirsiz bir pozisyona yerletirildiini grebiliriz. Ahlaki kanunu destekleyen ses, Sokrates ile Rousseau arasndaki zaman zarfnda grlebilen gelenek iinde ve hatta Kantta, aka ilahi olarak tanmlanmtr. Bu ilahi transandantal kanun, ayn zamanda znenin en mahrem ekirdeine de yerletirilir. Heidegger ile birlikte, sesin ilahiliinin, radikal bakalama, bir girie dntrldn grrz, kendine mal etmenin (kendini kavramann, kendini dnmenin) tesinde bir telie. Eer ilahilik ve bakalk, geici olarak byk teki bal altna konabiliyorsa, o zaman ses, teki ile ba, iindeki teki dolaysyla tekinsizdir. Yine de, ne zneye, ne tekine aittir, znenin gerektii biimde ynetebilecei sesi deildir ama sadece ilahi bir buyruk da deildir; ses tekinden gelir ama tekine ait deildir, onun bir paras da deildir. Bir boluu, tekindeki bir boluu, herhangi bir pozitiflik olmakszn snrlar.
18 Varolmann sesi sorusunu burada bir kenara brakyorum. 19 Bu mutlu forml Zupancicden (sf.164)alnmtr, Baasta da bulunabilir (sf. 196)

68

Yine sesin ikisi arasndaki stats, zne ile teki arasndaki ilgin kesiime, biri ya da dierine ait olmadan yerletirilmi belirsiz bir ontoloji ya da topoloji bulduumuzu gryoruz.20 IV imdi, baka bir dnce tarzn takip edelim. Alain Badiou, Loqiues des mondesa demokratik maddecilik olarak tanmlad eyin temel ilkelerini rneklendiren bir ifadeyle balar: yalnzca bedenler ve diller vardr. Bu aslnda, tam da nl seleflerinin (rnein Descartesn res extensa ve res cogitans ayrmnda olduu gibi) modern post modern bir avatar olarak grebileceimiz dncedir; her iki para da bir deiime girer (kyafet ve apka giymi Kartezyen makinelerden bu yana, beden olduka deiti, sanal bir bedene, oklu haz bedenine, ok cinsiyetli bedene, siber bedene, organsz bedene, yaama itkisi ve retim olarak bedene, bedevi bedene vb. dnt; dnce ise ruh ve fikirden, iaret ve dillerin okluuna evrildi, semiyotiin maddeselliine indirgendi; beden ve ruh yerine oklu hazlar ve semiyotik geldi) ancak her ikisi de, olann kuvvetli bir kant, ikili maddesidir. Ancak, bu ikili dnyada, Badiounun tm meselesi udur: Beden, dil ya da bu ikisinin karm olmayan gerekler de vardr, bunlar baka bir yerde, rnein bir takm zel Platoncu noktalarda da deillerdir. Bunlar cisimsiz bedenler, anlam olmayan diller, soysal sonsuzluklar, koulsuz tamamlayclardr. Hibir ey ile katksz olay arasnda olagelir ve askya alnrlar.21 Bylece, olaylarn sonucu olarak ortaya kan gerekler, var olanlarn dnyasnda, yani beden ve dillerin srekliliinde bir krlmaya yol aar. Bir nesne olarak ses de, yani peinde olduumuz paradoksal yaratk da, bir krlmadr bu konuda srarcym. Elbette varlkla, yani olanla, arasnda varlk kavramn destekleme noktasna varana kadar znde bir iliki vardr, ancak ayn zamanda, varlkta bir krlmaya iaret eder. Basit bir biimde, var olan eyler arasnda saylamaz; topolojisi onu, varlkla ilikili olarak yerinden eder. Burada, her ne kadar ikisi de sesi temel nokta olarak alsalar da, Derridann ve Lacann yaklamlar arasndaki fark grlebilir. Ksaca, eer Derridaya gre ses, z buradaln, z effafln ve z sahipliin ve dolaysyla da metafiziin ses ve konuma merkezciliinin anahtarysa, Lacanda ses, bozma, mlkszleme, deyim yerindeyse z-buradal rahatsz eden ve bir krlmaya neden olan eydir. Bu balamda en nemlisi ise udur: bedenleri ve dilleri bir arada tutan, tam da sestir. Dil, bedene ses ile ilitirilir, sanki yeni Kartezyen madde ayrmnda ses, beyin epifizinin ilevini yerine getirir. Maddesellik, belirten iin uygun deilse de, ses iin uygundur: fonemler sessizken, seslerin bir sedas olduu gerei bir tarafa, belirtenin (her ne kadar tamamen manta ve farklara dayansa da), bedende bir k ve yaylma noktasna sahip olmas gereklilii su gtrmez. Ancak bunu destekleyecek ve buna sahip kacak bir bedene ihtiya vardr. Bedensiz a, bir bedene tutturulmaldr. Her ne kadar aradaki balant, hayal edilebilenlerin en yzeyseli olsa da, retildii anda yok olan basit bir hava salnmnn, dokunulamaz ve sblime eklini alr. Maddesellik, bu noktada, en dokunulamaz ve dolaysyla en kuvvetli halindedir. Yine de, neredeyse bedensizlemi olan bu beden, hantal ve utan verici olmak iin yeterlidir, bedene pek de uymaz. Dolaysyla burada, Michel Chionun (Pierre Schaefferi izleyerek) akusmatik (acousmatic) ses22 olarak adlandrd ey ile ilgili tm dertleri grrz.
20 Bu adan bakldnda, psikozda sesin yerini ele alabiliriz, ancak burada bu soru ile uramyorum. Eer gerekten ses, tekinin yerine geiyor ve hemen kanunu yapyorsa, o zaman psikozda ahit olunabilecek dramatik sonular gerektirebilir. Lacan psikozu baba ismine olan hakkn dmesi bal altnda inceler den babann ismine ynelik hak ise, Gereke ses olarak geri dner. 21 Alain Badiou, Logiques des mondes, Paris: Seuil, 2006, sf. 12 22 Bkz. La voix au cinma (Paris: Cahiers du cinma, 1982).

69

Akusmatik sesin kayna belirsizdir, bedenini bulduunda ise bedene balanamad anlalr, yani bedene hi de uymayan bir urdur. En kapsaml rnek, Annenin sesi nereden gelir? Hangi bedene tahsis edilmelidir? sorular etrafnda ekillenen Hitchcockun Psychosudur. Bu vaka, hi kukusuz bir rnektir, nk tm akusmatik seslerin annesi tam olarak annenin sesidir, tanm itibaryla akusmatik sesin en iyi rneidir, bebein kaynan gremedii bir sestir bebein dnyayla ba, gbek kordonu, yuvas, maaras, zindan ve dr. Bu ses hangi bedenden kar? Psychoda bir yant bulabiliriz. Bunun popler kltrdeki daha az kaygl bir rnei iin, aktarm (transference) zerine olduka Freudyen bir hikayeye, Oz Bycsne bakalm.23 Efendi, ancak geldii kaynak gizli olan bir ses olduu srece efendi olabilir. Tm byclk, akusmatik sesten oluur ve bir kez rt kaldrldnda, ister istemez efendi gln ve gsz bir yal adama dnr. Artk ka umudu onda deildir, zira kendisi de byk oranda yardma muhtatr. Akusmatik ses, kayna tespit edilemedii srece insana srekli musallat olan bir sestir. Her yerde bulunduu ve gcnn her eye yettii hissini verir. Pek ok dinde, ilahlarn tam da akusmatik ses eklinde ortaya kmas, bu sebepledir. Akusmatik sesle ilgili asl problem udur: gerekten kayna saptanabilir mi? Bu, Chionun dezakusmatizasyon dedii sretir: ses, beden ile ilikilendiinde, her eye kadir olma zelliini yitirir, sradanlar ve Oz Bycsnde olduu gibi aktarm ker. Ses gcn yitirir; fonik fallusunu ancak beden ile ilikisi grnmez olduunda kullanabilen taycs zerinde, idi edici bir etki brakr. Chion, dezakusmatizasyonu striptiz ile karlatrr: pek ok aamal bir sre olabilir, kii sesin taycsn nce uzaktan ya da arkadan, ya da birok belirsiz durumda grr (Psychoda olduu gibi). Son aamaya, kii gerekten iinden ses gelen delii, bedendeki akl, yani az grdnde geilir. Yani boluu, yar, delii, kovuu, fallusun yokluunu grdnde kii, Freudun nl senaryosunda olduu gibi24, son aamadan bir aama nce, tam boluk belli olmadan nce, durabilir ve bu sondan bir nceki aamay fetie dntrebilir, idi edilmenin nne bir set, boluun nne bir siper ekebilir. Ses fetiizmi, kii imkansz atlak ile, yani sesin kayna olduu ileri srlen yark ile karlamadan ve onun tarafndan evrilmeden hemen nce nesneyi sabitlemesine dayanr.25 Ancak sonuta, dezakusmatizasyon diye bir ey yoktur, sesin kayna hibir zaman grlemez. Az grebiliriz, ancak ses aa kmayan ve yapsal olarak gizlenmi bir i mekandan gelir, byk ihtimalle de kiinin grebildiiyle rtmez. Sradan gnlk deneyimde bile bir insann grnm ile sesi arasndaki ilikide, biz bu ilikiye almadan nce, uyumsuz bir eyler vardr. Bu ok anlamsz, bu ses bu bedenden kyor olamaz, bu kiinin sesi bu olamaz, ya da bu kii sesine benzemiyor gibi eyler dnrz. Her ses yaym, znde vantrilokluktur. Zizekin bununla ilgili ok iyi bir cmlesi var: Bedeni, kendi sesinden ayran almas imkansz bir ayrm vardr. Ses, hayalet kabilinden bir otonomluk sergiler, grdmz bedene pek de ait deildir. Dolaysyla, yaamakta olan bir insan bile konuuyor olsa, orada minimum da olsa, her zaman bir vantrilokluk mevcuttur: konumacnn kendi sesi, sanki onun ukurunu kazyor gibidir ve bir anlamda kendi kendine konuur, onun iinden konuur.26
23 Freud gibi Lyman Frank Baum da Mays 1856da domutur. Freudun Dlerin Yorumu adl kitab gibi, Baumun Oz Bycs isimli eseri de 1900de baslmtr. Bunlara bakarak, Freud ve Baum adl bir hikaye hala yazlmay bekliyor diyebiliriz. 24 The Pelican Freud Library 7, 353f. 25 Modernliin en sembolik imajlarndan biri Munchun lk isimli resmidir. Adornodan Jameson ve Zizeke, pek ok dnr tarafndan bu resmin analizi yaplmtr. Benim bu zel balamda ekleyebileceim, yalnzca bir dipnot var: kii boluu, az, derinlii grr, ancak koruyacak ya da tutunacak bir fetii olmadan. lk boaza taklmtr, kii azdaki siyah delie mhland lde sesin tns artar. (Bunlardan da te, antropomorfik, garip, lk atan yaratn kulaklar yoktur sadece kimseye lyla ulaamyor deildir, stelik ona da ulalamaz.) Bu sembol tm bir modernlik program izler: fetiten baka bir obje olmas gerektii nermesine dayanr. 26 Slavoj iek, On Belief (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), 58.

70

Dolaysyla, bir nesne olarak ses, tam da desakusmatizasyonun imkanszl ile ortaya kar. Yalnzca kaynan tespit etmesi imkansz, musallat olan ses deildir. Daha ok, kt varsaylan kaynak ile arasndaki uyumsuzlukta belirir, ancak muhakkak geri ekilir. Mesele yle zetlenebilir: ses, belirteni bedene balar, ancak her ikisine de ait deildir. Dilbilimin bir paras deildir; tam olarak dilin, dilbilimin imkanlaryla ba edilemeyecek artdr. Bedenin de bir paras deildir kendini bedenden ayrtrr, bedene uymaz, kaynandan ayrlm bir fzedir, bedenin tesindeki hayalet beden gibidir drtnn nesneleri gibi (Ses ve Tortular diye bir balk bile nerebiliriz). Dolaysyla, paradoksal ve belirsiz bir noktada durur, hibirine ait deildir ama ortaklatklar noktay meydana getirir. Ses, bedenden kar, ancak ona ait olmaz. Dili de, dile ait olmadan destekler, ancak bu paradoksal topolojide, bu rtebilecekleri tek nokta olur. te burada, Lacann iki emberin kesime noktasn gsteren gzde emasn kullanabiliriz: beden emberi ile dil emberi, seste kesiirler ama ses, her ikisine de extimate27tr. Ses, bu rol iin en bariz adaydr, nk gerekten de, belirteni bedene balar. Ancak, gdnn dier nesneleri iin de ayn topolojik yap geerlidir. Bedensiz organlar, bedenin hayaletimsi uzantlar, bedene deil, ierisi/dars ya da ierme/karma iin kritik nemdeki bir alana (gs, dk) aittirler. Ancak ayn zamanda, tekinin ierisinde/ darsndadrlar; her ne kadar tekinin beden zerindeki etkisinin sonucu olarak ortaya ksalar da (belirten kesiin sonucu), sembolik sistemin paralar deillerdir. V Eer ses, ne bedene, ne de dile aitse, eer ikisini ilikilendirmenin kaidesiyse (rnein ayrmlarnn), ieri ve dar ayrmnda da nemli bir rol stlenir. Ses sorusunu ele almann bir ekli de, konuya tehir bal altnda bakmaktr, ya da ar tehir. Kim ya da ne tehir edilir, kime ya da neye tehir edilir? Bir yandan kii, nitelii gerei, dinleyiciyi itaat etme pozisyonuna yerletiren sese maruz kalr. Dinlemek, zaten itaatin balang aamasdr (pek ok dilde etimolojik bir ba vardr obey, obr, obaudire, gehorchen, vb.); Sahibi-nin Sesi balnda, somut rneini bulan para da budur. Dinlemek, tabi olmann minyatrdr. Ses, duyulduu an, otoritenin kayna olarak belirir. Kendini empoze eden, byleyen, hipnotize eden, batan karan ve esir eden bir eydir. Bu zelliin en muazzam biimde canlan, ses ile ilahi olan arasndaki ilikide ortaya kar. lahi olan, pek ok dinde, emir veren sesin kaynadr, ou zaman akusmatiktir ve yine ou zaman, anlamla ilikisi yoktur. ofarda da grlebilecei gibi, emir veren, zorlayc bir buradalktr. Kraln sesini, ilahi olann yeryznde ortaya k olarak gren klt de buradan gelir.28 Ayrca faizmde belirgin olduu zere, sesin totaliter kullanl, yar-arkaik olann modernliin kalbine dn; bir otorite kayna olarak sesin, kanunu gayrimeru hale getirebilmesi ve dolaysyla acil durum kadar yaygnlaabilmesi de bundandr. Komutay elinde tutan ses, yasay askya alabilir, ya da yasann yerine geebilir. Ses, yasann kurucu istisnasdr.29 Sesin gc, onu uzakta tutmann glnden gelir. Bizi ieriden bulur, dorudan iimize akar, hibir korumaya taklmaz. Kulaklarn kapa yoktur.

27 .N: Lacann intimacy (mahrem) kelimesine ex-(d) n ekini getirerek oluturduu bir kavram. 28 Bkz. Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIe sicle (Paris: ditions Champion, 1995). 29 Fhrerworte haben Gesetzkraft, dedi Eichmann Kudste. Fhrerin syledikleri yasann gcne sahiptir. Bkz. Agamben, Homo sacer (Paris: Seuil, 1997).

71

tr

performans ve teknoloji
johannes birringer akbank sanat konferans salonu 10 kasm 2007

1. Yeni bir r Eletirmenler, milenyuma girildii dnemlerde, dans ve teknolojinin birlikteliinin, dinleyicilerini artan ve dikkatleri imdi dijital performans olarak adlandrabileceimiz tre eken birka nemli alma dourduunu fark etmilerdir. Gnmzn sanat dnyalarnda ve teknolojik kltrlerinde bilgisayar tabanl sanat olgusunun ykselii kabul edilmi bir olgu olduu halde, dijital performans tr halen olduka yenidir ve ancak tanmlanabilmitir. Dolaysyla bu trn, tarihsel ve kavramsal olarak desteklenmesi gereklidir. Ekranda daha uzun sreli dans silsilesi ve ekran grntlerinin gsterimini birletiren ok ortaml performanslar canl dans ile hareketli grnt, veya hareketin poliritmik paralar ile grnt ve sesin dijital hareketi arasndaki uyumluluu anlayabilmek iin bir zemin hazrlar. Ancak, dijital performans ekrana dayal bir ara deildir. Daha ziyade, dijital performans bir arayz yapsyla karakterize edilmitir ve biliimsel srelerin kompozisyon ve ierikler, estetik teknikler, interaktif konfigrasyonlar ve teslim ekilleriyle ayrlmaz olduu btn performans almalarn kapsad sylenebilir. nsan ve makine arayzlerinin bu entegrasyonu, ou kez interaktif sistemlerin ve gerek zamanl ok ortaml dnmlerin dizayn anlamna gelir. Tannm koreograflar Merce Cunningham ve Bill T. Jones, hareket yakalama teknolojisinin sanatsal potansiyelini kefederek bir dizi dans almas ve kurulumu -- Hand-drawn Spaces (1998), Biped (1999), Ghostcatching (1999), Loops (2001-04) -- gerekletirmek zere dijital sanatlar ve bilgisayar uzmanlar ile (Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, Michael Girard, Marc Downie) ibirlii yaptnda, Time dergisindeki eletiriler, en fiziksel sanat olan dans dijital aa tayan hipnotize edici r aan performanslardan bahsetmitir. Ancak hareket yakalamaya dayal dijital grafikler Hollywood ve Hong-Kong dv sanatlar filmlerinde daha nceden yaygn olarak kullanlmaktayd ve dijital animasyon televizyon reklamclnn, MTVnin ve club-house tr VJliin temel rndr. Yeni bir sanat trnden veya dans ve interaktif grntlerin baarl bir birlikteliinden bahsedebilmek iin, dans ve teknolojinin birlemesinde neyin r aacak nitelikte olduunun dikkatli olarak incelenmesi gerekmektedir. Fiziksel bedenin rolnn ve fiziksel varln snrlarnn genellikle teknolojik cisimleme tartmalarnn nemli kuramsal konular olduu varsaylr. Yeni tekniklerin gelitirilmesi de sanatsal bir kayg olmaldr; ve bu almada koreografi/kompozisyon/doalamann yeni bir anlaynn yazlm/tasarm/ interaktif sistem mimarisi ile entegrasyonu zerinde durmann alan iin nemli olduunu ne srerim. Kameraya ynelik koreografi hazrlamak pek yeni bir sorun deildir ve analog atalardan dijital haleflere gemi olan video-dans artk klasik bir trdr. Nottinghamda dzenlenen 2005 Dijital Kltrler Festivalinde, video-dans almalarnn bir program (Motion at the Edge), iirselden belgesel benzerlerine, etnografikten zet-deneysele, video, dans ve performans sanatlarnn eitli apraz geilerini ieren ada koreograf-film yapmclarnn zerinde alt estetik trleri gzel bir ekilde yanstmtr. Programn kapsamnda Vanishing Point (Rosemary Butcher/Martin Otter), Infected (Gina Czarnecki), Ascendance (Chris Dugrenier), Birds (David Hinton), Arrested Development (Grace Ndiritu) ve Romanz (Katharina Mayer) yer almtr.

72

Bu programda yer alan btn videolar, tiyatroya dayal performanslarda ender olarak mmkn olan bak alarnn derin bir samimiyetini ve ortamn bir uzakln salayan, ok dikkatli bir ekilde koreograflanm kamera almalar ile oluturulmu grntler iermektedir. Czarnecki, Ndiritu, Dugrenier ve Mayerin videolarnda vcut hareketleri allmam staccato heyecanlarna, ritelletirmelere, havai grlere ve bylenmenin minimalist hallerinin tekrarlayan sabitlemelerine gre dzenlenmitir. Butcherin dans halsinasyonel benzerliklerle dolu bir l geen bir figr, bir tr ar ekim fata morgana iermektedir. Hinton, video-dansn insan figrn kullanmaktan tamamen kanarak, yabani ku hareketlerinin arivsel film silsilesini bir araya getirerek yaratmtr. Ekrana dayal aracn tesinde, kamera grnts, sensr veya yapay zekal gerek zamanl bir etkileim (e-koreografi) sistem yaratmna ve alan ve dijitalin alan ve duyumsal tecrbesi ile ilgili daha byk hususlara dikkat edilmesini gerektirir. Eer dans veya harekete dayal performans bir medyum olarak deerlendirilirse ve eer etkileimli koreografinin ortaya kyla meydana gelen sanatsal olarak zorlayc bir dans ierii ararsak, medyuma has bir analiz koreografinin, mekansal dizaynn, dans ediin, teknolojilerin ve dans teknolojilerinin kendi belirli etkileimli, dijital gsterimlerinin incelenmesini gerekli klar. Ayn zamanda, dijital artk daha ak bir ekilde bizim ada fenomenolojik boyutumuz veya kark realite ile teknik olarak ortamlanm arayzmz olarak alglanmaktadr(1). Deneysel performansn tarihinde canl sanatlar genellikle eski ve yeni medyay, zellikle de canl sanat uygulamalar ounlukla grsel sanat ierikleriyle ortaya kt ve video ve kurulum sanatyla kaynat iin kartrmtrlar. Video, webcam ve a balantl doalama canl kreasyonun iir teknii Corpos Informticosun (www.corpos.org) almalarn karakterize eder; grubun kurulumlar genellikle galeriler ve mzelerde yer almakla birlikte daima ortaklaa eyleme uzaklardan katlan online katlmclar ierir. Benzer ekilde, Sher Dorrufun Eski ve Yeni Medya iin Waag Dernei (Amsterdam) oklu oyunculu online ibirlikleri ve (webcam ve interaktif yazlmlarla) uzak siteleri birbirine balayan bir performans ekolojisi iermekte ve belirli yaplar ve snrsz potansiyeller arasndaki gerilimle oynamaktadr. Rafael Lozano-Hemmerin bantsal mimarileri, rnein ars electronicada youn ilgi toplayan (2002) byk lekli ak hava Body Movies kurulumu, nceden kaydedilmi portrelerin geni bir veri taban ve gerek zamanl bir kamera izleme sistemiyle basit glge dkmn birlikte kullanr. Dijital grntler sadece nnden geen kiiler yanstlan n nn kestiinde ve katlmclar ayn zamanda kendi glgelerini dijital hayaletlerin stne bindirdiinde grnr olur. Doruffun ve Lozano-Hemmerin uygulamas, psiko-corafik tecrbeler ve gnlk kent hayatndaki politik ve duygusal durumlarla, Durumsal kaygy tekrarlamaktadr(2). Kltrlerimizde bilgisayarn gnlk varl, nternette yaayan veya uzak siteleri balayan interaktif sanal performanslar gelitirmek iin bilgi ve iletiimi kullanan yeni sanat ekilleri ortaya karmtr. Telebulunma veya a balantl performans artk mobil dijital hizmetleri datan bir a-sanat uygulamasnn daha geni bir spektrumunun parasdr. Geleneksel olmayan dans (lokatif medya) ve teknolojinin belirli ilikisi yeni performans konseptlerinin deien ieriklerini aydnlatmaktadr. Bunlar, dijital olarak arttrlm insan hareketinin yaratlmas iin yeni aralardan veya yeniliki bilimsel ve bilim-sanat erevesinden tretilebilir. Ayn zamanda tarihsel emsalleri de bir btn olarak ele almalyz.

73

Ticari film endstrisinde olduu kadar, bilgisayar bilimi, biyomekanik ve daima yakalamaya konu olacak sanatlar arayan grafik sanat blmlerinde yaratlm olan gnmzn hareket yakalamaya dayal animasyonlar kk 19. yzyln sonlarnda, kronofotografideki ve ilk sinemalardaki hareket almalarna dayanmaktadr (Muybridge, Marey, Mlis)(3) Dansn anlatmc film ve film mzikallerinin tarihindeki mtevaz rol detayl olarak belgelenmitir; ekran dansnn grnrl sahne koreografilerinin filmlere uyarlanmas/ evrilmesiyle, zellikle kamu televizyonundaki dans programlarnda kamerann gsterilmesiyle yaplan zel koreografilerin (1970lerden beri) prodksiyonuyla, ve 1980lerden buyana bymekte olan uluslararas video-dans festivalleri ayla birlikte artmtr(4). Film yapmclar ve koreograflarn belirli ibirliki vizyonlarna olduu kadar filmsel ve dorusal olmayan dijital biimlendirme tekniklerine de ok ey borlu olan video-dans tele-grsel ve sinematik stillerin dans eden vcutlara gre hareket ettii karma bir alandr. Ancak, daha az detayl belgelenmi iitsel-grsel kompozisyonun yrngesi ilk balardaki soyut animasyon (Oskar Fischinger), grsel mzik, yapsalc film ve bilgisayar grafik animasyon soyut trlerine iaret ederken, video-dans ynetmenleri ayn zamanda postmodern sahne dans stratejilerinden ve tele-grsel kodu ve teknolojik ilevi altst eden video sanat tekniklerinden yararlanmaktadrlar. Ses sanatlarndaki son gelimeler, programla gc ve esnek programlama aralarndaki (rnein Max/MSP, Jitter) artla, yazlm sanatlar deneysel film uygulamasnn geleneklerine benzer ekillerde film ve videoyu daha esnek bir ekilde kefedebilmektedirler. Gerek zamanl sentez ve hareket grafiklerinden tretilen yeni bir kinestetik hassasiyet, iki ekil arasndaki yapsal estetik benzerliklere dayanan, ki bu benzerlikler deneysel avangard film ve ada elektronik mzik uygulamalarnn anlalmasnda temeldir, yeni bir sanatn ortaya kmasna katkda bulunabilir. Dahas, bilisellik ve sinirbilimi alanlarndan gelen destekleyici kantlar (ki bunlara duyu-motor alglama, biyolojik gzlemleme, hareket dinamikleri ve hz zerine bir dizi gncel alma da dahildir; rnein Scott deLahunta tarafndan balatlan Koreografi ve Bilisellik) sanatsal uygulamaya olan yapsal yaklamlara yenilenmi ilgi oluturmaktadr(5). En sonunda danslar, aratrmaclar ve retmenler film veya videoyu, icra eden vcutlardan dier icra eden vcutlara geirilmi mevcut koreografileri belgeleme ve analiz etmede nemli bir ara olarak kullanmtr. Bilgisayar yeni hareket imknlarn kefetmekte ve grselletirmekte kullanmak isteyen koreograflarn (rnein Merce Cunningham, Pablo Ventura, Ivani Santana) yan sra, baz bilim adamlar ve yazlm programclar (Laban Writer, LifeForms) dans notasyonu ve korunumu alanna ilgi eken aralar yaynlamlardr. Performans Sistemleri ve Dnen Grntler Yeni yzylda film, elektronik mzik, dijital sanat, bilim ve teknoloji, dizayn, mhendislik, robotbilim ve telekomnikasyon gibi birbiriyle ilgili alanlardaki rten karlar, biliim, yapay zeka, biyoloji ve yapay hayat, giysi bilgisayar ve telekomnikasyondan tretilmi kavramsal modeller reterek disiplinler aras youn aratrmalara nayak olan btnleyici dnme srelerini anlaymz gelitirmitir. Daha ncesinden mziin yapm olduu gibi, dansn enstrmanlar (kameralar, video-yanstclar, mikrofonlar, sensrler, mikrokontrolrler) ve yazlm aralarn birletirmesi her trl performansn eitli birleenlerini (rnein ses, video, 3 boyutlu animasyon ve hareket grafikleri, biyo-geribildirim, k) yaplandrma ve kontrol etmeyi mmkn klmtr.

74

Benim burada performans sistemi olarak tanmlamak istediim ey, koreografi ve sistem tasarmnn programlama dilleri, elektronik mzik ve film montaj ile interaktif ve gerek-zamanl ilenmesiyle bir noktada birlemesidir. cra eden kiileri interaktif bir yazlm sisteminden veya programlama ortamndan ayr bir arayzde grmediimizi ne sryorum. Aslna bakarsak, yazlm programlar ayn zamanda koreografinin icraclar olabilir(7). nteraktif dans tiyatrosunun ilk jenerasyonunda icra eden ve tepkisel evre iin arayz dizaynnda eleme (hareketten sese, hareketten video rnne) kefedilirken, geribildirim kontrollnn sibernetik imgesinden ve insan aktr zerinde makinenin modellemesinden ilham alnarak byle bir sistem anlay ortaya kmtr. Direkt arayzler (bklme sensrleri, mikro siviler, basn levhalar, akll kumalar, vs...) bazen koreograflarn, dansnn bir canl video editr veya bir mzik enstrman olarak hareket ettiini ileri srmelerine sebep olan bir takm belirli tekniklerin kullanmn gerektirir. Ancak tetikleme ilemlerinde snrlayc olmakla eletirilen, gelimekte olan tekniklerle ilgili estetik ve kavramsal kayglar en nihayetinde alternatif arayzlerin aranmasna sebep olmutur. Baz uygulayclar tarafndan arayzn somut kalmas gerektii ve bylece performanssal girdinin (hareket girdisi) ve ktnn (video/ses ile ilgili) kolayca gsterilebileceini ne srm olsalar da, direkt, hareketsel arayzler ieren dans-teknoloji veya mzik-teknoloji ibirlikleri azalmtr. Belirli sanat-enstrman kombinasyonlarnn bir analizi, koreografi ve doalamay birletiren lokalize teknik geliimini ne srer ve ayrca kii allagelmi bir yazlm teknikleri grubunu (rnein granler sentez) ve dijital video/sessel ktda alglanan filtreleme parametrelerini tanmlayabilir. zellikle sahnede veya interaktif kurulumlarda gerekletirilen dijital dans/mzik uyumu ve mzik teknolojisinin analog/dijital ses retimi ve dnm ile ilgili kayglar bakmndan hareketsel ve yazlmsal llebilirlik tekniklerine eit derecede tanmak gereklidir. Eer analiz edilecek almalar daha geni bir yelpazede olsayd (tepkisel ortama dntrlebilen) sensr veri deerlerini zel estetik performans deerlerinden, veya zel bir kt iin kullanlan koreografi/doalamann stili araclyla, ayrt etmek daha kolay olacaktr. Sonu sayfalarnda adet rnei ele alacam. Bunlardan ilki her yaz Gttelborn Almanyada kullanlmayan bir Kmr Madeninde dzenlenen bir medya laboratuar olan uluslararas Interkationslabordur. 2003 Yl Temmuz aynda madenin devasa Makine Dairesi, nefes alan organizmalar veya dans ve peyzajn ilikisini dramatize eden interaktif bir sensr-dansn gsterimi iin halk arlamakta kullanlmtr. Bir merdivene alan kapdan ieri girdikten sonra izleyiciler dokuz ila on iki metre arasnda bir ykseklikten aaya, on biner beygirglk iki maden karma makinesinden bir tanesinin durduu, dier makinenin yerinde ak bir delik olan, bir rezonans gvdesi ve film ekran olarak bat duvarnn kullanld alana bakmtrlar. Lukkas/Mark Henrickson (Minneapolis)/Paul Verity Smith(Bristol)/Marija Stamenkovic Herranz (Barcelona) ve Kelli Dipple (Melbourne) arasndaki ibirlii, duyumsal, ritmik, grsel ve iorgansal faktrlerin arasndaki boluklara dikkat ekerek sensr-arayznn arpc bir takm olanaklarn ortaya karmtr.

75

75

ekil 1: Titled On, Stamenkovic/Lukkas/Henrickson/Smith/Dipple, 2003. Fotoraf: J.Birringer Bu arayz ortamnda vcudun hareketleri (mikrofonlar araclyla) sadece ses olarak deil, ama ayn zamanda biyomekaniin en incelikli varyasyonlar olarak llmtr: nabz, nefes ve vcudun iindeki kalp ritminin ta kendisi (elektrotlarla balanan bir Biyoradyo araclyla). Elektriksel olarak llebilen sinyaller bilgisayara kablosuz ekilde veri olarak aktarlm, burada sadece ses proseslerine gerek zamanl etkide bulunmam ama ayn bilgisayardaki film sekanslarnn yanstlan grnt hareketinin ritmini etkilemitir (Macromedia Director ve MAX/MSP). Nefes dansn Marija Stamenkovic icra etmi, ilk balarda seyircilerin arasndan merdivenle aa inerken uzatlm vokal teknikleriyle hafif doalamalarda bulunmu, daha sonra makine dairesinin dz zeminine doru ilerlerken sadece ar olarak amfilenmi nefes alp vermi ve sonunda da btn vcudu ve staccato sesi ile kendisini serbest ve cokulu hareketler iinde trans benzeri bir hale sokmutur. Devasa odada Stamenkovicin muhteem rezonansl sesi gzeneklerimizden ve midemizden iimize iledi; ve izlerken nefesinin grnt hareketini nasl kontrol ettiini ve bylece hikayenin dramaturjisinin farkna vardk. Stamenkovic nefesini tuttuunda filmin hareketi donuyordu. Nefes aldndaysa onu (filmde) Madenin atk ynnn zerinde yrdn ve derin bir patikaya alaldn grdk. Lukkas, Stamenkovicin d grntlerini her blmde farkl kaydetti; nc blmde hiperaktif bir zoom kulland. Stamenkovicin iyice hzlanm nefesiyle birlikte bu son blm, btn alan-hacmi srekli olarak eksiksiz ama ayn zamanda ehvetli younluklardan oluan dzensiz nabzl bir tr vcut-makineye evirerek saf hiperkinetik heyecana cisimleti.

76

Bunun gibi bir performans tarif etmek gerekten zor; grnt darda sahneledii hatrlanan hareketlerden bir geribesleme dngsne girdiinde bile, sanki saf hissiyatn (filmdeki) kendi grntsnn devamlln ve istikrarn krd geniletilmi boyutlu bir uzay yaratld. Bina iersinde ilave sesler de ykselmeye ve dolaysyla mekansal grntlerin duyum alglarn daha da teye dntrmeye, veya izleyicilere kendi heyecanlarnn sanal grntleri nasl erevelediini veya titrettiini fark ettirmeye balad. Peyzaj ve figrn grnt-hareketi, ses bekleri ve akllar, nefes ve vcut yankland ve tekrarlanan elemelerle birbirine dnt. Ancak, birisi byle bir performansn belgesel fotoraflarna bakacak olursa hayal krklna urayacaktr. Genel olarak bir fotorafta grlecek olan bir dans ve bir ekran yanstmasdr, ki bu durumda bu neredeyse anlamszdr zira btn dier duyumsamalar ve alann kendisinin hacmi fotoraflarda kayptr. nteraktiflik ve gerek zamann duyumsal elemesi de bir alma kavramnn ortadan kaldrma eilimi gstermektedir. Bu performans bir nesne veya bir koreografi veya bir sistem olarak kalmaz. Olayn yaps dijital performansn tamamen somut duruma ve kendisini gerek zamanda bir izleyici kitlesi karsnda ortaya karan birbirine gemi srelere dayandn iaret eder. Vereceim ikinci rnek alana has veya doalamasal olmamakla birlikte sistemin eitli hallerinde performanssal bir sre olarak tekrarlanabilen interaktif bir koreografinin yaratlmasdr. nteraktif sistemlerin ikinci neslini tantrken tekrarlanabilir bir koreografiden bahsetmek elikili olabilir zira bilgisayarl ileme dans hareketleri ile birlikte gelimekte ve koreografiye yeniden adapte edilebilen kendi yaratc hareketlerini retmektedir. lk interaktiflik insan-bilgisayar etkileimini uyarc bir karlk veya bir eylem-tepki modelinde anlarken, ikinci interaktiflik insan performansnn ve bilgisayar srelerinin her birinin kendi zerkliklerinin olduu ve kendilerini srekli dinamik bir iliki iersinde organize edebilecekleri bir dereceye kadar duyumsal diyalogun stnde durur. Dansnn ve sanal ortamn elemesinin birbirileriyle nedensel olmayan bir ballama dnmesiyle, ikinci nesil interaktiflik insann cisimlemesinin tecrbesini ve duyumsal tecrbeyi arttrr. deal olarak hem performans sergileyen hem de performans sistemi birbirlerinin canlandrmalarna, kendi ilerinde olan belirgin ilevsel kurallara (yeni bir tr post-koreografi) dayanan z-deiimleri gerekletirerek karlk verirler. Ancak, direkt olmayan arayzlere doru hareket ederek (optik, manyetik ve ultrasonik sensrler veya makine grleri) bu tr performanslarn yaratclar sklkla yazlm tekniklerin gelitirilmesini fiziksel tekniklere tercih ederler. Bu trn saysz performans deneyimlerinde kii dans vasat veya az gelimi grr. Bu gibi durumlarda sistemin dntrmsel kabiliyetlerini gelitirmek veya vcut ve vcudun davurumsal metabolizmasn yeniden organize etmek yerine stnkr uygulanan fiziksel teknikler arayz yamalamak iin kullanlr. Bana gre bu durum hazrlksz izleyici kitlesini hareket etmeye ve yardmc yazar olmaya davet eden interaktif kurulumlarda daha ktye gitmeye meyillidir. Dolayl bir arayzde, performas sahipleri (veya katlmclar) hareketsel, duygusal, perspektif ve propriyoseptif hareketlerini yeniden dzenlemeye zorlanrlar. Bu durumda ulalmak istenen estetik ama direkt dans dnmlerinin gerek zamanda ngrlmesi olacaktr. Baka bir ifadeyle, arayzn arkasndaki teknolojiler karmaklatka dnmsel tekniklere ve sinestetik srelere daha fazla dikkat, yaratclk ve orijinallik uygulanmasn gerektirir. Bu zorlua verilen ilk karlk gnmzde el kol hareketlerinin ustalna ve nanslarna verilen nemde gzlenebilir. New York merkezli dans grubu Troika Ranch, getiimiz gnlerde yeni eserleri 16 (R)evolutionsn turnesine kt.

77

Bu performans neredeyse el hareketleri kontrolnn evrimsel bir alegorisi ve yarattklar programlama ortam iersinde hareket izlemenin bir gelitirmesidir. Trisha Brownn how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume (2005) eserinde kullanlan son teknoloji, ok kameral, gerek zaman grafik animasyonlar iin hareket yakalama sistemi yerine, Troika Ranch kolayca tanabilen, ok pahal olmayan ve kk bir sistem tasarlamtr. Bu sistem sadoray, Cenova InfoMus laboratuarnda talyan bilim insanlarnn gelitirdii hareket yakalama yazlm olan Eyesweb ile birletirmitir. Eyesweb boluktaki noktalarn, izgilerin, hareket enerjisinin veya ynnn animasyon grafiklere dntrlmesi iin kullanlan belirli bir hareket analizine olanak salar. Neredeyse bu sreci gerek zamanl tercme olarak adlandrmak yneltir insan. Sahnedeki danslar hareket eder ve sistem hareketi analiz ederek dijital ekran projeksiyonunda grafiksel ekiller oluturur. Bu biliimsel ortamda hareket-eylem ve hareket grafikleri birlikte geliirler. Boluktaki noktalar, Mareyin veya Muybridgenin yz yl nceki kronofotorafndaki gibi saniye saniye tannmakta, ve burada annda gerek zamana dntrlmektedir. Birbirini izleyen hareketlerin bir dizisini, bir Getalt oluturan akc bir devamllkla retirler.

ekil 2: 16 (R)evolutions, Troika Ranch, 2005. Fotoraf: Richard Termine. Gerek zamanl hareket takibinin bu birleme noktasnda, interaktiflik artk hareketin dorudan elemesi zerinde deil ama insan hareketlerinin kaligrafisinin grnt akna tercme edilmesinin veya karmak eylem resimlerinin yaratlmas zerinde younlamaktadr. Arayz saydamszdr. Matematiksel olarak prosedr tamamen ayndr: sadora hareketi takip eder ve bedeni verileri analiz eder. Yazlm bir tr lm veya gzlem arac olarak iler.

78

Verilere tahsis edilen deerler, filtreler ve deitiricilere bal olarak, program hareket kmldamalarndaki hafif deiiklikleri analiz eder ve canl hali veya bu hareketlerin zelliklerini (drt kategori ierisinde: dz, eimli, yanal, karmak) gzlemler. Bu kategoriler iersinde hareketlerin yn deitirmelerini, hzn, dinamiklerini ve sratini alglayarak program grafik kty gerek zamanl olarak canlandrr ve bylece biz de boyutlu dans ve yanstlan boyutlu renkler ve ekiller dnyalarn alglayabiliriz. zleyici yazlm programnn mzikal bir analoji kullanarak dansnn hareketlerinin tonsal niteliklerini gzlemlediini ileri srebilir. Bu durumda eletirisel analizlerin baka bir seviyesi de sanat-tasarmclarn verinin grntlenmesi iin yaptklar belirli seimlere uygulanmaldr. Zorlu bilimlerle uraan birok aratrmac, ki bunlara hcresel dinamikler ve kimyasal dnmler zerinde alan molekler biyologlar da dahildir, bugnlerde grselletirme teknolojileriyle meguldrler ve hareketlerin anlam ve etkisi ile ilgili estetik ve politik sorular hcre biyologlarn kayglarndan baka konulara odaklanyor olsa da, burada alanlar aras bir bilgi deiiminin varl aikardr. Zira hem sanatlar ve hem de hcre biyologlar ablon tannmas ve mikro-davransal deiiklerle ilgilenmektedirler. Gzlem iin kategoriler oluturduumuz bu gibi prosedrlerin zerinde durmaya deerdir. rnein bilgisayar hareketi bir izleyicinin belirli bir hareket tavrnn ve ifadenin hareket kalitesinin arln veya nemini duyumsad gibi hissedemez. Coniglio bir hareketin nerede baladn ve bittiini, nerede blndn kendi bana bilemeyeceini kabul eder. Yazlm hareketin zelliklerine gre tepki gsterir ve srekli olarak yanstldn grdmz grntnn Getaltn modifiye etmeye ayarlanmtr (renk deiiklikleri, ebattaki deiiklikler, grntlerin daha boyutlu ve karmakark hissedilmesi iin dner dzlemler). Grntler kendi ierinde izimin ve resmin (gl) hareketsellii veya geometrinin daha mimari bakyla, ok keli ekillerle (sabit) balantl olarak eitli elle tutulur karakteristiklere sahip olabilirler. 16 (R)evolutionsn bir sahnesinde, nabz gibi atan ve srekli olarak hareket eden, byyen, azalan, dnen ve gelien (yatay ve dikey) bir izgiler rgs btn zemin ve arka yanstma zerinde grnr. Baka bir sahnede ise daha youn apraz izgilerden oluan bir a rgs ve mimari Getaltlar harekette ve dnlerde klidin ilkelerine bakaldran polifonik bir karmaklk yaratr. Koreograf Dawn Stoppiello gnmzde hareket izleme ve grselletirmenin bu gibi keiflerinin, yeni dinamik sistemler veya felsefi ve bilimsel dnce modellerinin biyoloji, yapay hayat, bilgisayar bilimi ve bilisel bilimlerden tremi olan yar-kaotik sistemlerle ilikili olan grsel ve iitsel kalitelerin son derece incelikli maniplasyonlar zerinde durduunu ne srer (Maturana/Varela, Prigogine/Stengers, Kauffman, Iberall, ve dierleri). Artk notasal sistemlere (Laban Gsterimine) dayanmayan ve temelleri bilisel analizlere ve matematik zerine atlm olan hareketin tasviri grnt-hareketi olarak sunulmakta, ancak sistemin kaotik halindeki bulank mantk dijital bir estetikten bahsetmenin ne kadar zor olduunu bize hatrlatmaktadr. Zira dijital ortamn kendisi hareket iir tekniine veya eser sahipliine duyarszdr. Baka bir ifadeyle artk dans ve etkileim dizaynclar, dijital olarak arttrlm insan/ makinesel hareketler arasnda akc geilere olanak salayan aykr arayzlerdeki spontane, sezgisel, ngrlemez veya ritelize davrann psikolojisi olarak adlandrlabilecek eyin zerinde durmaktadrlar. Sosyal antropologlar (Turner, Goffman) tarafndan rol davrannn evvelki almalarndan fark, gnmzde performansn daima, genellikle performans sahibini ve arayz fiziksel olarak aykr yanstlm grntye veya evreleyen ortama ilitiren sistem-dizayn ilikisinin iersinde anlalmakta olduu gereinde yatmaktadr. in iine robotlar ve avatarlar dahil edildiinde, nesne maniplasyonunun dili (akatrler) de sahneye girer ve performans ve araclk ile ilgili antropomorfik varsaymlarmzn byleyici ve karmak bir yeniden oryantasyonunu yaratr.

79

Trisha Brownun 2006 Monako Dans Forumu iin batan yaratlan sahne eseri how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume, kinematik veriye tepki vererek belirli davranlar reten, sanat tarafndan dizayn edilmi bir yapay zeka yazlmyla ileyen gerek zamanl hareket yakalama ile arayzlenmitir. Marc Downie bu gibi geniletilmi arac-vcutlar koreografiye tabi tutmaktan bahseder ancak dikkatli bir ekilde insann hareket davran ile fiziksel zekay birbirinden ayrr. Yazlm performans esnasnda kendi dans diyagramlarn canl olarak izer ve grafik araclar sahnenin nndeki saydam bir ekrana yanstlr. Burada araclar, yapay zekalarna gre hareket eden yazlm yaratklardr. Bunlar otonomdur; grntleri, sahnede gerek zamanda grdklerini anlamlandrmaya alarak durumu kendileri deerlendirirken ortaya kar. rnein, how long sahnenin sa tarafndan sol tarafna hareket etmek niyetinde olan gen bir yaratkla alr. gen, bu niyetini hareketleri yakalanan danslarn vcutlarna bir nevi otostop ekerek, hangilerinin doru tarafa hareket edeceini tahmin ederek gerekletirir. Olas bir noktaya bir doru uzatr ve eer doru tahmin ettiyse o tarafa doru ekilir. Bazen de nsezisi yanl kar; bu durumda o noktadaki tutunmasn brakarak bir sonraki frsat bekler. Bu durumda uzatt doru bir iz brakr ve bylece performans devam ederken ortaya kan grnt daha nceki denemelerinin bir gemii halini alr. Baka bir ifadeyle bu sanal koreografinin hafzas vardr. Biz Trisha Brownn danslarnn fiziksel zekalarnn Downie ve Kaiserin dnen grntlerinin yapay zekalaryla etkileimini izlerken Monako Dans Festivali performans ve teknolojideki bylesine artc gelimelere ahitlik etti. Bir atlye syleisinde, Downie bilgisayarn kendi ortamyla kkl bir ekilde eletii bir ekillendirilmi arac olduunun altn izmitir. Bilgisayarn ortamyla elemesi o derecedir ki, sanal olarak canlandrlm bir vcudun fiziksel kstlamalaryla araclanm ortamnda eylemleri dikkatli bir ekilde retilmeli ve kendi ortamna ynelik, kstl duyumsal aygtlarla araclandrlm algs dikkatli bir ekilde srdrlmelidir. Makine danstan renmektedir ve bunu yapmas iin eitilebilir. Tabi ki bu yaratklarn bedenleri ve fiziksel grntleri tamamen hayal rndr ve unu bilmekte fayda vardr ki yazlm sanatlar soyutluk ve ekillenme arasnda gelip giden, kesin olmayan grntleri tercih ederler.

ekil 3: how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume..., Paul Kaiser, Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar ve Curtis Bahnn eliinde Trisha Brown Dans Grubu, 2006. Fotoraf Monako Dans Forumunun msaadesi ile ekilmitir.

80

ekil 4: SwanQuake (blm 1-Ev): Sanal Ortam evresel ses dzeni ile Bilgisayar Kurulumu, boyutlar deien. (c) igloo 2007 how longun yansra Bill T. Jonesun yeni solosu 22de gsterime sunulmutur. 22 daha baskn bir anlatmsal ierie sahiptir ve 22 belirli duru ve bunlarn varyasyonlar sunulurken yaratklar Jonesun anlatmakta olduu hikaye ile yapay bir diyalog kurmulardr. Bu konser iin hareket analiz ve gerek zaman oluturma sisteminin bakm iin muazzam bir teknik efor sarf edilmitir ve bunun Trisha Brownun veya Bill T. Jonesun youn tur programlarnda tekrarlanmas pek de beklenmemektedir. Bu byk almalar ayn zamanda saysz sanat ve bilim insannn dhil edildii ve yllar sren kapsaml aratrmalar zerine kurulmutur. Bylesi bir sanatsal aratrma ve gelitirme, dans gruplarnn genelde sahip olamad laboratuar koullarn gerekli klmaktadr. Yine de bu laboratuarlar tm dnyadaki niversiteler ve sanat stdyolarnda yava yava kurulmaya balanmtr. Gen mhendisler kendi ibirliki alarn ina etmek iin yollar bulacak ve performansta medyadan faydalanabilmek iin gelenekselin dnda yaklamlar kullanacaklardr (tersine mhendislik, oyun motorlarnn veya mobil cihazlarn adaptasyonu, vs). nteraktif olaslklarn eitliliinin farknda olmak nemli olduu gibi danslarn ve tasarmclarn, retilebilecek yeni performans tekniklerini kefetmeleri ve gelitirmeleri iin yeterli zaman ayrmalar da hayatidir. Bylelikle, dzenlenen her dans veya medya festivali, yeni uygulama metotlarn ortaya koymak ve deerlendirmek adna daha gl iskeletler ina etmek iin, ayn zamanda nclerle yeni gelenler ve sanatlarla izleyiciler arasndaki nemli diyalogu glendirmeye de bir vesile olur(8). * Metinde geen referanslar iin ltfen ingilizce versiyonuna baknz (Sayfa: 475).

81

tr

elektroakustik giysilerin tarihi

benoit maubrey akbank sanat konferans salonu 10 kasm 2007

1982 ylnda resim alannda yaadm tkankln stesinden gelmeye alrken Bat Berlinde uzun yryler yapmaya baladm: bir gn yolum hoparlrle indirimli satlarn yapld (kot pantolondu sanrm) bir spermarkete dt. Aklma bunun benim sorunumun zm olabilecei geldi: hoparlrlerle kamusal alanlarda sanat renkleri boyamak yerine, onlar konumak. ok gemeden fark ettim ki hoparlr sistemleri ehrin her yerinde bulunabiliyordu kongre merkezleri bunlarla donatlmt, tren istasyonlar ve stadyumlar da. Otobslerin ve uaklarn bile iinde bulunabiliyorlard, ya da nemli bulvarlarda ya da kent meydanlarnn zerindeki sokak lambalarnda. Aslna baklrsa nerede byk bir grup insan bulunuyorsa, orada bu kamusal ses sistemlerinden de bulunuyordu. Bu zaten varolan hoparlr sistemlerini ses performanslarnda kullanmak zere izin almaya alarak devam ettim lk balarda baarl da oldum: ziyareti gnnde Berlindeki Uluslararas Kongre Merkezinin nnde bir performans gerekletirdim. Sar ve Mavi Yeil Eder cmlesini ana hoparlrlerden tekrar ettim ve sesimi teknisyenlere ses modlatrleri araclyla proses ettirdim. Ancak, zellikle hoperlr sistemlerinden sorumlu olan kiilerin kamusal alanlarda gezen kiilerden ikayet gelebilecei endiesi yznden baka bir teklif almadm bu sorun benim son Hoparlr Kesi heykellerim ve projelerim iin hala devam eden bir sorun. (ekil: 1)

ekil: 1

82

ekil: 3

ekil: 2

Bu sebeple hoparlrleri stdyomda bulunan ikinci el ceketlere ve giysilere monte etmeye baladm ve bylece onlar mobil hoparlr sistemlerine dntrdm. (ekil: 2) Arkadalarmn ve komularmn gardroplarn dntrerek btn bir Audio Giysiler serisini yaratm oldum. Kyafeti giyen insanlarn, kyafetleri giydikleri srada kaset alarlarla kayt yapmalarn ve bu kaytlar daha sonra dinlemelerini saladm. Sonunda bir leden sonra oturup evimdeki tencere tavay kullanarak kendim kaytlar yaptm Audio ceketler iin Heavy Metal kompozisyonlar yarattm. (ekil: 3) Audio giysileri 1983de Paris Performans Festivalinde Galeri Donguyde, 1984te Staatliche Kunsthalle Berlin, Sanat ve Medya Festivalinde sergilemek iin teklif aldm. Performanslarmza katlanlar istedikleri her yne haraket etmekte serbesttiler dier bir deile performanslar olduka serbest ve bireyseldi. Ancak yine de, performanslarn bir ereveye ve ynlendirmeye ihtiyac olduunu hissettim nk koreografi yoktu ve elektroakustik giysilerin kalitesi istenilen seviyede deildi. Byk Krlma 1985te Berlin Federal Bahe ovu (Bundesgartenschau) iin yaplan bir kamusal sanat yarmas bana hem elektronik, hem de ses asndan tam bir Audio niforma tasarlama olanan verdi. Die Audio Gruppe (ses: Hans Peter Kuhn, elektronik: Wulf Kthe, organizasyon: Claudia Traeger)yi kurdum ve The Audio Herd iin fon elde etmeyi baardm. Bu eletroakustik niforma, park peyzajndaki ambulatuvar (gezici) performanslara uygun yedi adet zel yaplm Audio Kostmden oluuyordu. Bu kostmler krk grnmnde sentetik malzemeden yaplm, erkekler iin klasik kesim ceket ve pantolon, kadnlar iin ise etek ve ceketti. Bunun arkasndaki fikir, giysilerin doa iinde bukalemun gibi uyum salamasn baarmakt. Katlmclar bahenin farkl yerleri iin tasarlanm eitli hayvan sesi (maymunlar, kular, insanlar) kaytlar aldlar ve koreografiyi buna gre yaptlar (tropik alanda maymunlar, allarda kular, aklklarda insanlar). Performans yapanlar, 40cm apnda zerlerine otom obil hoparlr yerletirilmi deri audio korseler giydiler. Bu korseler ceketlerin iine giyilmi, ve performans yapanlarn srtna yaptrlmt. Dardan grnen tek elektronik para, ceketin arkasna yerletirilen 30 vat gcnde bir amplifikatrd. (ekil: 4) Kasetler 12 voltluk pillerle alan walkmanlerle alnd.

ekil: 4

83

Audio Giysilerin Ses Efektleri mobil ve multi-akustik bir performans. Sesin tek bir byk hoparlr sistemiyle amplifiye edildii ak hava konserlerinin aksine, Audio niforma konseri her katlmcnn kendi sesini ald bir performanstan oluur. Bu mzik insann stne 30.000 vatlk tek bir ses kaynandan hcum etmez, volmn dinleyicinin her bir performansdan uzaklna bal olarak deitii 30 vatlk g kaynaklarndan gelir. niforma giyenler sahaya yaylm olduklarndan dinleyicinin her ses kaynan ayn anda grmesi veya duymas mmkn deildir (hatrladm kadaryla Audio Herd performansnn maymun blmnde Herdin byk ksm allarn arkasna gizlenmiti). Kasetler birbirirlerinin ayns olmasna ve ayn anda alnmalarna ramen (walkmanlerin tanabilir mekaniinden dolay) sesin tam bir senkronizasyonu salanamamaktadr. Bu nedenle, Audio-Herdn ses efektlerini tanmlamak iin multiakustik kavramn kullanyorum. Bu zaten mobil ses heykellerinin hedeflerinden biri deildir: ses, Audio niformay giyen kii arkasn dndnde ya da farkl bir yne ilerlediinde deiir. Ayn ses boluktaki bir dizi uygun yer araclyla havada ilerler ve bylece ses, dinleyicinin kulana aamal veya yankl gelir. Bu nedenle bu kyafetlerin alnd yerler ok nemlidir alann topografisi ve mimarisi konserin nemli elemanlarndandr. Buna ek olarak, hoparlrleri tayanlar, karlatklar durumlar karsnda spontane olarak davranmaktadrlar (r: merdiven kmak, krmz kta beklemek, veya kapdan kmak gibi), bylece bu ses etkinliklerine konser salonlarnn, galeri ya da mzelerin korunakl ortamlarnda normal enstrmanlarla kopyas karlamayacak yepyeni faktrler eklemektedirler. Performanslarmzda ans faktr nemli bir rol oynamaktadr. Seyirci iin bizim gsterimiz genellikle beklenmediktir (d mekanlarda alrken insan seyircisini seemez). Bundesgartenschau 85teki ilk Audio Herd performans ksa sreliine stleriyle durumu netletirmeye alan bir park polisi ekibi tarafndan beklenmedik ekilde kesilmiti. Daha Fazla Audio Giysi 1986da Linz, Avusturyadaki Ars Electronica festivaline davet edildik. Bu festival iin Audio elik ilerini yarattk. Hazrlk srecinde ehrin Orta Avrupann en byk elik fabrikas olan Voest Alpineye ev sahiplii yaptn renmitim. Bu i iin zerlerine amplifikatr ve hoparlrler yerletirdiim 10 adet yangn geirmez i tulumu dn aldk. HP Kuhn elik fabrikalarnda canl olarak kaydettii seslerden bir kaset yapt. Bir haftalk festival sresince, ehrin eitli yerlerinde ve evresine 10 yry performans yaptk. Audio Metro Kontrolrleri (1987) Berlindeki Die Anweisung Festivali iin tasarland. Berlin metrosunda her istasyonda hoparlr sistemini kullanarak yolculara (ruh haline gre deien vurgularla) trenlere ne zaman binmeleri ve binmemeleri gerektiini (Herkes binsin ltfen!, Ltfen geri ekilin! eklinde) syleyen grevliler vardr. Ben bir metro gzergah zerinde btn grevlilerin seslerini sistematik olarak kaydettim ve Hans Peterin bunlar iki ayr kasette toplamasn saladm. Bir kasette yaklak 30 farkl Herkez binsin ltfen! ve dierinde ise 30 farkl Ltfen geri ekilin! sesi vard. Bu resmi bir festival projesi olduu iin, metro ynetimi bana -altna audio korseleri yerletirebileceim- yedi orijinal metro grevlisi kostm dn verdi. Kostmlerin amplifikatrleri, pilleri ve kasetalarlar koyabileceimiz ok geni i cepleri olmasndan dolay Audio niformalarmz zaten hazrd. (ekil: 5)

ekil: 5

84

Performans srasnda metroda devriye gezerken yine orada kaydedilmi seslerin kolaj alnyordu. Sylemeye gerek yok, metro seslerinin orijinal kyafetlerden gelmesi hem metro alanlarnda, hem de yolcularnda bir miktar afallamaya sebep oldu. 1988 ylnda, Rennesdeki Arts Electronique Festivali iin Audio Bisikletileri yarattk. Fransann Bretagne blgesinde yer alan bu ehirdeki insanlarn bisiklet sporuna olan dknl bu projenin temasn belirledi. Bu proje iin 10 adet audio forma (bisikletilerin giydii tipik naylon yar bluzlarndan) aldm, hoparlrleri bu bluzlarn arka alt ksmlarna, yarlarn genelde sularn ya da yiyeceklerini koydular yere diktim ve deriyle glendirdim. Ayrca be kez Tour de France ampiyonu olmu Bernard Hinaultun da Rennes civarnda yaadn rendik. Hinault bizimle rportaj yapmay kabul etti ve kendisi de bir bisikleti olan ve aramza ses alan olarak katlan Ralf Buron bu rportajdan tekno-rap havasnda bir ses kolaj yapt: Jai gagn Audio bisikleti kasetinin nakaratn oluturuyordu. Yerel spor merkezi bu i iin 10 amatr yary kiralad ve Rennes sokaklarnda, kazanan resmi trenin ve bir Audio Bisikleti kupasnn bekledii bir yar organize etti. Yar srasnda hoparlr formalardan metronom sesi verilen zamana kar yarlan tek kiilik yarlar bile yapld. The Guitar Monkeys, bir dizi punk ve avangart rock konserlerinden oluan Berlin Atonal Festivali (1986) iin tasarland. Gitar almay bilmeyen ya da az bilen kullanclara alt arka ksmnn zerinde hoparlr, ilerinde amplifikatr olan ve elektro gitar ya da mikrofon balanabilen siyah deri ceketler giydirildi. Baz durumlarda, fazladan ses iin ceketleri kartp, kullanclarn srtlarna srt antas gibi byk hoparlrleri baladk. (ekil: 6) Bu rock grubunun her yesi, sahneye kmas gerekmeden kendi enstrmannn sesini ayarlayabiliyordu. ou zaman seyircinin arasnda ya da merdiven aralnda, koridorlarda, ya da mekanlara ait dier nilerde (kadn ve erkek tuvaletlerinin zel akustik karakterleri vardr) alyorduk. The Guitar Monkeys bir noise and feedback (grlt ve geribildirim) grubuydu ve hem de en salamndan: ayn anda yalnzca bir deil, on adet hoparlrden geri bildirim aldnz dnn (aadan, yukardan ve yanlardan). Gitarlar Berlindeki yerel bir bit pazarndan enstrman bana 10 dolar limitli bir bteyle aldk. Her zamanki kontakt mikrofonlarn dnda, pick-up olarak Piezo seramik hoparlrler kullandk. Atonal festivalden sonra bile Guitar Monkeys, yerel underground barlarda almaya devam etti ve tura kt (bir eletirmen bizi Jimi Hendrixin torunlar olarak tantt ve mzii post-endtriyel punk olarak tarif etti.)

ekil: 6

Guitar Monkeys, nceki niformalar sadece n kayd yaplm kasetlerin alnmasna imkan tanrken kullanclarn kendi seslerinden sorumlu olmas asndan, Audio Giysilerin geliiminde nemli bir adm. Ayrca, Guitar Monkeysin 1989 Avrupa turunda, benden Kuzey Fransa sahillerinde gerekleecek Les Art au Soleil festivali iin yeni bir niforma tasarlamam isteyen Lilledeki LAeronefin direktr ile tantm. Bylece, Audio Balerinler ortaya kt. (ekil: 7)

85

ekil: 7

Audio Balerinler Bir sredir audio niformalar iin enerji kayna olarak gne pilleriyle deneyler yapyordum (genellikle 12 voltluk arj edilebilen pillerle alyorduk) ve pillerin gne nlarn mmkn olan en st seviyede yakalayabilmesi iin yatay bir yzeye yerletirilmeleri gerektii sonucuna vardm. Sanat Susken Rosenthal pleksiglastan transparan, disk eklinde, bir kemerle belden aa geveke aslacak bir etek yapmama yardm etti.

Bu yzeyin stne gne pillerini ve elektronik malzemeyi yerletirdik. Prototipi gren dans bir arkadam, Kuu Gl gibi klasik eserlerde giyilen tt adnda etek benzeri bir kyafet yarattmz syledi. Bylece Audio Ttler ortaya kt. Bu arada, sert ama esnek ttlerin bir disk jokey masasna benzer ekilde hoparlrleri, mikrofon jaklarn ve amplifikatrleri yerletirmek iin de ideal olduunu kefettik. Yeni ba mhendisimiz Manfred Thiemin ynlendirici etkisi altnda seslerin samplingini yapmak iin bir dijital ip (256K), elektronik bir metronom, fotovoltaik bir rezistr (k sensr olarak) ve hatta minyatr bir alc gibi yeni ekipmanlar denemeye baladk. Sonunda, spontane olarak sesleri toplayabilen, dijital olarak kaydedebilen, kaydettiini alabilen, amplifiye edebilen, elektronik bir loop cihazyla onlar tekrar edebilen ve bir ses perdesi (pitch) mekanizmasyla seslerin seviyelerini deitirebilen pleksiglas bir elbisemiz oldu. Mesela ttler yaknda alan bir an kulesinin sesini be saniyeliine kaydedebiliyor ve annda geri alabiliyordu. Eklenen elektronik zellikler, kyafeti giyenlerin loopun hzn ve ses perdesinin tenorunu (basit bir samplerdaki gibi) ar bir gonga ya da tam tersi ynde nlayan zil sesine dnecek ekilde deitirmesine imkan tanyordu. Dijital Hafza denen bu para, Audio Balerinler performansnn merkezinde yer alr. Grubun performans gerekletirdii her yerde ilk ii, o blgeye zg yerel bir ses bulmak ve bu parada kullanmaktr. Bunun birka rnei; St. Petersburgdaki Lenin Mzesinde bulunan Leninin piyanosu, ya da Mnihte tannm bir jodler, Avustralyada didgereedo alan bir yerli, ve son olarak Tokyoda bir eit banjo alan Japon mzisyen. Bir grup balerin (bir oda, bahe ya da parkta) geni bir alana dalmken, bu sesleri kaydeder, tekrarlar ve bireysel olarak alar, bylece tek bir orijinal sesten, multi-akustik ve mobil bir konser ortaya kar.

Bu yeni eklemeler sayesinde Walkman stereolardan ve nceden kaydettiimiz kasetleri kullanmaktan vazgetik. Audio Balerinler ayn zamanda, Guitar Monkeysdekine benzer kontakt mikrofonu ve Piezo kullanma opsiyonuna sahipti, ancak bunlar eski gitarlara monte etmek yerine, bu aletleri emsiye, dev fonograf ineleri gibi yerde srklenen ve ttlerin zerindeki elektronik ve gne pilleri araclyla amplifiye edilen basit metal ubuklar gibi baka enstrmanlara monte ettiler. Dolaysyla arknn ad The Earth as a Record Player (Bir Pikap olarak Yeryz) oldu. Akustik olarak konumak gerekirse, bu para bir grup temizlik iisinin bo p kutularn sokakta srklemesine benzer. Fotovoltaik sensrleriyle Audio Balerinler, bir Geiger sayacnn radyoaktif maddelere tepki vermesi gibi a reaksiyon gsterir. Sesin perdesi n younluuna gre deiir (radyan enerji). Bu, dans srasndaki hareketler sonucunda danslarn ya da etraftaki nesnelerin (aalar, bulutlar) glgesinin direkt engellemesi sonucu oluur. Bylelikle danslar vcut hareetlerini sese evirebilirler. Alclaryla ttler, havadaki ses dalgalarn duyulabilir klarlar. Bu seslerin iinde benim favorim, radyo istasyonlar arasndaki beyaz grltdr.

86

1989da Les Art Au Soleil festivalinde Kuzey Fransa kylarnda 10 gne pilli kyafetle balayan ey tam bir kumpanyaya dnt. Elektroakustik ttlerle Berline dndmde bir grup yerel dans tuttum, onlar ttlerin kullanm konusunda eittim ve yeniden birlemi Berlinde bir dizi performans organize ettim. Kk bir proje olarak balayan ey ok gemeden bir performans grubuna dnt: Audio Balerinler artk bir proje deil, ekirdek bir grup dansdan, bir koreograf, iki mhendis ve ynetici/menajer ve performans sanats olarak benden oluan bir gerek bir gruptu. Gruptaki baz danslar basitletirilmi sokak koreografilerini (ekil: 8 ve daha nce de bahsi geen Dijital Hafza, ekil: 9) kullanarak solo ve bireysel koreografili sahne gsterileri gerekletirdiler. (ekil: 10)

ekil: 8

ekil: 9

ekil: 10

87

Yine de en temel performanslarmz kamusal mekanlarda ve sokakta olanlard: elektroakustik giysilerimizin mobil ve spesifik mekanlara adapte edilebilir oluu neredeyse her d mekana uyabilmemizi salyordu. Dier taraftan, 1994te Berlinli alternatif bir tiyatro olan Theater zum Westlichen Stadthirschen ile ibirlii yapmay hevesle kabul ettim ve rejisr Elizabeth Zundelle birlikte Audio Dramay sahneye koyduk. Bu almada aktrlerin tamam elektroakustik kyafetler giydiler ve hareketleri sonucu oluan seslerini giydiklerini gstermek iin seyircinin arasnda dolatlar. Bu almay, i mekanda sergilediimiz mevcut repertuarmz (Audio Balerinler ve Elektronik Adamlar) iin sololar yaratmak, gelitirmek ve rafine etmek iin kullandk. zellikle, Seguirya ve Feedback Fred gibi paralar orjinalinde bu almaya dahildiler. Feedback Fred (ekil: aslnda Guitar Mon11) keys zamannda ortaya kmt. Solo tipteki performanslar iin kullanmay sevdiim ifade ekliyle bu Audio Karakter, temel olarak korse tipi bir kuakla srta eklemlenmi, 30 wattlk bir amplifikatr ve siyah bir yz maskesiyle aza doru gerili duran bir mikrofonla desteklenen byk bir hoparlr giyer. Bu karakter kelimenin tam anlamyla geribildirim (feedback) almaktadr. Odann iinde gezerek ve mikrofondan monologlar syleyerek geri bildirim yoluyla eitli ses efektleri elde eder. eitli yar-akrobatik hareketler yapt ve perendeler att iin ayrca dizlik ve dirseklik de takmtr. Dramatik olarak bu karakter Notre Damen Kamburu ve Hamlet arasndadr: kendisini hitabetle ifade eder ama hareketleri ve kendi yaratt feedbackle biteviye mcadelesi yznden szleri snrlanr. Hem melodramatik bir karakter, hem de bir palyaodur.

ekil: 11

Seyuirya, Elizabeth Brodinin (grubun ba danslarndan biri) k sensrleri kullanarak oluturduu bir para. Milimetrik olarak hesaplanm bu gsteride dansnn tam kafasnn stnde bir spot yer alyor. Esasen audio tt iin tasarlanan bu para, sanatnn hareket zgrln arttran ve srta tutturulan kk bir hoparlr kutusunun eklenmesiyle gelimitir. Sanat elinde bir k sensr ve bir de infra-red sensr tutar. Ses, k halkalar altnda sanatnn el ve vcut hareketlerinin oyunundan oluur. Ancak, Audio Balerinlerin uluslararas baars, bizi yeni Audio niformalar yapmaktan alkoymad. Audio Guards 1983te Oslo (ekil: 12) ehri iin sarayn nnde duran Norve Kraliyet Korumalarnnkine (Buckingham sarayndakilerden farksz) benzer niformalardan yaratld. Ancak, biz korumalarmza onlarn ayakkablarn ve emsiyelerini(tfek yerine) amplifiye etmek iin kullanlan audio yelekler giydirdik ve gerek korumalarla tpatp ayn koreografiyi (koreograf: Sygun Schenk) kullanarak kastl olarak hareketlerini ve admlarn elektroniklerimizle amplifiye ettik. Bizim nbet deiimi performansmz onlarnki ile ayn anda, ancak Modern Sanatlar Mzesi nnde gerekleti.

ekil: 12

88

ekil: 13

ekil: 14

Bu arada 1986 ylnda Berlin ehrinden ufak bir sanat hibesi aldmndan da bahsetmeyi unutmayaym. Hibenin karlnda sanatlarn ehri bir sanat eseriyle (genellikle resim) temsil etmeleri isteniyordu. Bunun iin Belediye Bakan iin bir Audio Frak (Frak, kuyruklu zarif, gece giyilen bir cekettir) tasarladm. Ses iin Berlinin eitli yerlerinde dolaarak insanlarn, o dnemki turist slogan olan Berlin seni iyi yapar deyilerini kaydettim. Bu ekilde yaklak elli farkl sesi birletirerek, bir audio kaset eklinde bakann ofisine, iki ylda bir dzenlenen Uluslararas Elektronik Fuarnn alnda giymesi iin tasarladm belirterek sundum. (ekil: 13) O da kibar bir mektupla, eer kyafeti giyerse basn danmannn iine son vermesi gerekeceini belirtti. Bir dier benzersiz durum ise 1990da Berlin sanat sergisi srasnda Rigadan aldmz davetti. Bunun iin yerel bir elektronik fabrikasn ziyaret ettik ve yneticisine bize en son model (model: Riga 2000) bir kaset alar salamas iin rvet (bunun baka bir yolu yoktu) verdik. Daha sonra, kaset alar otele gtrdk ve geceyi, bilerek yanmzda getirdiimiz pleksiglas ttye yerletirebilmek iin cihaz paralara ayrarak geirdik. Bir sonraki gn yerel bir dans tren istasyonunda bu ttyle bir performans gerekletirdi, ttye bir radyo alcs balad ve yrrken Radio Free Riga radyo istasyonunu amplifiye etti. Performans politik bir gsteriyle kartran bir grup olutu ve bizi otele kadar takip ettiler, ama otel korumalar onlar ieri almay reddetti. (ekil: 14)

Audio Geyalar 1997de nter-komnikasyon merkezinde (ICC-NTT) bir Auido Balerina serisi hazrlamak zere Tokyoya davet edildim. Yerel alveri merkezlerini gezerken farkl elbiseler giymi ve ilgin grnml gitarlar ve kk davullar alan bebeklere rastladm. Bana bunlarn kimono giyen Geisha bebekleri olduu sylendi. Audio Geisha fikri bu ekilde dodu. Bu (solar fikrinden ortaya kan) Audio Balerinlerden daha mantkl bir fikirdi nk bu danlar mzik yapabiliyorlard: elektroakustik kimonolar giymeleri ok mantklyd. Fikir beni ok heyecanlandrmt. Sreteki ikinci adm, elbise iin elektronikleri bulmakt. Drst olmak gerekirse, btn paralar retim fazlas elektronik paralar kataloglarndan bulduk: dijital bellekler sanrm seri sonu Kore ya da in mal konuan bebek veya telesekreterlerden artakalanlard. Aslnda elektroakustik kyafetleri tasarlamak iin modern p kullandk diyebiliriz: kullandmz elektronik malzemenin ou on yanda bir ocuun odasn dolduran oyuncaklarda da bulunabilir. Ne zaman yeni biri sanat ii tasarlamaya karar versem, nce yerel elektronik dkkanlarnn indirim sepetlerine bakarm.

89

Tokyoda yalnzca byle rnlerin satld bir kent alan (Akihabara City = Elektronik ehir) var. Yerel bir elektronik uzmannn eliinde aradm ey olan bir Casio Voicemani bulana kadar dar sokaklar ve dkkanlar dolatk. Bu esiz enstrman, canl sesleri rneklemeye ve tularla ses perdesini deitirmeye yarayan kk klavyeli bir samplerd. Berlinde Manfred Thiem ile birlikte entrmanlar paralamay ve klavyeyi, kimononun stne yaylm bir k sensryle deitirmeyi planlamtk. Bylelikle dardan gelen k sesi tetikleyecekti: etrafta yrdke Audio Geisha ses verecekti. Ayrca giysinin kemer ksmna yerletirilmek zere kk, tanabilir bir gitar amplifikatr de aldm. Giysilere dier audio ilevleri gerekletirebilmeleri iin akustik mikrofonlar, infra-red sensrler, radyo alclar ve gitar jaklar da yerletirdik. Audio Geishalarn prmiyeri 1997 Maysnda Inter-komnikasyon merkezinde, ve onu takiben Akihabara ehri sokaklarnda (ekil: 15) devam eden bir gsteriyle gerekleti. Geyalar mikrofonlar ve amplifikatrleri kullanarak geribildirimler retti, bunlar Voicemanler tarafndan kaydedildi ve perdeleri k sensrleri zerinden deitirildi. lgin bir ekilde retilen ses olduka Japonyaya zgyd.

ekil: 15

90

burak arkan, ali miharbi akbank sanat konferans salonu 10 kasm 2007

ilemsel sanatlar tr

Algoritmik yolla ya da matematiksel srelerle retilmi, derlenmi ya da kurgulanm sanata ilemsel sanat diyoruz. Bilgisayarlarla yaplabildii gibi yazl komutlara uyarak otomatik olmayan yollardan da yaplabilir. lemsel sanat bir akm veya ideoloji deil, sisteme dayal sanatsal bir yntemdir. Sanatnn yapt i, sistemin almas iin temel kurallar, formlleri oluturmak, ablonlar hazrlamaktr. Bundan sonra sistem kendi kendine ilemeye braklr. Bu sunum ilemsel sanatn dayand tarihsel referanslardan balar, yeni medyann yaratt temsil vs. gereklik ikilemini tartr, ve ada eylem ile tamamlanr.

91

92

mladen dolar akbank sanat conference hall 10 november 2007

whats in a voice? en

Juliet, standing on the balcony and talking into the night, says: Whats in a name? ... It is nor hand, nor foot, / Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part / Belonging to a man.1 Juliet doesnt see Romeo, hidden in the darkness of the garden, not yet, she speaks into the dark, and Romeo listens to his Mistresss voice addressing the night. This is first of all a scene of voices, voices heard in the dark, and at the same time, emblematically, a scene of names: precisely the drama of the disparity between voices and names. She will recognize Romeo, a moment later, by his voice, and they will commune with their voices in the dark, not quite seeing each other, they will swear their love in this scene of voices, the canonical scene which has defined so much of what the western culture understands under the name of love. What is love? It is what happens in the balcony scene. The scene can be taken as a cue for the understanding of the voice, for the rather dramatic understanding of the discrepancy, the opposition between the voice and the name, that is, on a more abstract level, between the voice and the signifier. In this scene, at the simplest, the name is the enemy and the voice is the ally, the friend. Tis but thy name that is my enemy, says Juliet. Both the name and the voice point to individuality, they pinpoint our uniqueness, our singularity, but in very different ways: the name points to the inscription of our individuality into the social, into the network of social divisions, hierarchies and obligations, the name ascribes us a social place. The voice, on the other hand, seems to escape the social network and its vicissitudes, it speaks from heart to heart, it is of such stuff that love is made of. Each voice is unique, it has the fingerprint quality.2 It is far more unique and singular than the name, since the name is shared, it obeys social and family codes and it is always generic one is always a Montague or a Capulet. Names can be replicated, they can be cloned, each name is always already a clone, but the voices cant not until the troubling technological inventions more than a century ago which inaugurated the new fate of the voice in the age of mechanical reproduction, and well come back to that. By the name, one always impersonates someone else, one is always a representative of a class of people bearing certain names, a family, a nation, a tradition, but with the voice one always impersonates only oneself, as it were. Impersonating oneself may seem an oxymoron, but it is actually an apt description of the use of ones own voice. The person, persona, according to a popular (albeit dubious) etymology,3 comes from per-sonare, to sound through, namely to sound through a mask, through a mouthpiece the person meant also a mask, so the uniqueness of a voice had to sound through a mask to invoke the person. Also in Greek prosopon astonishingly meant both the face and the mask.

1 Tis but thy name that is my enemy; / Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. / Whats Montague? O, be some other name! / Whats in a name? That which we call a rose, / By any other name would smell as sweet; / So Romeo would, were he not Romeo calld, / Retain that dear perfection in which he owes / Without that title: Romeo, doff thy name; / And for that name, which is no part of thee, / Take all myself. O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? / Deny thy father and refuse thy name; / Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love; / And Ill no longer be a Capulet. 2 The comparison has some sinister undertones nowadays, since one can imagine the voice easily serving as a biopointer, just as the retina that is checked on crossing certain borders. One can easily imagine an American immigration officer saying: Stand in front of the desk, sir, and speak into the microphone. And one can propose the sample recording one would have to repeat, e. g. All men are born free and equal. 3 This etymology was traditionally taken for granted, it is based on illustrious sources (Aulu-Gelle, Boetius), but which were prey to homonymy. The word is probably of Etruscan origin.

93

One could say that the mask is generic, it highlights the characteristic features, the type, it is like the name, it constitutes a class, while the voice is unique, yet only by sounding through a mask, so that the person is the troubled unity of the two, the generic and the individual: this already gives us an inkling that one can assume ones voice only by, literally, impersonation. But for the Veronese lovers, it is a matter of life and death to undo this unity. The uniqueness that the voice evokes and testifies to, is the uniqueness which is at stake in love, love aims precisely at the exclusive trait that cannot be quite spelled out or pinned down. Voice is its harbinger, voice is the pledge, and the two lovers in the night have no problems communing in their voices everything would be all right, or so it seems, if only they could be confined to the voice, it is the name that is the source of all trouble. In what vile part of this anatomy / Doth my name lodge? asks Romeo later in the play (III/3). Tell me that I may sack / The hateful mansion. And he draws his sword, as the stage directions indicate, prepared to cut off that vile bodily part, to cut off his name with the sword, castrate himself of his name, the name of the Father,4 but to no avail. To cut off the name and to retain the voice the name seems to be expendable, one could do without it, the voice is not: Deny thy father and refuse thy name in order to fully assume the voice? So whats in a voice, to extend Juliets question? What does the voice bear witness to? And which part of the anatomy does it inhabit? It is also nor hand nor foot nor arm nor face nor any other part belonging to a man. And how does whats in a voice differ from whats in a name? There is a dichotomy, an antinomy of the voice and the signifier this can serve as a general thesis, a starting point, something that this scene dramatizes most spectacularly, by pitting the voice against the master signifier, indeed that of the name of the father. But what is brought here to a dramatic peak, happens on a more modest and elementary level all the time: there is a drama, a miniature drama carried out in virtually every sentence we may utter. For what is signifier? One could propose its simple definition: it is that in language which can be replicated its replication, repetition, iterativity enables speech. It is that in language which can be linguistically classified, pinned down and dissected into a web of differences; it upholds a logic which functions well enough, despite its pitfalls and flaws with which we must make do. But the voice which sustains the speech, the voice which is the vehicle and the means whereby we can speak, cannot itself be linguistically described, although it stands at the very core of speaking. What can be pinned down, classified and analyzed, is the phoneme, a particular discrete sound, i.e. the voice molded by the signifier, shaped by it, cut down to size so that it can produce meaning. For it is only with signifiers that one can make sense, signifiers are there, as their name indicates, in order to signify. The voice is another matter: it is that in language which doesnt contribute to signification; it is what doesnt help making sense. And this could serve as its provisional definition it is what cannot be said, although it enables saying. It is the means in the ascent towards meaning, to be eventually discarded, like Wittgensteins ladder, once we have climbed to the peak of meaning. The voice is unique, unrepeatable, singular, and therefore not subject to linguistic description, it is what cannot be universalized. Hence it can serve as the pledge of ones ineffable being in the midst of iterativity and replication, the pledge of love this is where the linguistic drama intersects the drama of lovers, linguistics meets love. But in its unrepeatable singularity, and for that very reason, it is also immediately vanishing, evanescent, disappearing the moment it appears, and hence bringing up the question of memory and retention. A chapter can be opened here under the heading poetry and the unconscious.
4 What part of the body might he purport to cut off when he draws his sword? Does he tacitly assume that the phallic signifier resides in his phallus? Is this the spontaneous assumption that the audience inevitably makes? This is like an almost caricature Lacanian Urszene, bringing together the Name of the Father, the phallic signifier, castration, and the nature of love.

94

If the voice is the remainder of the universal, that what cannot be universalized, then this remainder works within the universal and contaminates it. It is not simply that the signifier excludes the voice and bans it out of its boundaries, it also contains it within its own nature this is where a signifier is never simply a signifier, a creature of difference and replication, but possesses itself an erratic and unpredictable nature, stained by the voice, as it were. It is always also a sound object, not merely the bearer of signification. This is where the effort of poetry lies: to capture the voice with the signifier; to seize what cannot be replicated with what can be; to work with what is singular in the signifier, not with what can be cloned; with the contingent within the necessary. The signifier has a double nature: apart from its differential, signifying, sense-making properties it also produces erratic sound echoes, reverberations, sound contagions, similarities, the stuff that can be put to use in repetitions, rhythms and rhymes, the stuff that can unexpectedly produce another meaning, inside of what makes sense, signification beyond signification, although both are inextricably tied together. This is where signification redoubles itself, contingently, precisely where it stumbles upon the voice, the voice as the erratic appendix of the signifying logic. Following the signifier, i.e. what can be replicated, enables everyone to be a speaker, speech is a universal function, but following the sound echoes and unpredictable patterns is elusive, it cannot be universalized, so poets are very rare creatures. Yet, there is a way in which everyone is a poet, unwittingly, a poet against ones will, insofar as one is endowed with the unconscious. The unconscious, such as Freud understands it, depends upon taking the contingent nature of language, the voice, the echo, the sound contamination, as a ubiquitous function. The Freudian slip, one says, but what does one slip on? Well, the meaning slips precisely on the excess of the voice, where words are not treated as signifiers, but as sound objects, and it is this excess of the voice, the sound echoes, similarities and contaminations, which make the meaning slip. Familir happens to have an echo in Millionr, so it can produce the famous joke of famillionr (I sat beside Salomon Rothschild and he treated me as his equal quite famillionairly PFL 6, p. 47).5 Geist, spirit, happens to sound like Geiz, avarice (PFL 5, p. 106), so it offers itself to the slip of the tongue and a whole history can be encapsulated between those two words, the close similarity of sounds matching the maximum distance of meaning. There is a beautiful dream of Freuds which turns around the word hearsing, which appears as the name of a station on a travel. Hearsing was a compound. One part of it was derived from the names of places on the suburban railway near Vienna, which so often end in ing: Hietzing, Liesing, Mdling The other part was derived from the English word hearsay. (PFL 3, p. 406) Hearsing, as opposed to hearsay, hearsing along with hearsay, inserted into the hearsay what an economical description of the way the signifier works in the unconscious! The element of singing in saying, that which doesnt contribute to signification, is the stuff that dreams are made of, it enables the flash of the appearance of the unconscious. And if the hearsay evidence is not admitted in court, then the point of the analysis is to lend it an ear, to give hearsing a hearing, to give a hearing to the point where the left-over of signification invades the very process of signification. But what is at stake now, is not the aesthetic effect lets listen how the unconscious sings and enjoy it but the question of knowledge, the unconscious knowledge and unconscious desire, the unconscious thought that was Freuds outrageous idea. There is a beautiful sentence in Agamben: The search for voice in language, this is what one calls thought.6Thought dependant not on the signifier, the meaning, but precisely on what is recalcitrant to signifier, what escapes meaning. So the problem is to focus the question of knowledge, precisely around the element of the voice which redoubles signification.
5 The Freud quotes are from The Pelican Freud Library (PFL), 15 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973-86. 6 Quoted in Jean-Luc Nancy, A lcoute, Paris: Galile 2002, p. 45.

95

They hinge on the excess of the voice against the meaning: they are always interruptions of meaning, its slips, and the point is not to unearth the hidden meaning in that excess, but rather to maintain the very excess and pursue its logic. For the unconscious, as Freud points out, doesnt reside in the latent thoughts disclosed by interpretation, it is not another meaning (deeper, hidden etc.), it resides in the form, in the excess of distortion, Entstellung, which sticks precisely to the voice in the signifier, its excrescence. The unconscious is not a hidden meaning, a deeper meaning to be unearthed, it resides only in the distorted form. One could say: it seems that the unconscious is telling us something in a roundabout way, so it seems that our task, the task of analytic interpretation, would be to say this directly, plainly, without the by-pass of distortion. But this is the lure, the error: the unconscious is telling us something only in the roundabout way, it resides only in the distortion, in the surplus of form, and the form sticks precisely to the element of the recalcitrant voice. This is where the analytic interpretation is a misnomer, it runs against the grain of the common notion of interpretation, it is not the meaning it is after, but rather the vacillating object epitomized by the voice. So whats in a voice? For one part, the lovers of Verona no doubt amply rely on the voice in this first sense, on the poetic voice which sustains their love in the dark, and this conjunction of their singularity and the poetic effects makes this scene so memorable. But there is more in a voice and other things. If it is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man, where does it come from? The voice, in its most elementary manifestation, appears as something that can convey the uniqueness, it expresses the interiority which it brings out, it testifies to an unfathomable interior, it exposes the hidden treasure of individuality but, to put it bluntly, this is another lure. There is a powerful notion of ones presence in ones voice, a presence in a way more real than the usual presence, a presence beyond presence, although the voice is but a mere undulation of the air, fleeting, passing the moment it is emitted, and therefore evoking presence at its most elusive, yet so tenacious in being tenuous. Perhaps the very notion of presence cannot be conceived without a voice this is where Derridas notion of phonocentrism takes its hold, we need a voice to think presence, we need a voice not merely to think, but to experience ones presence to oneself, the self-presence, consciousness, based on auto-affection, where one is the emitter and the receiver of ones voice in the illusion of pure self-affection, and this is perhaps what we call consciousness.7 There is a strong metaphoricity connecting the voice with the spirit, the breath, something more real than any positive presence. But this makes the very notion of presence, depend upon something eerie, spectral and virtual. For where does the voice come from? Already the simple question of its emission, involves a paradox: we can see the mouth, the bodily opening from which it is supposed to emanate, yet the voice comes, from an invisible interior, it indicates an unfathomable interiority, we can never see its source. It divides the body into an inside and an outside and is actually the major operator of this division, the most dramatic division there is. Standing at this dividing line that it helps to produce (standing? there is no way the voice could stand), it is at the same time the intersection of the body and the language, it is what they have in common, it pins the language to a point of bodily emission, it ties language to the body. The signifier is a creature without a body, a creature of logic, but with the voice, it acquires an embodiment, an incarnation, for it can function only if someone assumes it with his or her own voice. But this connection is paradoxical, for the voice doesnt simply belong to either the body or the language it cannot be seized by linguistics, it inhabits language without being its part, and it is not a positive part of the body, it is a missile which departs from it, it is not simply inside nor outside, but consists in the very transition. It is the great operator of the division into inside and outside, a borderline paradox, as it were, which requires a new kind of ontology or a new kind of topology.
7 Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976, p. 20.

96

Let me give another literary example I started with Shakespeare at the dawn of modernity, so let me take an example from the opposite end, from one of the highpoints of modernism, Samuel Becketts The Unnamable. The scene from Romeo and Juliet, forcefully staged the opposition between the voice and the name, the ensuing drama of the two, while Becketts text brings this to an extreme: what is at stake here is precisely a voice without a name, a nameless voice, an unnamable voice, for we literally dont know, throughout the novel, who is emitting this voice, where does it come from. The voice without a known origin or location, is the whole point of the novel, the novel is driven just by a voice to whom no name can be assigned. (Let me just remind that The Unnamable is the third part of a Trilogy, which comprises Molloy and Malone dies as the first two parts, where with each consecutive part more things disappear, so that in the final part there are no more characters, heroes, plots etc., what remains is a mere voice.) One quote must suffice: Ill have said it, without a mouth Ill have said it, Ill have said it inside me, then in the same breath outside me, perhaps thats what I feel, an outside and an inside and me in the middle, perhaps thats what I am, the thing that divides the world in two, on the one side the outside, on the other the inside, that can be as thin as foil, Im neither one side nor the other, Im in the middle, Im the partition, Ive two surfaces and no thickness, perhaps thats what I feel, myself vibrating, Im the tympanum, on the one hand the mind, on the other the world, I dont belong to either 8 One couldnt be more precise: the voice is the very principle of division, itself not on either side and yet on both sides at once, at the intersection of the inner and the outer, yet unplaceable in that division, the thinnest of foils which connects and separates the two. There is a standard way to describe certain procedure of modern literature under the heading the stream of consciousness, when a writer supposedly follows the inner rambling and faithfully records it as a scribe, putting down its meanderings in a raw form as they appear to consciousness before being made presentable and coherent. As far as Beckett is concerned, the term is highly misleading and inappropriate. For the stream of consciousness, presupposes consciousness as a realm neatly separate from the outside world, but the whole point with Beckett, is that this inner voice maintains itself as unplaceable, at the very edge of the mind and the world, the speech and the body, cutting into both and being cut by both. Its inner split, immediately translates into an outer split and vice versa. It is not that the consciousness is incoherent; rather the very line that separates consciousness and constitutes it as such, is constantly blurred and indistinct. We can mark in passing the distance that separates the two quotes: on the one hand the exemplary drama of the voice and the name, the name of the Father, at the other end the nameless voice, the voice without a foothold, with no name of the Father to stick to or to oppose and with no individuality to express, with no social obligations to fulfill or to fall back on, merely the persistence of the voice, but which obliges by its strange ethics of perseverance. It is as if the name (of the father) has lost its power and authority to name, to define the social, to prescribe, to allot a social place it has become missing. This voice is a new voice, an invention of modernity, as it were, something modernity has brought forward, and Becketts The Unnamable can be read as an exemplary counterpart to Romeo and Juliet. The voice which literally embodies the dividing line is, something that one can never quite claim as ones own, one can ultimately never speak in ones own voice: it may seem to be the most intimately mine, my own innermost possession, but it is also something which disrupts our self-presence, the very notion of the self, and refers it to virtuality. Stemming from the interior, it brings out more, and other things, than one catered for.

8 The Beckett Trilogy, London: Picador, 1979, p. 352.

97

Beckett, is here an excellent point in the case: there are now many schools of creative writing which endeavour to teach people how to find their own authors voices, this is their guiding metaphor: to find your own voice in writing, what is specifically and originally yours, proper to you only. Becketts problem was exactly the opposite: how to lose ones own voice, how to write neutrally, anonymously, how to get rid of style, how not to be an author (hence writing in a foreign language, to deprive oneself of the delusive shelter of ones mother tongue). Foucault, in the famous lecture What is an author? took his cue from Beckett, from his line What matter whos speaking, Quimporte qui parle how not to fall into the trap of ones own voice as an ineffable inner treasure and into the twin trap of authorship. For him, the voice is precisely not something intimate or proper, but something that disrupts the illusion of ones self-presence in the voice, something that disturbs the interiority of consciousness. It is more appropriate to say that the voice is like an intruder, a foreign body, a prosthesis, a bodily extension, an artificial limb it is never authentic, it is never just an expression. The voice has like a spectral autonomy, it never quite belongs to the body we see, the voice never sounds like the person emitting it, there is always a gap, a Verfremdung, a mismatch. There always seems that there is ventriloquism at work, as if ventriloquism was the standard use of the voice that we overlook by mere habit (and overhear when the habit drops its guard a bit). The voice as an intruder is endowed with a spectral nature, with something both intimate and external Lacan invented an excellent word for this, the extimate. Let me give two examples. In 2001 The Space Odyssey, the mythical film by Stanley Kubrick, there is a computer Hal 2000 which is running the space-ship and which at a certain point runs amok and has to be disconnected. So the hero (Keir Dullea) disconnects its brain cells, slowly, one by one, the computers were of huge sizes in those days, while we hear the computer speaking with his completely mechanical voice, pleading for his life, pleading for mercy, regressing to his supposed childhood, singing a childrens song the computer dies a most human death, it is tragically human, as it were,9 just by its mechanical voice, its humanity appearing precisely in its opposite, in the contrived voice, in this artificial extension, in its discrepancy. There is a contemporary real-life counterpart to this, the voice of Stephen Hawking. There is this mastermind, this living supercomputer, the scientific icon of our times, the most astute mind there is in modern science, but reduced to the bare minimum of the body, the completely disabled body, the body shrunk to the outmost, and his humanity is epitomized by the completely mechanical voice, the most gripping and at the same time the most uncanny voice, the extracorporeal voice of the mind, gripping in its impersonality. This spectral autonomy of the voice, this zone of indeterminacy, can perhaps be best felt with what has become known as the acousmatic voice. The term was introduced by Pierre Schaeffer, the famous French composer of concrete music, and by his follower Michel Chion,10 and it means simply the voice whose origin one cannot see or locate. We dont know where it is coming from and to what body it could be assigned. This voice can produce uncanny effects, the impossibility to locate it, endows it with a special force, a sort of omnipotence and omnipresence. The most striking example, is Hitchcocks Psycho it entirely revolves around the simple question where does the mothers voice come from, from which body it emanates.

9 In contrast, the hibernating astronauts in the movie die the most impersonal and mechanical death. 10 Cf. Pierre Schaeffer, Trait des objets musicaux, Paris: Seuil, 1966; Michel Chion, La voix au cinma, Paris: Cahiers du cinma, 1982.

98

We have the voice and we dont see the body producing it, not until the very end. And the mothers voice, we may add, is not just any voice, it is the beginning of the vocal experience, the first voice one hears, the case is paradigmatic the mothers voice which determines so much of the infants fate in its first and decisive stages, is precisely an acousmatic voice, whose origin the baby initially and structurally cannot locate, so the acousmatic voice is actually the originary experience of the voice as the voice of the other. This is where Psycho acquires the force of a parable. There is an inherent link between the acousmatic voice and philosophy. Where does this word acousmatic come from? The first person who called himself a philosopher and who founded the first philosophical school, was Pythagoras. The acousmatics were his followers, his pupils, who had to listen to their teacher, their master, to his lectures, in such a way that the teacher was hidden behind a screen and this for five years. We have the report of Diogenes Laertius (VIII, 10) for this. So if anybody wanted to be Pythagoras disciple, he had to undergo a period of apprenticeship when for five years he was merely listening to the masters teaching proffered behind a curtain, not being able to see the master. This is the acousmatic dispositive, which stands at the very origin of philosophy. The teacher behind the screen, lecturing, an invisible creature of the voice a stroke of genius which maybe inaugurates philosophy. This is a philosophical theatre, with the curtain and all, but a curtain which is not raised for five years, so that initially philosophy appears as an art of the actor behind the curtain. The aim of this mechanism, was to separate the teaching, entrusted to mere voice, from any visual distractions, from all the imaginary, from any image and appearance, from the behaviour and the very body of the teacher from everything that could divert from the concentration on the ideas being proffered. The teaching, the ideas, the doctrine, all this was assigned only to His Masters Voice as their proper medium, the medium of the spirit, and the aim was precisely to separate the spirit from the body. In this division, the spirit is in the voice and the body pertains to the visual. But it is not only that the disciples could concentrate better on the ideas in this way, it is also that the teaching acquired an exceptional authority, by being entrusted to the acousmatic voice, it acquired an additional surplus meaning, an aura which would be dissipated if one could see its banal location. The beauty of this mechanism, is in its simplicity and in the manner in which it can function automatically, formally one could even say that someone quasi-automatically becomes a teacher, a master, by lecturing behind a screen. There is a surplus authority, by which the teacher is not merely a teacher, but also the master, and this surplus stems from the invisible voice, not from the content of the proposed ideas. The body, seems to be an embarrassment for the spirit, but there is a lure in this, an illusion, since the voice itself is a kind of body, in a reversal it is more body than the visible body, a spectral body more forceful and intrusive than any other body can be. The disembodied body compels and the teaching is more persuasive if it is supported by the acousmatic voice. The spirit obtains a new body in the voice, an aura, and this is the source of its efficacy. Diogenes Laertius, also tells us that Pythagoras was an object of cult when still alive and achieved a status of divinity, and this is perhaps not unrelated to this mechanism it is perhaps a mechanism to produce divine effects. (Indeed, in the Bible and in a number of religions God regularly appears as an acousmatic voice.) And we can only surmise, what happened with the hapless disciples once the curtain was lifted after all these years and they could see with their own eyes this wonder, this source of the voice, this pitiful and banal old man for everyone would appear trivial in such circumstances, there is no way that ones appearance could measure up to this voice and its authority. One can pity the poor teacher when the curtain is lifted, and one can surmise that the thing could only turn into a black comedy, even worse, a comedy that no one could publicly admit.

99

If we have this acousmatic dispositive at the beginning of philosophy, then we find one also at its end, namely the figure of psychoanalyst. The analyst, is also someone one cannot see following Freuds guidelines, he is supposed to sit behind the couch, outside of the field of vision of the patient, and here, too, the intention is to be rid of all visual distractions, in particular to prevent the possibility of patients reading the analysts reactions in his behaviour and to take a cue from there. The analyst is thus a pure spirit, a ghost, an invisible creature, a spirit deprived of its body. But the situation, is now exactly the reverse: according to Freuds dispositive it is now the patient, the subject, who has to do all the talking this is indeed the talking cure, as it was called by the first psychoanalytic patient, Anna O., and the one who talks, is the one to be cured. On the other side, the analyst can do his job, in the limit at least, by keeping silent. He can occasionally say something, but in the limit the cure, the process of analysis, could be carried out by him not saying anything. So the situation is directly reversed: the subject talks, not in order to proffer a teaching, dispense the ideas, he speaks about anything that happens to fall into his mind, in the maximal distance to philosophy, this is mere babbling, free associations, anything goes. But the point is that, he speaks to the Other, to the teacher, the master, the doctor, the one who is supposed to know this is Lacans notorious formula of transference (and the vocal tie is essential to transference). The one who is supposed to know, is the one not to be seen, he is structurally behind the curtain and hence appears as omnipresent and omnipotent. So the analyst, in this Pythagorean embodiment in reverse, is not a creature of the acousmatic voice, the voice of authority, but of the voice reduced to silence, inaudible voice, which is perhaps the voice in its pure form, the voice brought to its concept. Not an acousmatic voice, but an acousmatic silence, a silence whose source one cannot see and locate. The subject, learns and transforms himself not by listening to a voice and a teaching, but by speaking himself into the silence to learn from the silence of the Other, which receives his own voice and transfigures it. The Other is not the possessor of a doctrine, it is the subject which has to make his way to a teaching through his own babbling, a babbling turning into a teaching through the loop of the silence of the Other. The voice, vanishes the moment it is emitted. It appears as an instantaneous flash and evaporates, like a brief lightening illuminating the night and its gone. When it is prolonged and sustained, it can only hold sway as long as it sounds, it has the power to entirely occupy the space, the outer and the inner, to hold us in awe, but only for the duration. It has no power to endure, no claim to permanence, it is intrinsically evanescent and transitory. It has an intimate relation to time it epitomizes its passing, the impossibility to hold on to the passing moment. Hence, it has an intimate relation to memory, to the very possibility of retention. How can one remedy its passing? Can one retain the voice, preserve it? There are two ways, one ancient as humanity itself, one fairly recent. The first one, is obviously the language, the signifier, the name. Language, can be seen as a huge machinery for replicating voices, for retaining and preserving that in the voice that can be retained and preserved. One could say: it retains and preserves everything except the voice itself. Or more precisely: it is an imperfect machinery, which can retain and preserve something of the voice due to its imperfection. It captures the echoes and reflections of the voice, precisely through the quirks and the glitches of the machine, the whims, the peculiarities, the oddities, the anomalies that both the poetry and the unconscious get hold of, the only places where they can get their foothold, as we have seen. Its quirks and glitches, are the spots where it seems that there is a ghost in this machine, the ghost of a voice, or where this machine seems to produce spirit. Still, the language machine is incapable of capturing the other aspect of the voice, its seemingly ineffable nature, its uniqueness and individuality, its intimate relation to interiority and presence.

100

But here, we have another kind of machinery which has come to our rescue more than a century ago, the technology of voice recording and reproduction, the technology getting ever more gigantic and sophisticated, giving rise to a hugely expanding industry, to the point of overwhelming all the recesses of our lives.11 Gramophones, radios, tape recorders, CDs, telephones, loudspeakers, microphones, cinema, TVs, mobile phones have come to rule our being and one of the most salient and significant features of the history of the past century, is that it has brought a new and unprecedented experience of the voice, a ubiquitous experience which has irretrievably changed the very meaning of the word voice. Every experience of the voice, from the earliest stages on, is an inextricable mixture, in varying proportions, of voices from live sources and voices produced by technical devices, i. e. voices whose live sources are absent and merely reproduced. The proportions of this revolution are staggering, its effects are omnipresent and overpowering. For the first time in history, capturing the uniqueness of the voice, has become not only possible, but common and at everyones fingertips; replicating the singular presence and interiority has become trivial, or so it seems. What is reproduced by technology, is precisely that aspect of the voice, that the language couldnt seize and retain: the footing in the unrepeatable presence. The unrepeatable presence of the sounding voice, has become easily repeatable. Along with fixing the voice on a support and making it replicable, a number of concomitant revolutions have taken place: 1. the possibility of transmitting the voice across distances; 2. the possibility of its amplification; 3. the possibility of its modeling and transformation; 4. the ubiquitous acousmatic quality the Pythagorean curtain has been replaced by gadgets; 5. the possibility of generating synthetic sounds and voices, whose only source is the electronic medium itself.12 All this taken together, amounts to a most spectacular revolution. Yet, if so much depends on apprehending the voice, ultimately the very notions of presence and consciousness (cf. Derrida), that what defines our being human has our experience of the voice and the self dramatically changed with this stunning transformation? Are we human in a strikingly different way? The first cautious answer could be: far less than one would surmise. Given the massive introduction of unprecedented devices with limitless possibilities, this certainly sounds most extraordinary. The first reason for this, lies in the nature of the voice itself, which, as we have seen, was always in itself endowed with a prosthetic quality. It is not quite accurate to say that the new technologies introduced an unprecedented experience of the voice, rather they magnified and extended something that was already in the voice, although in a concealed way, covered by the aura of authenticity, individuality, expression, uniqueness. The voice, strictly speaking, doesnt mean anything it is the signifier that is the bearer of meaning but in a strange reversal it was precisely by not meaning anything that it was ascribed the highest meaning, the ineffable meaning beyond words, be it as an elevation to divinity or as the pledge of self-presence and uniqueness. This structural illusion, pertained to the whole history of the voice and largely covered its disruptive nature. So one cant pit the authentic voice, stemming from a live source, against the voice artificially contrived and replicated by technology. It is not the technology which disrupted the unalloyed presence of the voice and its aura, its untarnished sway and unrepeatable individuality, there is rather something in the nature of the voice itself, which always pointed to this disruption, something by which the voice was never just a pledge of presence, but rather an indicator of an impossible presence. Where it seemed the most pervasive, it referred at the same time the presence to a void. Where it seemed the most authentic, it was at the same time a foreign body, a prosthesis, a quasi-artificial bodily extension. Technology magnified this part and brought it to a universal function, commonly available.13
11 Everything has changed since that recording, the first time in history, of Mary had a little lamb by Edison in 1877 the recording which is lost now and since Gustave Eiffel, of the Eiffel Tower, made the oldest existing recording, on the Tower itself, of a poem called LAcacia and which he dated, in his own voice, stating 11 Fecruary 1891. 12 For a lucid phenomenology of these revolutions cf. Michel Chion, Le son, Paris: Nathan 1998, pp. 197 ff. 13 Again, Beckett could be taken as a case in the matter: far from sticking to the authenticity of the voice, he gladly espoused new technologies, he used the tape-recorder (in his most remarkable Krapps Last Tape), wrote radio plays and for TV, made a Film etc. The use of technology was completely in line with his understanding of the voice, not a break with it.

101

But it magnified both sides at the same time: it made the prosthetic nature of the voice palpable, but thereby not dissipating the structural illusion, it rather kept covering the gap that it opened with ever more formidable and imposing technical possibilities. So the astounding thing, is perhaps not so much the unprecedented experience of the voice, but how easily it could be recuperated. It is true that the introduction of new technologies initially provoked a great deal of consternation, the sudden proliferation of acousmatic voices was initially accompanied by a vast panoply of uncanny effects, it seemed like a new kind of magic endorsed by science.14 I can briefly give another grand literary example from the early days of the telephone. This is from Proust, from The Guermantes Way (1920), the third volume of his great novel In Search of Lost Time. The narrator finds himself in a French provincial town and at some point, speaks to his grandmother over the telephone at the post-office. The presence of her voice is so real, it is a phanthom of a presence, but precisely because of this it is overpowering, so he is immediately seized by a great desire to see his beloved granny, her acousmatic voice, heard for the first time without the support of its source, instilled him with an unstoppable yearning. So he rushes back to Paris, on an impulse, to rejoin her, he sants to free himself in her arms, from the phantom, hitherto unsuspected and suddenly called into being by her voice. And when he returns and enters her room, what happens? For the first time and for a moment only, since she vanished very quickly, I saw, sitting on the sofa beneath the lamp, red-faced, heavy and vulgar, sick, day-dreaming an overburdened old woman whom I did not know. (2001, p. 426) So the voice, filled him with longing to come back and embrace the body from which it emanated, but too late, all he could find was a woman he didnt know. So the acousmatic voice disrupts the presence, it invades the living persons, and the disruption can no longer be healed. But the unsettling effects were short-lived and things quickly achieved a new state of normality, where the new voices were integrated in our life-world. Perhaps the upsetting thing, is that not so much was upset. Still, if our daily experience swallowed the massive assault of new voices with a seeming ease something that by traditional standards looked like a miraculous feat of magic the new possibilities did affect the historical fate of the big Other (to use the economical term of the Lacanian psychoanalysis) and intervened in a particular shift in this fate. One could tentatively say that technology presents a redoubtable extension of the big Other, the notion which was initially conceived as the big Other of language, of the symbolic order, i. e. the big Other of the first great machinery of retention, of stacking and preserving the voice. The Other, is the authority or rather the supposition of authority which upholds language, which guarantees its laws and its meaning, and one cannot speak a language without the supposition of such a guarantee. In this first sense, the voice presented the object which escaped this preservation and eluded the signifying logic (where it could only be obliquely invoked by its quirks and glitches). The technology of voice-reproduction, by (seemingly) repeating the unrepeatable and by annulling the distance which was the natural limitation of the voice, enhanced the Other and made it even more unassailable. The presence of the voice, didnt become truncated by the possibility of replication of its singularity and uniqueness, but replication rather enhanced its sway: every voice-presence became increasingly artificial, a make-believe, but then again, the presence of the big Other, was always a make-believe. We dont believe less because of the conspicuous make-believe, it entails a belief which is mediated, and hence in a way less assailable. One could venture a rather massive hypothesis: the decline of the symbolic authority of the Other (something that can be described in a variety of ways) hasnt weakened the Other, but rather made it more oppressive, omnipresent and impregnable. The decline of the name the name of the Father, to take up our initial dispositive was as if counterbalanced by a host of replicable voices and their vast dispersion, voices not any
14 Here I must refer to the meticulous and magisterial work by Friedrich Kittler, in particular Grammophone, Film, Typewriter, Stanford UP, 1999.

102

longer governed and framed by the name. The vocal Other, has as if succeeded the symbolic Other. The Other, has become far more vocal than symbolic, no more based on the name of the father, but also not in his Masters voice. The notorious image of the dog inspecting the cylinder of a phonograph, one of the emblematic icons of the 20th century, doesnt display simply that the absent Master holds us in sway, by his replicated acousmatic voice, but also the fact that the very figure of the Master has changed. The proliferation of voices, has both disintegrated his authority and made it more pervasive and more difficult to cope with.15 But this is not at all a lament at the pervasiveness of technology and its fatal dangers (in the vein of, say, Heidegger). If technology of voice-reproduction, enhanced and extended the big Other, it made the job of its dismantling more difficult, but also provided a vast panoply of means that can tackle it. The mourning for the lost live presence, is utterly misplaced, since that presence was always a retroactive myth that tried to cover up the disruptive nature of the voice. But perhaps equally insufficient, is the rejoicing over the new possibilities of voice (re)production and the profusion of new voices, say in the guise of postmodern stance of delight at the proliferation of simulacra, the endless string of copies and replicas (the happy anything goes). Both attitudes, albeit here simplified into caricatures, are ways of giving up on the voice, although in opposite ways, once by holding on to its rooting in the (lost) presence, once by extolling its prosthetic nature as a blessing. What would be required, is a most difficult strategy, a politics of memory, as it were, a politics of the voice, whose contours one can only surmise and for which there is no blueprint. The possibility of retention of the evanescent voice, as we have seen, is the very possibility of memory. With new technologies, the voice quite literally leaves a trace; technology is an extended memory, it can memorialize everything with seeming accuracy, not just the process of signification as the language did, but the timbres, the cadences, the materiality of the voice, its inherent quirks, the meaningless. It turned the voice, for the first time, quite literally into an object, repeatable at will, easily handled and manipulated. The unrepeatable presence, was supplanted by a new object-voice which kept it alive as its own double. With the advent of computer technology, memory became even more infinitely expanded, everything can be recorded and stacked at our disposal, but the infinite possibilities of seemingly total memory, make the task of memory more difficult than ever, insofar as memory always meant something else than faithful recording and stacking. For couldnt one say, as we did with language, that everything is retained and preserved, in voice-recording, except the voice? The stacking of new voice-objects, renders even more palpable the impossible experience of the voice and its special topology which makes that the voice cant coincide any more with its objective trace than it did with the signifier. The voice, no more resides in the mythical ineffable lost presence than it does in the new voice-object which claims to be its adequate reproduction, its fixed sound-image. So can one conceive of a memory that would of course work with all the means at our disposal, language and technologies alike, within and inside them, but which nevertheless wouldnt simply coincide with either the signifier or the recorded voice? Can one conceive of an object voice, which insists in the objective traces of both signifiers and recorded voices, as their inaudible surplus, neither simply present nor absent, but which cannot be reduced to them? How can one maintain faithfulness to something which has no standing as an objective trace, but is also not some mythical or mystical being in a realm apart? How can one retain its memory? How can one hear the inaudible? I must leave the question in suspense.
15 Hearing voices was always a sign of psychosis. Only mad people heard voices without origin. Could one say that the shift to the vocal Other has produced a condition where a psychotic streak massively invaded the most common everyday life? Could it be, that the multitude of voices became a stand-in for the foreclosed name of the Father? The foreclosure of the name of the Father, of the signifier of authority of the Other, is Lacans definition of psychosis.

103

en

his masters voice

mladen dolar akbank sanat conference hall 10 november 2007

Let me start by one of the most notorious and widely commented passages, the first of Benjamins Theses on the Philosophy of History, the last text he completed before his death, in April 1940. The story is told of an automaton constructed in such a way that it could play a winning game of chess, answering each move of an opponent with a winning countermove. A puppet in Turkish attire and with a hookah in its mouth, sat before a chessboard placed on a large table. A system of mirrors created the illusion that this table was transparent from all sides. Actually, a little hunchback who was an expert chess player sat inside and guided the puppets hand by means of strings. One can imagine a philosophical counterpart to this device. The puppet called historical materialism is to win all the time. It can easily be a match for anyone if it enlists the service of theology, which today, as we know, is wizened and has to keep out of sight.1 One is almost embarrassed to revisit this notorious spot, this universally beleaguered shrine. Slavoj iek has used it recurrently, from The Sublime Object (1989) to The Puppet and the Dwarf (2003), where it provided the very title. Let me try to use it as a prolegomena to a theory of the voice. Admittedly, the connection is all but evident. There have been many speculations about what Benjamin exactly meant with that strange parable or metaphor (if this is one). Leaving provisionally aside the historical materialism and theology, there is the following mystery: how can a puppet enlist the services of the one who is operating it, who is literally pulling its strings? The puppet appears to be controlled by the hunchback, but then in the second stage, it is endowed with its own intentionality, it should itself pull the strings of its master. The metaphor itself, like the automaton, seems to be endowed with duplicity, but let us first look at its very literal doubling. The chess automaton was constructed in 1769 by Wolfgang von Kempelen, an Austrian court official.2 It indeed consisted of a Turkish puppet, with a hookah in one hand and making the moves with the other, and of a box containing a complicated system of mirrors, entrapments and contraptions which permitted the human player to move around and remain invisible while the inside of the machine was displayed to the audience. The automaton achieved great notoriety, it has beaten many famous opponents (among whom there was Napoleon, in a famous game which was recorded Napoleon had the reputation of a very strong chess player, but this game doesnt do him credit: solo escapades with the queen, neglect of the defense no wonder that he was heading for Waterloo). After Kempelens death, the automaton was taken over by Mlzel, who eventually took it for the long American tour, where Poe has seen it and written the famous piece, Maelzels Chess Player (1836), arguing that the whole thing was a fraud, a hoax. But for Kempelen, the constructor made famous by his invention, the chess automaton was not at the center of his interest.
1 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1987), 253. 2 One can find an extensive and most entertaining history of this chess-playing machine in the remarkable book The Turk, by Tom Standage (New York: Berkley Books, 2002), from which I draw some information here. With all the vast amount of references Standage curiously never mentions Benjamin.

104

He had another big obsession, a far more ambitious one: to construct a speaking machine; literally: a machine which could imitate human voice and human speech. That was a problem which caused some vivid curiosity in the eighteenth century, it was one of the dreams of the Enlightenment. Euler, the greatest mathematician of the century, saw it as the serious problem in physics: how to construct the machine which could imitate the acoustic productions of the human mouth.3 The mouth, the tongue, the vocal chords, the teeth how is it that this simple panoply can produce the wide variety of specific sounds of such complexity and distinctiveness that no acoustic machine can imitate them? The Royal Academy of sciences in St. Petersburg, issued a prize assignment in 1780: to construct a machine which could reproduce the vowels and to explain their physical properties. Many people tried their hand at this strenuous task, among them Kempelen who constructed die Sprech-Maschine (still to be seen today in Deutsche Museum in Munich). It was a machine composed of a wooden box which was on one side connected to bellows (a sort of bagpipe), serving as lungs, and on the other to a rubber funnel serving as mouth and had to be modified with a hand while speaking. In the box there was a series of valves and ventricles which had to be operated with the other hand. With some exercise one could produce astounding effects. As one witness put it in 1784: You cannot believe, my dear friend, how we were all seized by a magic feeling when we first heard human voice and human speech which apparently didnt come from human mouth. We looked at each other in silence and consternation and we all had goose-flesh produced by horror in the first moments.4 In 1791 Kempelen meticulously described his invention in a book, Mechanismus der menschlichen Sprache nebst Beschreibung einer sprechenden Maschine (The mechanism of human speech with the description of a speaking machine). The book laid down the theoretical principles and the guidelines for the practical realization. Yet, no matter how much the thing was described for everybody to study, the machine nevertheless kept producing the effects which can only be described by the Freudian word as uncanny. There is an uncanniness in the gap which makes that a machine can, by purely mechanical means, produce something so uniquely human as the voice and speech. As if the effect would emancipate itself from its mechanical origin and start functioning as a surplus, indeed as the ghost in the machine; as if there was an effect without a proper cause, an effect surpassing its explicable cause. And this is one of the most striking properties of the voice: that it presents a breach of causality, a gap in the causal nexus, as if it was to occupy the place of a missing link. The imitational powers of the machine were quite limited. It couldnt speak German, apparently French, Italian and Latin were much easier. We have some examples of its vocabulary: Vous tes mon ami je vous aime de tout mon Coeur Leopoldus Secundus Romanorum Imperator Semper Augustus papa, maman, ma femme, mon mari, le roi, allons Paris etc. If we were presented with this as a list of free associations, what would we make of the machines unconscious? There are, to be sure, two basic functions of speech: the declaration of love and the praise for the ruler, both all the more compelling since the anonymous speaking device mechanically produces affection implied in the form of address. The minimal vocabulary has the purpose to display the posture of devotion, machines voice is used to declare its submission, its devotion be it to the abstract beloved or to the actual ruler; it is as if the voice wou ld subjectify the machine, as if there was an exposure in this something becomes exposed, an unfathomable interiority of the machine irreducible to its mechanical functioning, and the first use of subjectivity would be to throw itself at the mercy of the Other, something one can best do with the voice, or what one can only do in ones own voice.
3 Euler had the fantasy of constructing a piano or an organ where each key would represent one of the sounds of speech. So that one could speak by pressing the succession of keys, like playing the piano. 4 Quoted by Brigitte Felderer, Stimm-Maschinen. Zur Konstruktion und Sichtbarmachung menschlicher Sprache im 18. Jahrhundert, in: Kittler, Macho & Weigel (eds.), Zwischen Rauschen und Offenbarung. Zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Stimme (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), 269.

105

This immediately turns the voice into a pivotal point in love and politics (two of Badious generic procedures) the voice as a pledge, a declaration, a gift, an appeal, but here brought about mechanically, impersonally, thus causing a perplexity, bringing into question the intimate link between voice and subjectivity. Here we come to the point of this story. Kempelen made a tour of major European cities in 1780s, and what he presented was a double attraction, a double bill: on the one hand the speaking machine, on the other the chess automaton. The sequence of the two is crucial. The speaking machine was used as the introduction of the other wonder and presented its counterpart, its supplement, its foretaste, as it were. As if we had to deal with a double device, a double creature composed of the speaking and the thinking machine as the two Platonic halves of the same being. The difference between the two was didactical: first, the chess automaton was constructed in such a way as to appear as human-like as possible, it made the pretense of being engrossed in deep thought, it rolled its eyes etc., while the speaking machine was as mechanical as possible, it didnt try to hide its machine nature, on the contrary, it exhibited it conspicuously. This was the point of its attraction: how can something utterly non-human produce human effects? The anthropomorphic thinking machine was counterbalanced by the non-anthropomorphic speaking machine. Second, Kempelen ultimately admitted that the chess automaton was based on a trick, which he didnt want to disclose (indeed he carried this secret to his grave). The speaking machine, on the other hand, was no hoax, it was a mechanism that everybody was free to inspect and whose principles were carefully explained in a book, so that everybody could make one. The Turkish chess-player was unique and kept in mystery, while the speaking machine was intended for replication, imitation, mass production on the basis of universal scientific principles.5 Third, there was a teleology in the link between the two machines. First in the weak sense, that the speaking machine was presented as the introduction to the thinking machine and thus the former made the latter plausible, acceptable, endowed with credibility. For if the first one was demonstrated as actual, then the second one was presented as a possibility, although admittedly based on a trick. But there was also teleology in a stronger sense, namely that the second machine was the fulfillment of the promise given by the first one. The perspective was opened in which the thinking machine was but an extension of the speaking machine, so that the speaking machine, presented first, would reach its telos in the thinking machine, or even more, that there was a quasi-Hegelian transition between the two, from in itself to for itself: what the speaking machine was in itself had to be made for itself in the thinking machine. So that the point of this dispositve could be read in such a way that speech and voice present the hidden mechanism of thought, they have to precede thought as something mechanical, which thinking then has to conceal under the disguise of anthropomorphism. Thinking is like that anthropomorphic puppet concealing the real puppet, the speaking puppet. So that the secret to be disguised by the Turkish puppet, with the hookah and all, was not the human dwarf in its bosom, its supposed homunculus mastermind, but rather the speaking machine, the voice machine which preceded the automaton and which was displayed for everybody to see. That was the homunculus which was pulling the strings of the thinking machine. The first machine was the secret of the second one, and the second one, the anthropomorphic puppet, had to enlist the services of the first one if it was to win.

5 It so happened that in 1838 a Charles Wheatstone constructed a version of it, following Kempelens instructions, and this machine made such a deep impression on the young Alexander Graham Bell that his pursuit of it eventually led him to nothing less than the invention of telephone. One should also add that Charles Babbage saw the chess automaton in 1819 and was so impressed by it that the pursuit of its enigma led him to the construction of the first computing machine. Cf. Standage, pp. 138-45.

106

There is a paradox: the dwarf within the puppet, turns out to be himself another puppet, the mechanical puppet within the anthropomorphic one, and the secret of the thinking machine is something which appears to be itself thoughtless, yet a mechanism which produces voice, the most human of effects, an effect of interiority. It is not simply that the machine is the true secret of thought, for there is a certain duality, a split already in the voice machine: it endeavors to produce speech, some meaningful words and minimal sentences, but at the same time it actually produces the voice in excess of speech and meaning, the voice as an excess. That was the true point of fascination: the meaning was hard to decipher, given the poor quality of reproduction, but the voice was what immediately seized everybody and inspired universal awe, precisely with the impression it made of quintessential humanity. Voice was produced not by a seamless mechanical causality, but by a mysterious jump in causality, a breach, an excess of the voice-effect over its cause, and the voice occupies the space of that breach. Il ny de cause que de ce qui cloche. There is a cause only in something that doesnt work.6 Literally: There is a cause only of what limps. The cause appears only at the point of a hitch in causality, with a troubled causality and this is where Lacan situated the object. But this is also the lever of thought, as opposed to the anthropomorphic masquerade of thinking there is a good line in Agamben: The search for the voice in language, this is what is called thought.7 The search for what exceeds language and meaning. For our present purpose, we could bend or transform Benjamins thesis: if the puppet called historical materialism is to win, it should enlist the services of the voice. Hence the need for a theory of the voice, the object voice, the voice as one of the paramount embodiments of what Lacan called objet a. I What singles out the voice against the vast ocean of sounds and noises, what defines the voice as special among the infinite array of acoustic phenomena, is its inner relationship with meaning. The voice is something which points toward meaning, there is like an arrow in it which raises the expectation of meaning, it is an opening towards meaning. No doubt one can ascribe meaning to all kinds of sounds, yet they seem to be deprived of it in themselves, while the voice has an intimate connection with it, it is a sound which seems endowed in itself with the will to say something, with an inner intentionality, indeed it opens the supposition of an interiority which expresses itself. One can make various other sounds with the intention to signify, but there the intention appears to be external to those sounds themselves which are used as its mere instruments; or else they function as a stand-in, a metaphoric substitute for the voice. Only the voice implies a subjectivity which itself inhabits the means of expression, the intention which is one with its instrument.8 The moment the voice is heard in the midst of the tumult of sounds, it instantly makes all other sounds appear like a background, it reduces them to the scenery which highlights the main hero. This link with meaning, produces a spontaneous inner teleology of the voice: it is a means in the ascent towards the peak of meaning, but, like Wittgensteins ladder, to be discarded once we get there. The voice is but a vehicle, and the meaning is the goal. This entails a spontaneous opposition: the voice functions as materiality, as opposed to the ideality of meaning. The materiality is an instrument on the way to ideality, a means to be obliterated. This implicit teleology of the voice can be put to use by an entire theology.
6 Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (ed. J.-A. Miller, trans. A. Sheridan, Harmondsworth etc.: Penguin, 1979), 22. 7 La fine del pensiero, quoted by J.-L. Nancy, A lcoute (Paris: Galile, 2002), 45. 8 The French can use a handy pun with the expression vouloir dire: the voice wants to say, i. e. it means, there is a vouloir-dire inherent in the voice. Derrida has made a great case of it in one of his earliest and best books, La voix et le phnomne (Paris: P.U.F., 1967), where, to put it briefly, the voice functions as the vouloir-dire of the phenomenon.

107

In our use of Benjamins parable, the production of voice was put in the place of the theological hunchback, but the voice can be quite literally used as the hidden springboard of theology. St. Augustine, in one of his famous sermons (no. 288), makes the following claim: John the Baptist is the voice and Christ is the word, logos. Indeed this seems to follow textually from the beginning of St. Johns Gospel: in the beginning there was the word, but in order for the word to manifest itself, there has to be a mediator, a precursor in the shape of John the Baptist, who identifies himself precisely as vox clamantis in deserto, the voice crying in the desert, while Christ is identified with the Word. The voice precedes the Word and it makes possible its intelligence. [] What is the voice, what is the word? This voice, which merely resonates and offers no sense, this sound which comes from the mouth of someone screaming, not speaking, we call it the voice, not the word. [] But the word, if it is to earn its name, has to be endowed with sense and that, by offering the sound to the ear it offers at the same time something else to the intellect. [] Now look closely at the meaning of this sentence: He has to increase, I have to diminish [John 3, 30]. How, for what reason, with what intent, why the voice, i. e. John the Baptist, could say, given the difference that we just established, He has to increase, I have to diminish? Why? Because the voices are being effaced as the Word grows. The voice gradually loses its function as the soul progresses to Christ. So Christ has to increase and John the Baptist has to be obliterated.9 So, if we are to isolate the voice as an object, an entity on its own, then we have to disentangle it from this spontaneous teleology which goes hand in hand with a spontaneous theology of the voice, the voice as the revelation of the word. There is a linguistic theology, as it were, which precedes and conditions theology proper. We have to make our way in the opposite direction, to make a descent from the height of meaning back to what appeared to be mere means; to catch the voice outside of making sense, or as a blind spot of sense. To seek the voice in language as the break in the field of meaning. II There are various ways to look at this excess of voice, and the first one would be to turn this excess of voice into an aesthetic object. There are sound effects that the language makes apart from procuring meaning, and they can serve as the basis for an aesthetics of the voice. The easiest and most spectacular demonstration, is perhaps the title of the series of lectures that Roman Jakobson delivered in New York during the war, in 1942, which was one of the mythical birthplaces of structuralism. Jakobson was offered a chair in general linguistics and he started off by giving six lectures on sound and sense, to explain some basic tenets of structural linguistics on the whole and phonology in particular. Lvi-Strauss was part of the enthusiastic audience, and he later testified that he was a changed man after hearing this revelation, and the encounter with Jakobsons phonology was at the core of his own project.10 The six lectures, were published only in 1976 under the title Six leons sur le son et le sens (Paris: Minuit), duly prefaced by Lvi-Strauss. The title, in its deceptive simplicity, seems to epitomize perhaps the very fate of structuralism. The English version, Six Lectures on Sound and Meaning (published by MIT in 1978), of course ruins it all in its very accuracy. The title goes straight to the point, to the very core of the problem: how to make sense with sounds? How to make sounds make sense?
9 Quoted by Michel Poizat, Vox populi, vox Dei (Paris: Mtaili, 2001), 130. Could one go so far as to say that John the Baptist plays the same structural role, in relation to Christ, as the vocal machine does in relation to the thinking machine? That John the Baptist is Christs hidden theological puppet, the voice-dwarf of the Word? 10 Phonology cannot help but play the same innovative role with respect to the social sciences that nuclear physics, for example, has played for all the hard sciences. (Lvi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958), 39.

108

The connection between sound and sense, is what defines language, and phonology was a revolutionary tool to deal with it, to explain its mechanism and its operation. The sounds, were to be put into the mold of a differential matrix in order to produce phonemes, the discrete units which are themselves deprived of any substance, they are mere bundles of differential oppositions and hence indifferent to sonority. So this is how sounds make sense, and one is still baffled by the elegant simplicity of explanation, by the rigor of its demonstration, and indeed that deductive rigor, is what Lvi-Strauss had in mind when he spoke about phonology as the lever which could endow human sciences with the same strictness, which up to then seemed to be the privilege of sciences of nature. But listen to it again I mean listen, not read: Six leons sur le son et le sens. Jakobson spent half of his illustrious linguistic career, reflecting not only on the standard matters of linguistics, but on a pet subject of his, which was poetics. The question how do sounds make sense? is for him to be enlarged by another question, how does language produce poetic effects? What is the machinery of this? Language is never just about making sense, on the way to making sense, it always produces more than sense catered for, its sounds exceed its sense. The most elementary proof of it, is the wording of the title: with Jakobson, there can certainly be no coincidence that we find the alliteration of s, repeated four times at the beginning of words, once in the middle and once at the end; and no coincidence with the pun on leons and le son it all goes lost in the English translation. The title was made with alliterations artful aid (to quote another pun coined by Churchill). Certainly sounds make sense, but the title at the same time, demonstrates that there is an excess of sounds over sense, there is a sound-surplus which doesnt make sense, it is there just like that, for the fun of it, for the beauty of it, for the pleasure of it. For what does alliteration mean? Is there a meaning that could be assigned to it? It is as if the title contained a hidden message beyond the straightforward one not beyond, but in the very same place. The title announces six lessons, but there is a seventh lesson to be drawn from the title itself. But what is this lesson? One can see in the very title, that it goes in two different directions. On the one hand, on the level of meaning, it paves the way for phonology, that is, a treatment of linguistic sounds which deprives them of their phonic substance and reduces them to purely differential entities. But on the other hand, on the level of phonic substance, sounds are not to be reduced, but to be maintained, elaborated, their music can be heard, they can make sound echoes, they can reverberate, they can be the material of an art of sounds apart from their sense-making properties. The sounds of the title are not the phonologically relevant sounds, they produce an irrelevant surplus in the currency of sense. They are like a frivolous addition, a supplement to the primary function of language, or better, they are like parasites of the phonemes. One could make here a provisional demarcation line between hearing and listening and between meaning and sense. To make it quick, hearing is after meaning, the signification which can be linguistically spelled out; listening is rather being on the watch-out for sense, something that announces itself in the voice beyond meaning. We could say that hearing is entwined with understanding (hence the French double-meaning of entendre, entendement, being both hearing and understanding, intellect), that is, reducing the heard to the meaningful, reducing the audible to the intelligible, while listening implies an opening towards something else, towards a sense which is undecidable, precarious, elusive, and which sticks to the voice. The sense, apart from making a makeshift link to the Deleuzian use of the word in The logic of sense, also alludes to the other use of sense, that of the five senses, of the sensual (to say nothing of the sensitive and the sensible). The equivocation of sense and sense (the sense of hearing) is, I suppose, structural, it is already encapsulated in the sound and sense formula, which could also be read as sense and sense.

109

So the voice, doesnt quite go up in smoke, in the meaning which is produced with its aid, and from there, one could make the simplest provisional definition of the voice: it is that part in the signifying operation, which doesnt contribute to meaning, all that in signifier which doesnt concur to the effect of signification.11 There is an antinomy between the signifier and the voice: the signifier is that part of the voice which participates in meaning, while the voice is precisely that which doesnt mean anything (although it can make a lot of sense). Like the alliteration of s in Jakobsons title. For Jakobson, what doesnt contribute to meaning, is then taken as the material for poetic effects, it functions as the source for repetitions, rhythms, rhymes, sound echoes, metric patterns, all the complex panoply that produces the enchantment of poetry. The voice is the source of an aesthetic effect which stands apart from the referential or informational function of language, it is its side-effect which can then present the problem of establishing another kind of codification than the linguistic one, and which is after making music with the words beyond mere meaning and reference. I can only mention briefly the book Operas Second Death12 explores this direction that if poetry makes the voice a counterpart to meaning, then this logic is brought to the extreme where the voice is singled out for itself, which happens with singing: it brings the voice energetically to the forefront at the expense of meaning, it takes the distraction of the voice seriously and turns the tables on the signifier let the voice take the upper hand, let the voice be the bearer of what cannot be expressed by mere signifier. Of what one cannot speak, of that one can sing. Expression versus meaning, expression beyond meaning, expression which is more than meaning, yet expression which functions only in tension with meaning, for it needs the signifier as the limit to transcend and to reveal its beyond. Yet singing, by its massive concentration on the voice, runs the risk of losing the voice that it tries to worship and revere by turning it into a fetish object, which is in a way the highest rampart against the voice. The immediate massive attention and aesthetic appreciation are, paradoxically, ways of turning a deaf ear to the voice.13 Bringing the voice from the background to the forefront, entails a structural illusion: the voice appears as the locus of true expression, it endows the voice with profundity. By not meaning anything, it appears to mean more than mere words, it becomes the bearer of an unfathomable originary meaning which, supposedly, went lost with language. It seems to still maintain the link with nature, the nature of a paradise lost, and on the other hand to transcend the language in the opposite direction: it promises an ascent towards divinity, an elevation above the empirical, the mediated, the limited, the mundane. It becomes the locus of a revelation beyond information. Hence the highly acclaimed role of music, as an ambiguous link with both nature and divinity. When Orpheus, the emblematic and archetypal singer, sings, it is in order to tame wild beasts and to bend Gods. This link, can be clearly demonstrated by shofar, a primitive horn used in Jewish religious rituals, something which ties the most elementary form of music to the very foundation of the signifying law, an instance where voice appears as such in a presence which is deprived of meaning and thus functions as the pure source of authority. This is the way that Lacan himself chose as the introduction of the object voice.14
11 Jacques-Alain Miller, Jacques Lacan et la voix, in: Fonagy et alii, La voix. Actes du colloque dIvry (Paris: La lysimaque, 1989), 180. 12 Slavoj iek & Mladen Dolar, New York: Routledge, 2002. 13 Cf. Miller: If we make music and listen to it, ]...] it is in order to silence what deserves to be called the voice as the object a. (Op. cit., 184) But, one should hasten to add, this gesture is always ambiguous: music evokes the voice and conceals it, it fetishizes it, but also opens the gap that cannot be quite filled. 14 Lacan, Langoisse (ed. J-A. Miller, Paris: Seuil, 2004), 281f. This is the tenth seminar which took place in 1962/63.

110

Shofar, is one of the most ancient wind instruments which is blown in long continuous sounds, reputed to fill the soul with an irresistible profound emotion. There is no melody, just the prolonged sounds reminiscent of a bull roaring. Where does its astounding force come from? Lacan relies on Theodore Reik who saw the key to its secret in the Freudian myth of Totem and Taboo: one has to recognize, in the sound of shofar, the voice of the Father, the cry of the dying primal father of the primitive horde, the leftover which comes both to seal the foundation of his Law and to haunt it. By hearing his voice, the community of believers establishes its covenant, its alliance with God, they assert their submission and obedience to the Law, while the law itself, in its pure form, before commanding anything specific, is epitomized by the voice, the voice that commands total compliance, although in itself completely senseless. The letter of the law, can acquire its authority, only through this remnant of the dead father, through that part of him, which is not quite dead, the undead remainder, i. e. his voice: it testifies to his presence, but at the same time also to his absence, for it is a stand-in for an impossible presence, the point of the impossible origin of the Law, covering up its lack of origin. The sound of shofar, takes its support in the Bible, the most significant instance being the foundational moment when Moses receives the tables of the law on Mount Sinai. The sound of shofar, at that moment testified to the presence of God for the people, for they could only hear this terrible and commanding sound, and only Moses could speak to God and make out what He said. So shofar is the voice without content that sticks to the Law, underpinning its letter. There is, in this inaugural moment, a division between the voice and the signifier and its law; but there is no law without the voice. It seems that the voice is what endows the letter with authority, making it not just a signifier, but an act. So after poetics and music, we have here the third use, the voice as the senseless commanding presence, the voice isolated from the word, but at the same time founding the word, the logos, the law, in that very separation. The senseless foundation of sense, which yet again functions as a theological device the voice is the theological hunchback of the Law, but not really hidden, very much on display, just like Kempelens voice-machine. For Lacan, it is precisely this inaugural division, which presents the object in all its ambiguity, as the condition of sense and as the break, the halt, the interruption of sense. The voice, as both an opening and a closure. III Let me now approach the voice from an entirely different angle, under the heading of the ethics of the voice. There is a figure of speech, as it were, a metaphor, which associates the voice and conscience. Strangely, ethics has always been associated with the voice, the voice has been the guiding metaphor of reflections on moral questions, both in the popular reasoning and in the grand philosophical tradition. Is this voice, this internal voice of a moral injunction, simply a metaphor? Its metaphoricity is perhaps doubtful and should be put into question. Is it the voice that one actually hears, or is the internal voice still a voice, or is a voice that has no empirical manifestation perhaps the voice in the proper sense, closer to the voice than the sounds that one can hear? And why the voice? What is the tenuous and tenacious connection between voice and conscience? Is ethics about hearing voices? One can recall its brief history.15 It all starts with one of the best known voices, the Socratic voice, the daemon which accompanies Socrates wherever he goes. In a very famous spot in Apology, Socrates says the following in his defence in front of the tribunal: ... I am subject to a divine or supernatural experience ... It began in my early childhood a sort of voice which comes to me, and when it comes it always dissuades me from what I am proposing to do, and never urges me on.
15 A good guide to this is Bernard Baas, De la chose lobjet, Paris: Vrin, 1998.

111

(31d) The voice, this daemon, is like Socrates shadow, or his guardian angel, and I can just briefly point to four points: (1) its origin is supposed to be divine and supernatural, it is at the innermost of his consciousness but originating from beyond, it is an atopical voice, coming from another space, while being at the same time most intimate. (2) Furthermore, it is not a prescriptive voice, it is not a voice telling him what to do he has to decide about that himself but merely a prohibitive, dissuasive voice, preventing him from doing wrong but not advising him how to do good. (3) It is a voice with which one cannot argue, it is not a matter of argument. (4) One should also point out that this voice, actually dissuaded him from taking part in the active political life: the voice pertains to the moral law as opposed to the positive written laws of the community, the voice sustains the unwritten law. This division hinges on the divide between the voice and the letter. The theme, will then be taken up by an entire tradition: the voice of conscience, as a firm guide in ethical matters the bearer of a moral injunction, an imperative voice which compels in its immediacy, a voice which one cannot silence or deny, or one can do this only at the price of catastrophic consequences. It is a voice which circumvents discursive argument, it provides a firm ground for moral decisions beyond discursivity, beyond the pros and the cons, the intricacy of deductions and justifications. Its pure commanding authority, is supposedly unfailing. One can see this mechanism, perhaps at its purest, in that part of mile that Rousseau has entitled La profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard The profession of faith of the Savoy vicar which embodies for him the sound, firm and astute basis of morality. Rousseau there speaks of the immortal and celestial voice, the sacred voice of nature, the interior voice which is infallible (mile IV, pp. 372-8). Other voices can try to tamper with it, the shrill voice of prejudice, the voice of the body (conscience is the voice of the soul, passions are the voice of the body, p. 372), yet it imposes itself, it gains the upper hand, the true voice against the false voices. However much one can reason, calculate and argue about morality, all this is groundless without a firm footing in the voice, its immediate intuition and the sentiment it carries. It may be strange, and perhaps symptomatic, that one can find this line also in Kant. Strange, because Kant is at the opposite end of Rousseau on the question of ethics: firm ground can only be provided by the moral law, which, in its universality, or in its injunction to universalization, is purely formal. Every moral action, should be submitted to the test of universality, and there doesnt seem to be any place for the voice or for moral feelings (indeed Kant harshly criticizes the attempts to ground morals on moral feelings). Ethics should be grounded in reason alone, yet we find at a certain point, that even reason is endowed with a voice. When debating what appears to him as the monstrous proposal to promote ones own happiness as the supreme moral goal, he says that this principle would entirely destroy morality if the voice of reason in relation to the will was not so clear, so piercing, so discernible even for the most common man. (... die Stimme der Vernunft in Beziehung auf den Willen (ist) so deutlich, so unberschreibar (unovercryable), selbst fr den gemeinsten Menschen so vernehmlich.)16 The proponents of false morals can continue their confused speculations, only if they plug their ears against that heavenly voice. So there is not merely the voice of the heart, or the voice of nature, there is also the voice of reason, which, while being silent, is nevertheless so loud that no matter how loud one tries to cry, one can never cover it or silence it. (The voice of reason is quiet, but it will not rest until it has gained a hearing, Freud will say, in strange accordance with Kant.) Yet with Kant, the voice acquires a subtler form: for Socrates, the voice merely dissuaded him from doing wrong; for Rousseau, the divine and natural voice was the guide telling the subject how to act, a compass in every situation.
16 Critique of Practical Reason, New York: Macmillan, 1993, p. 36.

112

For Kant, the voice doesnt command or prevent anything it is merely a voice which demands, imposes the submission of the will to the rationality and formality of the moral law, the categorical imperative. The voice of reason, is merely the injunction to submit to reason, it has no other content. It is a purely formal voice imposing formality. Reason itself is, powerless (something that Kant will develop at great length in The contest of faculties), its voice, silent as it may be, is the power of the powerless, the mysterious force which compels us to follow reason. Finally, the voice which says nothing in particular, but insists as a pure injunction, finds its last and perhaps purest form in Heidegger. Very briefly: in the paragraphs of Sein und Zeit dealing with Gewissen, the existential-ontological foundations of conscience (# 55-60), one can find the whole phenomenology of the call of conscience (der Ruf - the cry, the appeal?). What does the conscience call to its addressee? Strictly speaking - nothing. The call doesnt say anything, it doesnt deliver a message about worldly events, it has nothing to tell. Least of all does it strive to open in the addressee some monologue within the self. Nothing is called [zu-gerufen] to the self which is called upon, but the self is called [aufgerufen] to /him/ self, that is, to its most proper possibility of being [Seinknnen]. The call ... doesnt invite the self to a negotiation, but it is a convocation to the most proper capacity of being oneself [Selbstseinknnen], a provocation [vor(-nach-vorne-)rufen] of Dasein to its most proper possibility. The conscience speaks exclusively and persistently in the mode of silence. (# 56, p. 273, my translation) So there is a pure call, not commanding anything, a mere convocation and provocation, the call to an opening to being, to get out of the closure of ones self-presence. And the notion of responsibility ethical, moral responsibility is precisely a response to this call it is impossible not to respond to this call, one is always called upon. The very notion of responsibility has the voice at its core, it is a response to a voice. Furthermore, where does the voice come from? It comes from the innermost of our being but at the same time it is something that surpasses us, it is in ourselves more than ourselves, a beyond at the most intimate. (Der Ruf kommt aus mir und doch ber mich. Es ruft, wider erwarten und gar wider Willen. # 57, p. 275) The intimacy from which the call comes, is constantly described as unheimlich, uncanny. The call, the cry, the voice, the appeal their proper location is unheimlich, with all the ambiguity that Freud has given to the word: that which is the most intimate and external at the same time, the internal externality, he expropriated intimacy, the extimacy the Lacanian word for das Unheimliche (a much better rendition than the uncanny). So the call is the call to exposure, the opening to Being which is precisely opposed to a self-reflective monologue with oneself, it hinges on that which, within oneself, one cannot appropriate. The voice is pure alterity, it prevents self-reflexivity.17 Through all these attempts, we have a certain opposition between the voice, its pure injunction, its imperative resonance, on one hand, and on the other, the discursivity, argument, the particular prescriptions or prohibitions or moral judgments. Strangely, here we find again our initial division into the voice as the object and the signifier. One could say that in this view of morality, the signifying chain cannot be sustained by itself and in itself, it needs a footing, an anchorage, a root in something which is not a signifier, but the object, the voice which doesnt say anything, but is precisely through this all the louder, an absolute convocation which one cannot escape, a silence which cannot be silenced. But what kind of foundation?

17 I am leaving aside the problem of the voice of being.

113

It can be conceived as the divine voice, infallible since divine, and thus a firm guarantee. But that would be the clear positive voice, which would release the subject from responsibility and relegate it to a purely passive stance of someone carrying out orders. To avoid this pitfall, one should see the voice as a pure convocation which doesnt command anything and offers no guarantee. A good way to conceive it, is to connect it with the voice as pure enunciation which in the domain of ethics can be seen as the enunciation without a statement.18 And one could say that there lies the crucial point, the touchstone of morality: one has to supply the statement oneself. The moral law is like a suspended sentence, a sentence left in suspense, a sentence to be completed by the subject, by his moral decision, by the act. The enunciation is there, but the subject has to deliver the statement and thus assume the enunciation, respond to it and take it on his shoulders. So in the respect of the ethics of the voice, we can see again that the voice plays a pivotal role and is by virtue of being placed in an ambiguous position. The voice which sustains the moral law, has been explicitly called divine by the whole tradition between Socrates and Rousseau, and even by Kant, and this divine transcendent law, is at the same time placed at the most intimate kernel of the subject. With Heidegger, we have the voice whose divinity has been transformed into an opening to a radical alterity, a beyond which is beyond the self-appropriation (self-grasp, self-reflection). If divinity and alterity, can be provisionallyput under the heading of the big Other, then the voice is unheimlich by virtue of its link with the Other, with the Other within. Yet, it doesnt simply belong to either the subject or the Other, it is not the subjects proper voice which he could master, but it is also not simply a divine command; the voice comes from the Other but doesnt belong to the Other, it is not its part. It circumscribes a void, a void in the Other, without any positivity. We can see that we find again the ambiguous ontology or rather the topology of the status of the voice as between the two, being placed precisely in the curious intersection of the subject and the Other, without belonging to either. 19 IV Let us now pursue another thread. Alain Badiou starts off his Logiques des mondes with an assertion which exemplifies the basic tenet of what he calls the democratic materialism: there are only bodies and languages. This is indeed the doxa which can be seen as a modern postmodern avatar of more illustrious predecessors, say of Descartes division into res extensa and res cogitans, where both parts have undergone some change (the body has evolved since the Cartesian machines covered by clothes and hats, to a virtual body, a body of multiple enjoyment, a multiply sexed body, a cyberbody, a body without organs, a body as life-force and production, a nomadic body etc.; and the thought has evolved from the soul and ideas to the multiplicity of signs and languages, reduced to materiality of semiotics; instead of body and soul the multiple pleasures and the semiotics), but both parts remain as the firm evidence, the dual substance of what there is. But in this double world, this is the whole point of Badiou, there are also truths, which are neither bodies nor languages, nor mixtures of the two, nor are they somewhere else either, in some special Platonic spot.
18 The happy formula taken from Zupancic, p. 164, and found also in Baas, p. 196 and passim. 19 From this angle one could tackle the status of the voice in psychosis, something I am not dealing with here. If the voice actually supplants the Other and immediately makes the law, then it entails the dramatic consequences one can witness in psychosis. Lacan scrutinized psychosis under the heading the foreclosure of the name of the father and one could say that the foreclosed name of the father returns in the Real precisely as the voice.

114

They are incorporeal bodies, languages deprived of sense, generic infinities, unconditioned supplements. They become and they are suspended between nothing and the pure event.20 So the truths, which emerge as consequences of events, are a break in the world of what exists, that is, the break in the continuities of bodies and languages. Now the voice as the object, the paradoxical creature that we are after, is also a break I have been insisting on this. Of course it has an inherent link to the presence, to what there is, to the point of endorsing the very notion of presence, yet at the same time, it presents a certain break of the presence, it is not simply to be counted among the existing things, its topology dislocates it in relation to presence. Here is the great difference between the Derridean and the Lacanian approach, although both see the voice as the central point. If for Derrida, to make it quick, voice is the key to self-presence, self-transparency and self-possession, and hence a key to the phonocentrism and logocentrism of metaphysics, then with Lacan, voice functions as a disturbance, a factor of dispossession, so to speak, that what troubles the self-presence and refers it to a break. But what is of greatest importance in this context: it is precisely the voice that holds together bodies and languages. It is like their missing link, what they have in common. The language is attached to the body through the voice, as if the voice were to fulfill the function of the pineal gland in the new Cartesian division of substances. If materiality is irrelevant to the signifier, it is not irrelevant to the voice: apart from the fact that the voices sound while the phonemes are soundless, there is the massive fact that the signifier, however purely logical and differential, must have a point of origin and emission in the body. There must be a body to support it and to assume it, its disembodied network must be pinned to a body, even if the link is the most tenuous imaginable, it takes the most intangible and sublimated form of the mere oscillation of air which keeps vanishing the moment it is produced, the materiality at its most intangible and hence in its most tenacious form. Still, this almost disembodied body is enough to be cumbersome and embarrassing, it doesnt fit the body at all. Hence all the troubles with what Michel Chion (following Pierre Schaeffer) has called the acousmatic voice,21 the voice whose source remains unidentified when the acousmatic voice finds its body, it turns out that the voice doesnt stick to the body, that it is an excrescence which doesnt match the body at all. The most massive example is Hitchcocks Psycho, which revolves entirely around the question of where does the mothers voice come from? To which body can it be assigned? The case is no doubt paradigmatic, for the mother of all acousmatic voices is precisely the mothers voice, by definition the acousmatic voice par excellence, the voice whose source the infant cannot see his tie with the world, his umbilical cord, his nest, his cage, his prison, his light. Which body does it emanate from? We can see an answer in Psycho. To give a more light-hearted example of this in the popular culture, think of The Wizard of Oz, this very Freudian tale about the nature of transference.22 The master can be the master as long as it is a voice whose source is hidden, all the wizardry consists in an acousmatic voice, and once the veil is lifted, he necessarily turns into a ludicrous and powerless old man who is no source of rescue, but is himself in great need of help. Acousmatic voice is always haunting, as long as one cannot situate its source. It gives the impression of omnipresence and omnipotence, and this is why divinities in many religions appear precisely in the shape of acousmatic voices.

20 Alain Badiou, Logiques des mondes, Paris: Seuil, 2006, p. 12. 21 Cf. La voix au cinma (Paris: Cahiers du cinma, 1982). 22 Lyman Frank Baum was born in May 1856, just like Freud, and his Wizard of Oz was published in 1900, just like The Interpretation of Dreams. There is a story waiting to be written, Freud avec Baum.

115

The real problem with the acousmatic voice is: can one actually ever pin it down to a source? This is a process that Chion calls desacousmatisation: when the voice gets attached to the body, it loses its omnipotent charismatic character, it turns out to be banal, as in The Wizard of Oz, and the transference crumbles. The voice once located loses its power, it has something like castrating effects on its bearer, who could wield and brandish his phonic phallus as long as its attachment to the body remained hidden. Chion compares the desacousmatisation to a strip-tease: it can be a process of several stages, one sees the bearer of the voice first from distance, or from the back, or in a number of ambiguous situations (as in Psycho). The ultimate stage is finally reached, when one actually sees the orifice, the bodily aperture, from which the voice is coming, the mouth. That is, when one sees the gap, the crack, the hole, the cavity, the void, the very absence of phallus, and as in Freuds famous scenario,23 one can stop on the last but one stage, just before the void would become apparent, and one can turn this penultimate stage into a fetish, erect it as a dam against castration, a rampart against the void. The fetishism of the voice, resides precisely in fixing the object just before one is confronted with the impossible fissure, the slit from which it allegedly originates, before being engulfed by it.24 But ultimately there is no such thing as desacousmatisation, the source of the voice can never be seen. One can see the mouth, but the voice comes from some undisclosed and structurally concealed interior, it cannot possibly match what one can see. Even in the most banal everyday experience, there is always something incongruous in relation between the appearance of a person and his/her voice, before one adapts to it. It is absurd, this voice cannot possibly stem from this body, it doesnt sound like this person at all, or this person doesnt look at all like his/her voice. Every emission of the voice, is essentially ventriloquism. iek has a good line on this: An unbridgeable gap separates forever a human body from its voice. The voice displays a spectral autonomy, it never quite belongs to the body we see, so that even when we see a living person talking, there is always a minimum of ventriloquism at work: it is as if the speakers own voice hollows him out and in a sense speaks by itself, through him.25 So the voice as the object, appears precisely with the impossibility of desacousmatisation, it is not simply the haunting voice impossible to pin down to a source, but rather it appears in the discrepancy with the source from which it is supposed to stem, but which necessarily recedes. The gist of the matter can be put in this way: the voice ties the signifier to the body, but it doesnt belong to either. It is not part of linguistics, it is precisely the remainder in language that linguistics cannot tackle with its means, but it is not part of the body either it detaches itself from the body, it doesnt fit the body, it is a bodily missile separated from its source, it is like a spectral body beyond the body like all the objects of the drive (one could propose a title: Voice and faeces). So it stands at a paradoxical and ambiguous point, the intersection of language and body, belonging to neither and yet constituting the point they have in common. The voice stems from the body, but doesnt belong to it, and it upholds the language without belonging to it either, yet, in this paradoxical topology, this is the only point where they overlap.
23 The Pelican Freud Library 7, 353f. 24 One of the emblematic images of modernism was Munchs picture The Scream. It was subjected to famous analyses, from Adorno to Jameson and iek, and I can only add a footnote in this particular context: one sees the void, the orifice, the abyss, but with no fetish to protect one or to hold on to. The scream is stuck in the throat, its resonance is all the louder the more one is transfixed by the black hole of the mouth. (On top of that, the homunculus, the strange screaming creature, the alien, has no ears it is not only that he/she/it cannot reach anybody by the scream, he/she/ it cannot be reached as well.) A whole program of modernism follows from that emblem: it hinges on the maxim that there has to be an object other than the fetish. 25 Slavoj iek, On Belief (London/New York: Routledge, 2001), 58.

116

This is where one could put to use Lacans favorite scheme of the intersection of two circles: the circle of the body and the circle of language overlap in the voice which is extimate to both. The voice is the most obvious candidate for this role, since it literally links the signifier and the body, but the same topological structure is also true of other objects of the drive they are all organs without bodies, spectral extensions of the body, they dont belong to the body, but to an area which is critical for the division inside/outside, incorporation/ expulsion the breast, the faeces and they are at the same time inside/outside the Other, they are non-parts of the symbolic grid, although they only emerge as the effects of the incidence of the Other on the body, the effects of the signifying cut. V If voice doesnt belong either to the body or to language, if it is the principle of linking the two, i. e. of their division, it also plays the pivotal role in the division into interior and exterior. One way of treating the problem of the voice, is to approach it under the heading of exposure, or as an excess of exposure. Who or what is exposed, and to whom or what it is exposed? On the one hand one is exposed to the voice which inherently places the listener into the position of obedience. Listening is already an incipient form of obedience (there is an etymologic link in many languages obey, obr, obaudire, gehorchen etc.), and this is the part which is epitomized by the label His Maters Voice. Listening presents subjection in miniature. The moment the voice is heard, it appears as the source of authority, something which imposes itself, spellbinds, hypnotizes, seduces, enthralls. One can see this property most massively enacted in the link between voice and divinity, where divinity, in most religions, appears as a source of commanding voice, most often acousmatic and most often divorced from meaning, an imposing presence which commands, before commanding anything in particular, as one can see with shofar. Hence also the cult of the Kings voice as the divine emanation on earth.26 Hence also the totalitarian use of voice, the return of the quasi-archaic into the heart of modernity, so prominent in fascism; the voice as the source of authority, which can invalidate the law and which is thus coextensive with the state of emergency. The voice in the commanding position can suspend and supplant the law, it is its constitutive exception.27 This power of the voice stems from the fact that it is so hard to keep it at bay, it hits us from the inside, it pours directly into the interior, without protection. The ears have no lids, as Lacan doesnt tire of repeating, they cannot be closed, one is constantly exposed, no distance can be maintained to the sound. There is a stark opposition between the visible and the audible: the visible world presents relative stability, permanence, distinctiveness, and a location at a distance; the audible presents fluidity, passing, a certain inchoate, amorphous character, and a lack of distance. Voice is elusive, always changing, becoming, elapsing, with unclear contours, as opposed to the permanence, solidity, durability of the seen. In one word, it is by its nature on the side of the event, not of being. It deprives us of distance and autonomy. If we want to localize it, to establish a safety distance to it, we need to use the visible as the reference. The visible, can establish the distance, the nature, the source of the voice and neutralize it. This is why the acousmatic voice is so powerful, for it cannot be neutralized with the framework of the visible. This immediate connection between the exterior and the interior, is the source of innumerable mythical stories of the magic force of the voice (Sirens), something that makes us lose reason and leads to disaster, a lethal enjoyment.
26 Cf. Philippe-Joseph Salazar, Le culte de la voix au XVIIe sicle (Paris: ditions Champion, 1995). 27 Fhrerworte haben Gesetzkraft, said Eichmann in Jerusalem. What Fhrer says has the force of law. Cf. Agamben, Homo sacer (Paris: Seuil, 1997).

117

And this is also where the mechanism of psychosis, hearing voices, only uses and takes on the hallucinatory nature of the voice itself.28 But all this is one side of the ambivalence, the voice as authority. On the other hand, it is also true that the sender of the voice, the bearer of vocal emission, is someone who exposes himself and thus becomes exposed to the effects of power which lie not only in the privilege of emitting the voice, but pertain to the listener. The subject, is exposed to the power of the other, by giving his/her own voice, so that the power, domination, can take not only the form of the voice, but that of the ear. The voice, comes from some unfathomable invisible interior and brings it out, it lays it bare, it discloses, uncovers, reveals the interior. By this, it produces an effect, which has both an obscene side (disclosing something hidden, intimate, revealing too much, structurally too much) and an uncanny side (this is one of the ways how Freud described the uncanny: something which should have remained hidden has come to light). One could indeed say that there is an effect, an affect of shame that accompanies voice, one is ashamed of using ones voice, because it exposes some hidden intimacy to the Other.29 What is exposed, is of course not some interior nature, an interior treasure too precious to be disclosed, or some true self, or a primordial inner life, rather it is an interior which is itself the result of the signifying cut, its product, its cumbersome rest. So by using ones voice, one is also yielding power to the Other, the silent listener has the power to decide over the fate of the voice and its sender, the listener can rule over its meaning, or turn a deaf ear. The trembling voice, is a plea for mercy, for sympathy, for understanding, and it is in the power of the listener, to grant it or not. The voice cuts both ways, as an authority over the other and as an exposure the Other, an appeal, a plea, an attempt to bend the Other (Orpheus). It cuts directly into the interior, to the point that the very status of the exterior becomes uncertain, and it directly discloses the interior, to the point that the very supposition of an interior depends on the voice. So both hearing and emitting a voice, present an excess, a surplus of authority on the one hand and a surplus of exposure on the other. There is a too-much of the voice in the exterior because of the direct transition into the interior, without defenses; and there is a too-much of the voice stemming from the inside, it brings out more, and other things, than one would intend. One is too exposed to the voice and the voice exposes too much, one incorporates and one expulses too much. And one could say that this is, what all objects of the drive have in common: they function precisely through the mechanism of excessive incorporation and expulsion (hence the opposition between the breast and the faeces) and are thus, first, extra-corporeal, non-corporeal supplements of the body, and second, they are the very operators of the division into an exterior and an interior, while themselves dont belong to either, they are placed in the zone of overlapping, the crossing, the extimate. VI The object, as we have seen, is the excessive entity with no properties which presents a break in the horizon of meaning, in the existing world of bodies and languages, it is a crack, a site, a locus, an opening, which circumscribes the site both of subjectivation and of jouissance. One should recall here, a very simple fact that psychoanalysis, at the most elementary level, is a practice of the voice. It can only be carried out viva voce, in living voice, in the living presence of the analysand and the analyst. Their tie is a vocal tie, a tie reduced to a vocal tie, since in the very simple Freudian dispositive, the visible tie has to be suspended.
28 If the visible seems to be on the side of the distance and stability, then Lacans theory of the gaze as an object, aims at collapsing this distance of the eye from what is seen. The scission of the eye and the gaze, as a section is called in Seminar XI, means precisely that the gaze is the point where the distance collapses, where the gaze is itself inscribed into the picture, as the point where the image regards us. The illusion of distance has to be unmasked as an illusion, while it seems that with the voice, the problem tends to be the opposite: how to establish a distance at all. 29 This is where one could speak of ontological shame, an idea magisterially developed by Joan Copjec.

118

The patient, the analysand, is the one who has to present anything that comes to his/her mind, in the presence of the invisible analyst. So the patient is (in principle) the principal or in the limit, the sole speaker, the dubious privilege of the emission of the voice belongs to him/her. The analyst has to keep silent, at least in principle, and the great majority of the time. So the point of this simple device, is to reduce everything else and retain merely the work through the voice, by the voice, on the voice. But here, a curious reversal takes place: it is the analyst, with his silence, which is ultimately the embodiment of the voice, the agent of the voice as the object, or more precisely, the agent of that Other in which the voice resonates and takes place, the support of the alterity of the voice, the place where the voice takes the value of event, of a break in the field of meaning, the break of the existing situation, to use Badious term, of the continuity of bodies and languages, and hence the emergence of that incorporeal body suspended between nothing and the pure event, the emergence of a place of truth.

119

en

performance and technology

johannes birringer akbank sanat conference hall 10 november 2007

1. Breaking Ground It was around the turn of the millennium when critics began to take note that the marriage of dance and technology had produced a few significant works which startled its audiences and shifted attention to what we might now call digital performance. While the growth of computer-based art is an accepted phenomenon in todays art worlds and technological cultures, the genre of digital performance is still a very young one, barely defined and thus in need of historical and conceptual underpinnings. The more sustained lineage of dance on screen and multimedia performances which incorporate projections of screen images offers a background for understanding the compatibility between live dance and the moving image, between the polyrhythmic components of movement and the digital behavior of images and sound. Digital performance, however, is not a screenbased medium. Rather, it is characterized by an interface structure and can be said to include all performance works in which computational processes are integral for the composition and content, the aesthetic techniques, interactive configurations and delivery forms. In many instances, this integration of human-machine interfaces implies the design of interactive systems and real time multi-media transformations. When widely known choreographers Merce Cunningham and Bill T. Jones collaborated with digital artists and computer scientists (Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar, Michael Girard, Marc Downie) to create a series of dance works and installations exploring the artistic potential of motion capture technology -- Hand-drawn Spaces (1998), Biped (1999), Ghostcatching (1999), Loops (2001-04) -- the reviews in Time Magazine spoke of hypnotic groundbreaking performances bringing dance, the most physical of the arts, into the digital age. But the filmic use of motion capture-based digital graphics had already been widely seen in Hollywood and Hong-Kong martial arts movies, and digital animation is a staple of television advertising, MTV, and club-house VJing. The question of what is groundbreaking in the coupling of dance and technology needs to be examined carefully in order to make any claims for a new art form or a successful marriage of dance and interactive image. The role of the physical body and the limits of physical presence are generally assumed to be crucial theoretical issues for the discussion of technological embodiment. The development of new techniques should also be a major artistic concern; and I shall argue, in this essay, that it is important for the field to worry about the integration of a new understanding of choreography/composition/improvisation and software design/interactive system architecture. Choreographing for the camera is hardly a new challenge, and videodance is now a classic genre having moved from analog ancestors to digital successors. At the 2005 Digital Cultures festival in Nottingham, a program of videodance works (Motion at the Edge) beautifully reflected the aesthetic genres with which contemporary choreographer-filmmakers work today, ranging from the poetic to the quasi-documentary, the ethnographic to the abstract-experimental, including various cross-overs between video, dance and performance art. The program included Vanishing Point (Rosemary Butcher/Martin Otter), Infected (Gina Czarnecki), Ascendance (Chris Dugrenier), Birds (David Hinton), Arrested Development (Grace Ndiritu), and Romanz (Katharina Mayer). All videos in this program featured images composed with very carefully choreographed camerawork enabling both a remoteness of settings and a deep intimacy of viewpoints rarely possible in theatre-based performances.

120

In the videos by Czarnecki, Ndiritu, Dugrenier and Mayer, the body movements were edited into unusual staccato jitters, ritualizations, aerial views and repetitive fixations of minimalist states of entrancement. Butchers dance featured a figure traversing a desert of hallucinatory ambiguities, a kind of slow-motion fata morgana. Hinton created his videodance by slicing together archival film stock of wild bird movements, eschewing the human figure altogether. Beyond the screen-based medium, real-time interaction (co-choreographing) with a camera-vision, sensor or artificial intelligence system requires attention to the system creation and to larger issues of the space and sensory experience of the digital. If dance or movement based performance is considered a medium, and if we look for artistically challenging dance content created by emerging interactional choreography, a medium-specific analysis requires an examination of choreography, spatial design, dancing, technologies and dance-technologies in their own particular interactional, digital manifestations. The digital, at the same time, is now being perceived more clearly as our contemporary phenomenological dimension, our technically mediated interface with mixed reality.(1) In the history of experimental performance, live artists have often mixed old and new media, especially as live art practices often emerged from visual arts contexts and commingled with video and installation art. The poetics of improvised live creation with video, webcams and network connection characterizes the work of Corpos Informticos (www. corpos.org); the groups installation events often take place in galleries or museums but always involve online participants joining the composite action from afar. Similarly, Sher Doruffs projects for the Waag Society for Old and New Media (Amsterdam) include multiplayer online collaborations and a performance ecology which bridges remote sites (via webcams and interactive software) and plays with the tension between determinate structures and indeterminate potentials. Rafael Lozano-Hemmers relational architectures, for example his large-scale outdoor Body Movies installation which caused much attention at ars electronica (2002), uses simple shadow casting in combination with a large data bank of prerecorded portraits and a real time camera-tracking system. The digital images only become visible when passersby block the lights that wash out the projections, while the participants at the same time superpose their shadows onto the digital ghosts. Doruffs and Lozano-Hemmers practice echoes the Situationist concern with psychogeographic experience and political and affective situations in everyday urban life.(2) The everyday presence of computers in our cultures has brought about emerging art forms that inhabit the internet or use information and communications technologies to develop interactive virtual performances that link remote sites. Telepresence or networked performance is now part of a wider spectrum of net art practices which deploy mobile digital devices. The particular relationship of unconventional dance (locative media) to technology illuminates the changing contexts for new performance concepts. They may be derived from new tools or innovative scientific and sci-art frameworks for the creation of digitally augmented human movement. We also need to keep historical precedents in perspective. Todays motion capture-based animations, created in the commercial film industry but also in computer science, biomechanics, and graphic art departments who always look for performers to be the subjects for capture, find their historical roots in late 19th century motion studies in chronophotography and early cinema (Muybridge, Marey, Mlis).(3)

121

The modest role of dance in the history of narrative film and the film musical is well documented; the visibility of screen dance increased with the adaptation/translation of stage choreographies into film and, especially, with the production of specialized choreographies for the camera shown in dance programs on public television (since the 1970s) and in the growing international network of videodance festivals since the 1980s.(4) Owing much to filmic and non-linear digital editing techniques, as well as to particular collaborative visions of filmmakers and choreographers, videodance is a hybrid site where televisual and cinematic styles act upon the dancing body. But directors of videodance also draw on postmodern stage dance strategies and video art techniques which disrupt televisual code and technological function, while less well documented trajectories of audio-visual composition point to non-representational genres of early abstract animation (Oskar Fischinger), visual music, structuralist film and computer graphics animation. Recent developments within the sound arts indicate that with the increase in computing power and availability of flexible programming tools (e.g. Max/MSP/Jitter), software artists are able to more flexibly explore film and video in ways that are similar to the traditions of experimental film practice. Real time synthesis and a new kinesthetic sensibility derived from motion graphics could contribute to the emergence of a new art based on structural aesthetic similarities between the two forms, similarities which are fundamental to an understanding of both experimental avant-garde film, and contemporary electronic music practice. Furthermore, supporting evidence from the fields of cognition and neuroscience (including a wave of current studies in sensorimotor perception, biological motion observation, movement dynamics and velocity, for example in the Choreography and Cognition project initiated by Scott deLahunta) is generating renewed interest in structural approaches to artistic practice.(5) Finally, dance makers, researchers and teachers have used film or video as a vital means of documenting or analyzing existing choreographies that have been passed on, in practice, from performing bodies to other performing bodies. Some scholars and software programmers published tools (LabanWriter, LifeForms) that attracted attention in the field of dance notation and preservation as well as among choreographers (e.g. Merce Cunningham, Pablo Ventura, Ivani Santana) who wanted to utilize the computer for the invention and visualization of new movement possibilities.(6) Performance Systems and Thinking Images In the new century, overlapping interests in related fields -- film, electronic music, digital art, science and technology, design, engineering, robotics, telecommunications -- advance our understanding of the complementary thinking processes that drive intensive interdisciplinary research, generating conceptual models derived from informatics, artificial intelligence, biology and a-life, wearable computing and telecommunications. Like music before it, dance has incorporated instruments (cameras, video-projectors, microphones, sensors, microcontrollers) and software tools which allow it to structure and control the various components of any performance event, i.e. sound, video, 3D animation and motion graphics, biofeedback, light. It is the convergence of choreography and system design with the languages of programming, electronic music and film editing in interactive, real-time processing that I want to define as a performance system. I propose that we do not look at human performers in the interface as separate from an interactive software system or programming environment. In fact, software programs can also be performers of choreography.(7) In the first generation of interactive dance theatre, when mapping (gesture to sound, gesture to video output) was explored in the interface design for performer and reactive environment, such understanding of the system was inspired by the cybernetic vision of

122

feedback control and the modeling of the machine on the human actor. Direct interfaces (flex sensors, micro switches, pressure plates, smart fabric etc.) required specific techniques of use which sometimes led choreographers to argue that the dancer acted as a live video editor or musical instrument. But aesthetic and conceptual concerns regarding the emergent techniques (which were criticized as limiting in their triggering function) eventually led to a search for alternate interfaces. Dance-tech or music-tech collaborations involving direct, gestural interfaces have declined even if some practitioners argue that the interface should remain tangible so that mappings between performative input (gestural) and output (video/sonic) are easily inferred. An analysis of specific artist-instrument combinations suggest localized technique development which combines choreography and improvisation, and one can also identify a common set of software techniques (e.g. granular synthesis) and filtering parameters perceived in the digital video/sonic output. Especially with regard to digital dance/music collaborations on stage or in interactive installations, and to music technologys concern with analog/digital sound production and transformation, both the gestural and the software parameterization techniques should be given equal recognition. If there were a larger range of works available for analysis, one would be better able to distinguish the range of sensor data values (able to be transformed by the reactive environment) from the particular aesthetic performance technique -- or through the style of choreography/ improvisation harnessed for a particular emergent output. In the concluding pages, I shall look at three examples. The first is from the international Interaktionslabor, a media lab which takes place every summer in an abandoned Coal Mine at Gttelborn (Germany). In July 2003, the gigantic Engine Room was used to receive the public for an interactive sensor-dance which dramatized the breathing organism or correlation of dancer-landscape. Upon entering a door leading to a staircase, the audience would glance down thirty or forty feet to an empty space where one of the two winding engines of ten thousand horsepower had stood, the remaining one now facing a gaping hole, a deep resonance body, with the western wall serving as film screen. The collaboration between Lynn Lukkas/Mark Henrickson (Minneapolis)/Paul Verity Smith(Bristol)/Marija Stamenkovic Herranz (Barcelona) and Kelli Dipple (Melbourne) opened up some striking possibilities of the sensor-interface, pointing to spaces in-between the aural, the rhythmic, the visual and the visceral. <See page: 76, Fig. 1: Titled On, Stamenkovic/Lukkas/Henrickson/Smith/Dipple, 2003. Photo: J.Birringer> In this interface environment, the bodys actions were measured not only as sound (via microphone) but as the most subtle variations in the biomechanics: the pulse, breath, and heart rhythm in the body itself (via a Bioradio attached with electrodes). The electrically measurable signals were transmitted wirelessly as data to the computer, where they affected not only the sound processes in real time but the rhythm of the image movement of the projected film sequences stored in the computer (Macromedia Director and MAX/ MSP). Marija Stamenkovic performed the dance of breath, first improvising softly with extended vocal techniques as she descended the staircase in midst of the audience, then purely with heavily amplified breathing as she moved onto the flat plane of the engine room, and finally with her whole body and staccato voice as she propelled herself into an untrammeled trance-like flurry of movement. Her voice crept under our skins, the magnificent resonating sound in the huge room entering through our pores and stomachs, and as we listened we realized how her breath controlled the image movement and thus the dramaturgy of the story. If Stamenkovic stopped her breath, the films motion froze.

123

When she breathed, we saw her (on film) walk across the slag heap of the Mine, descending into a hollow path. Lukkas had filmed her outside movement differently in each section, the third one using a hyperactive zoom. In conjunction with Stamenkovics accelerated breathing, this final segment materialized as pure hyperkinetic sensation, transforming the entire space-volume into an irregular pulsating body-machine of continuously unfolding exhaustive yet libidinal intensities. A performance of this kind is hard to describe; it appeared to produce an extended three-dimensional space where pure sensation broke the continuity and stability of her own image (on film) even as she entered into a feedback loop with remembered movements she had enacted outside. Additional sound began to grow inside the building, transforming sense perceptions of spatial images even further, or allowing the audience to recognize how their own sensations framed or pulsed the virtual images. Image-movement of landscape and figure, sound clusters and pebbles, breath and body, echoed and transformed one another in recursive couplings. If one looks at the documentary photographs of such performances, they must disappoint. Generally, one sees a dancer and a screen projection, which in this case is nearly meaningless since all the other sensations and the volume of the space itself are lost. The sensorial coupling of interactivity and real time also tends to get rid of the conception of a work there is no Titled On. It does not survive as an object or a choreography or a system. Its event structure implies that the digital performance is entirely contingent on the concrete situation and the interlaced process which produces itself in real time before a public. My second example is not site-specific nor improvisatory but reflects the creation of an interactive choreography which can be repeated as performative process within the various states of the system. It might be contradictory to speak of repeatable choreography when introducing the second generation of interactive systems, as the continuity of computer processing co-evolves with the dance movement and generates its own creative behavior that might be re-adapted into the choreography. Whereas the first interactivity understood human-computer interaction on a stimulus-response or action-reaction model, the second interactivity emphasizes sensorial dialogue insofar as human enaction and machinic processes each have their own autonomy, being able to self-reorganize in constant dynamic relationship. The second-generation interactivity heightens the experience of human embodiment and sensory experience as the coupling of dancer and virtual environment evolves in noncausal correlation with one another. Ideally, both performer and performance system respond to the others enaction by undergoing self-permutations on the basis of distinct operational rules (a new form of post-choreography) which are internal to them. Moving towards indirect interfaces (optical, magnetic, and ultrasonic sensors or machine vision), however, creators of such performance systems often prioritize the development of software techniques over physical techniques. In innumerable performance experiments of this kind one sees mediocre or underdeveloped dancing. In such cases, perfunctory physical techniques are used to patch the interface rather than expanding the transformational capabilities of the system or developing new re-organizations of the body and its expressive metabolism. The situation tends to be worse, I think, in interactive installations inviting the unprepared public to move and become co-authors. In an indirect interface, the performers (or participants) are challenged to re-organize their motional, affective, perceptive and proprioceptive behavior in the environment. The desired aesthetic aim would be to anticipate direct dance transformations in real time.

124

In other words, the more complex the technologies behind the interface become, the more attention, creativity and originality need to be applied to transformative techniques and synaesthetic processes. A first response to this challenge can be observed today in the care given to the subtleties and nuances of gestural quality. Troika Ranch, the New York-based dance company, recently toured their new piece 16 (R)evolutions, a performance which is almost reads as an allegory of the evolutionary development of gestural control and refinement of motion tracking within the programming environment they have created. Rather than deploying a high-end multi-camera motion capture system for real time graphic animation, as it was used in Trisha Browns how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume (2005), Troika Ranch designed a small system that can easily travel and is inexpensive, combining Isadora with a motion capture software (Eyesweb) created by Italian scientists at the Genova InfoMus Lab that allows a particular gesture analysis here used for the transformation of points in space, contours, lines, and motion energy or direction into animated graphics. It is tempting to call this a process of real time translation. The dancers onstage move and the system analyses the motion by generating graphic shapes in the digital screen projection. In this computational environment, movement-action and motion graphics co-evolve. The points in space, recognized each second almost as in Mareys or Muybridges chronophotography a hundred years ago, are here transformed instantly in real time. They generate a trail of successive movements in fluid continuity which form a Gestalt. <See page: 78, Fig. 2: 16 (R)evolutions, Troika Ranch, 2005. Photo: Richard Termine.> At this juncture in the development of real-time motion tracking, the interactivity is no longer focused on direct mapping of gesture but on the creation of complex action paintings, calligraphies of human gesture translated into image-flows. The interface is opaque. Mathematically, the procedure remains identical: Isadora tracks motion and analyzes the bodily data. The software functions as a measuring tool or tool of observation. Depending on the values, filters and modifiers assigned to the data, the program analyses slight changes in the motion gesture -- observing the living state or properties of such movement (four categories: straight, curved, lateral, complex). Recognizing change of direction, speed, dynamics and velocity of movement within these categories, the program then renders the graphic output in real time, and we can perceive the three-dimensional dance and the projected 3D worlds of colors and shapes. Using a musical analogy, one could argue that the software program observes tonal qualities of the dancers movement. Another level of critical analysis would then have to be applied to the particular choices the artist-designers make for the visualization of the data. Numerous researchers in the hard sciences, including molecular biologists working on cellular dynamics and chemical transformations, are currently preoccupied with visualization technologies, and here an exchange of knowledge between fields of observation appears relevant, even if the aesthetic or political questions about the meaning and affect of gestures may address different concerns from those of the cell biologist. Yet artists and cell biologists both show concern for pattern recognition and micro-behavioral change. It is worth dwelling on such procedures with which we construct categories for observation. The computer, for example, cannot feel the gesture in the way in which the human audience will sense the weight or import of a particular movement behavior and movement quality of expression. Coniglio admits that he wouldnt know himself where a gesture begins and ends, where it divides.

125

The software reacts to properties of the motion and is set to modify the Gestalt of the image we see projected continuously (color changes; change in size; rotating planes to effect a more three-dimensional and topsy-turvy feeling of the images). The images themselves can have various tactile characteristics connected to the gestural-ness of drawing and painting (sinewy) or the more architectural look of geometric, polygonal shapes (rigid). In one scene of 16 (R)evolutions, a meshwork of lines (vertical and horizontal) appears all over the floor and back projection which is pulsating and constantly moving, growing, decreasing, turning, evolving. In another, a meshwork of more densified criss-crossed lines and architectural Gestalts gain polyphonic complexity in motion, and in rotations that defy Euclidian space. Choreographer Dawn Stoppiello suggests that such current explorations in motion tracking and visualization emphasize highly subtle manipulations of visual and aural qualities, correlated to new concepts of dynamic systems or semi-chaotic systems whose philosophical and scientific thought-models are derived from research in biology, a-life, computer science and cognitive science (Maturana/Varela, Prigogine/Stengers, Kauffman, Iberall, and others). No longer based on notational systems (Labanotation) but on computational analysis and mathematics, description of movement is rendered as image-movement, yet the fuzzy logic in the chaotic state of the system reminds us how difficult it is to speak of a digital aesthetics. The digital medium itself is indifferent to movement poetics or authorship. Dance and interaction designers, in other words, now reflect on what could be called the psychology of spontaneous, intuitive, unpredictable or ritualized behavior in traversable interfaces which allow fluid transitions between digitally augmented human/machinic movement. The difference to earlier studies of role behavior by social anthropologists (Turner, Goffman) lies in the fact that performance is here always understood to take place in relationship to system-design which often encloses performer and interface within a physically traversable projected display or immersive environment. When robots and avatars are involved, the language of object manipulation (actuators) also enters the scene, creating a fascinating and complex re-orientation of our anthropomorphic assumptions about performance and agency. Trisha Browns stage work, how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume..., recreated for the 2006 Monaco Dance Forum, interfaces with animated graphics from real-time motion-capture driven by an artist-designed artificial-intelligence software which responds to the kinematic data and generates particular behaviors. Marc Downie speaks of choreographing these extended agent-bodies, but he carefully distinguishes such motion behavior from human, physical intelligence. The software draws its own dance diagrams live during the performance, and the graphic agents are projected on a transparent screen in front of the stage. The agents are software creatures, acting according to their artificial intelligence. They have their own autonomy, their imagery comes about as they picture things to themselves, trying to make sense of what they see onstage in real time as the dance unfolds. For example, how long opens up with a triangle creature, whose intention is to move from stage right to stage left. It does so by hitching rides on points in the motion-captured dancers bodies, guessing which ones are moving in the right direction. It extends a line out to a likely point, and is then tugged that way if it has guessed correctly. Sometimes its hunch is wrong; it has to relinquish its grip on that point and await the next opportunity. In such a case, that line is left as a trace, and thus the whole image as it progresses is simultaneously a history of its attempts. This virtual choreography, in other words, has memory.

126

The Monaco Dance Festival gave testimony to such surprising advances in performance and technology, as we watched the physical intelligence of Trisha Browns dancers interact with the artificial intelligence of Downie and Kaisers thinking images. In a workshop talk, Downie emphasized that the computer is an embodied agent, deeply coupled to its environment such that its actions on its environment -- mediated by the physical constraints of some virtual animated body -- must be carefully produced and its perceptions of its environment -- mediated by its limited sensory apparatus -- must be carefully maintained. The machine is learning from dance, and it can be trained to do so. The creatures bodies and their physics are purely imaginary, of course, and it is noteworthy that the software artists prefer indeterminate images, lingering between abstraction and figuration. <See page: 80, Fig. 3: how long does the subject linger on the edge of the volume..., Trisha Brown Dance Company, with Paul Kaiser, Marc Downie, Shelley Eshkar, Curtis Bahn. 2006. Photo courtesy of Monaco Dance Forum> <See page: 81, Fig. 4: SwanQuake (part 1-House): Virtual Environment - Computer Installation with surround sound, dimensions variable. (c) igloo 2007> how long was shown alongside 22, a new solo by Bill T. Jones which had a stronger narrative content and featured the creatures in an artificial dialogue with the story Jones was telling as he moved through 22 particular postures and their variations. The maintenance of the motion analysis and real-time rendering system for this concert involved a huge technical effort, unlikely to be repeated too often on Trisha Brown or Bill T. Jones busy touring schedules. These major works also were built on extensive research involving numerous artists and scientists over a period of several years. Such artistic research and development requires laboratory conditions that are not generally available to dance companies. And yet, they are slowly being created at universities and art studios across the world; young artists will find ways to build their own collaborative networks and use unconventional approaches (reverse engineering, adapting game engines or mobile devices, etc) to make use of media in performance. It is important to acknowledge the diversity of inter-active possibilities; yet it is also crucial that dancers and designers have sustained time to discover and develop new performance techniques which can be trained. Each dance or media festival thus also provides an occasion to encourage critical dialogue between pioneers and newcomers, artists and audiences, in order to foster stronger frameworks for placing and evaluating new methods of practice.(8)

127

Notes : (1) See Mark B.N. Hansen, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media (New York: Routledge, 2006), p.5. (2) Activist artists connected to grassroots movements and political protest have also never hesitated to articulate their interventions by any media necessary. Cf. Critical Art Ensemble, Digital Resistance: Explorations in Tactical Media (Brooklyn, NY: autonomedia, 2001), p.2. Ricardo Dominguez, in a lecture on his work with CAE and Electronic Disturbance Theater, coined the term hacktivism when referring to his online art and activism which is focused on the development of electronic civil disobedience. See also Sher Doruff, Collaborative Culture, in: Joke Bouwer, Arjen Mulder, Susan Charlton, eds., Making Art of Databases (Rotterdam: V2_ Publishing/NAI Publishers, 2003), pp. 7099. For Lozano-Hemmers theories, see his Vectorial Elevation: Relational Architecture 4 (Mexico City: Conaculta and Ediciones San Jorge, 2000). Similar to Lozano-Hemmers urban projection is Argentine choreographer Margarita Balis Pizzurno Pixelado (2005) which used enormous digital trompe loeil movement effects projected onto the huge Pizzurno Palace faade in the center of Buenos Aires. Balis choreographic-digital work was featured at the 2006 Festival Internacional de Video-danza de Buenos Aires. (3) When I created the MFA program in Dance and Technology at Ohio State University in 1999-2000, a new motion capture studio was opened at the Advanced Center for Computing in Art and Design, and dancers in my lab were among the first to be asked to provide capture data. For critical discussions of post-cinema and motion studies, see Lev Manovich, What is Digital Cinema? in The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media, ed. Peter Lunenfeld (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999), 172-92. See also, Johannes Birringer, Media and Performance: Along the Border (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), Dance and Interactivity, Dance Research Journal 35:2/36:1 (2003), 88-111, and Performance, Technology, Science (forthcoming). (4) See Judy Mitoma, ed., with Elizabeth Zimmer (text editor), Dale Ann Stieber (DVD editor), Envisioning Dance on Film and Video (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), and Sherril Dodds, Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). (5) For more information on this research project, see http://www.choreocog.net. For an introduction to current cross-overs between neuroscience and dance, see Johannes Birringer/Josephine Fenger, eds., Tanz im Kopf/Dance and Cognition (Mnster, LIT Verlag, 2005). (6) Cunningham first worked with LifeForms in 1990 for the creation of Trackers. His interest in and use of video dates back to 1974, followed by numerous projects with Charles Atlas, Elliot Kaplan, and other filmmakers. For Venturas work, see http://www.venturadance.com. For Santana, see her book Corpo Aberto: Cunningham, dana e as novas tecnologias (So Paulo: EDUC/FAPESP, 2002). (7) Software systems used in performance include: VNS, BigEye and Image/ine, EyeCon/ Kalypso, Max/Msp/Jitter, Nato, ChoreoGraph, EyesWeb, Poser, LifeForms, Isadora, and Keystroke, etc. PD (Pure Data) is also now a popular alternative to Max/Msp. The IRCAM website has a bibliography on interactive systems: <http://www.music.mcgill.ca/ musictech/ISIDM/ >. An overview of software development for performance is offered by Scott deLahunta: <http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/transdance/report/>.

128

He organized the pathbreaking workshop Software for Dancers at Sadlers Wells Theatre in London (October 2001); it was followed by Performance Tools: Dance and Interactive Systems, at Ohio State University in January 2002; cf. < http://minuet.dance. ohio-state.edu/~jbirringer/Dance_and_Technology/tt.html />. (8) The expansion of international exchange and networking is reflected, for example, in the vibrant multimedial and interactive website created collectively by the dance/ media community (http://www.dance-tech.net/) and the proliferation of festivals and workshops created by young organisers in many countries around the world, of which amber07 is a good example.

129

en

the history of electoacoustic clothing

benoit maubrey akbank sanat conference hall 10 november 2007

In 1982, while recuperating from a bad case of painters block, I started taking long walks through West Berlin: my path took me one day through a department store, where I heard a voice advertising some special sales (jeans, I think it was) through the public-address (PA) system. This, I thought, was the solution to my problem: art happening through loudspeaker systems in public spaces --instead of painting my colors, I would speak them through the air. I soon began noticing that PA systems existed everywhere around the city -- convention centers are equipped with them, as are train stations and sport stadiums. They can even be found inside buses and airplanes, or mounted on street lamps along important boulevards and city squares. As a matter of fact everywhere you find large groups of people the chances are good that you will also find public speaking systems. I proceeded in trying to obtain permission to use these pre-existing speaker systems for audio performances. In the beginning I had some success: I did a performance on visitors day at the International Congress Center in Berlin. I repeated the sentence Yellow and blue make green through the main loudspeakers system and had the technicians process my voice through a sound modulator. But no further offers came, mainly because those responsible for these PA systems were afraid that the people walking through these public spaces might be annoyed or even panic at what I was saying -- a problem that still exists today in the case of some of my more recent Speakers Corner sculptures and projects. <See page: 82, Fig. 1> This is the reason why I started attaching loudspeakers to various second-hand jackets and clothes laying around my studio -- transforming them into mobile loudspeaker systems. <See page: 83, Fig. 2> I created entire series of Audio Clothes transforming my friends and neighbors wardrobes. I had each person make recordings and played the recordings via cassette recorders that they carried with them while hooked up to the clothes. Eventually I sat down by myself one afternoon and made a series of recordings with pots and pans in my kitchen -- creating, in effect, a heavy metal composition for Audio Jackets. <See page: 83, Fig. 3> In 1983, I was invited to present the audio clothes at the Performance Festival of Paris, at the Galerie Donguy, and in 1984, at the Art and Media exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle of Berlin. The participants in our performances were allowed to move around in any way they wanted-- in other words, the performances were quite loose and individualistic. But somehow I felt that the performances lacked a framework and direction: there was no choreography and the sound quality of these electroacoustic clothes left a lot to be desired.

130

The big break In 1985 a public arts competition for the Berlin Federal Garden Show (Bundesgartenschau) gave me an opportunity to conceive a complete Audio Uniform both in terms of electronics and sound. I founded DieAudio Gruppe (sound: Hans Peter Kuhn, electronics: Wulf Kthe, organization: Claudia Trger) and succeeded in obtaining the funds for creating The Audio Herd. This electroacoustic uniform consisted of seven custom-built Audio Suits for ambulatory performances through the various landscapes of this park. These suits --classically cut jackets with pants for men and skirts for women -- were made from a synthetic material that looked like animal fur. The idea was for them to blend into the environment like multimedia chameleons -- the participants played audio recordings of animals (monkeys, birds,human beings) that were designed to correspond to different areas of the garden and choreographed as such (e.g. monkeys in the tropical sections, birds in the bushes, people in the clearings). The performers were fitted with audio corsets-- 40-cm -diameter circular pieces of leather onto which a car loudspeaker was mounted. The audio corsets, worn under the jackets, were strapped to the performers backs. The only visible electronic element was a 30-watt amplifer that was mounted on the back of the jacket. <See page: 83, Fig. 4> The cassettes were played on Walkman cassette players and a 12-volt battery served as power source. The sound effect of audio clothes: a mobile and multiacoustic performance. Unlike most outdoor concerts where the sound is amplified through one massive PA system, an Audio Uniform concert consists of individual performers playing each his or her own sound. The music is not blasted at the listener with 30,000 watts of power from a static source, but is carried with 30 watts of power from different places at a volume that is dependent on how far the listener is from each performer. The Uniform wearers spread throughout an area so that it is impossible for the listener to see or hear all sound sources at the same time (as I recall, during the monkey part of the The Audio Herd performance, most of the Herd was hidden behind bushes). I use the term multi-acoustic to describe the sound effects of the Audio Herd: the cassettes, though identical and played simultaneously, are not (and cannot be due to the portable nature of the Walkmans mechanics) be perfectly synchronized. This is not the intent of these mobile sound sculptures anyway: the sound changes as soon as the Audio-Uniformwearer turns his or her back or starts moving in a different direction. The same sound is propelled through the air from a variety of vantage points in space, so that it reaches the listeners ear sound staggered or like a echo. This is why the places in which these Clothes are played are so important-- the topography and architecture of the area are important elements in the concert. In addition, the loudspeaker sources are carried by people who react spontaneously to situations (e.g. walking up stairs, waiting at a stoplight or exiting through a door), thus bringing whole new factors to these sound events that cannot be duplicated by normal instruments in the protective environment of a concert hall, gallery, or museum. The element of chance plays an important part in our performances. The public-at-large does not usually expect us (one cannot choose ones public when working outdoors).

131

The first official Audio Herd performance at the Bundesgartenschau 85 was briefly interrupted by a posse of park police, providing us with an unexpected intermission while they cleared up matters with their superiors. More audio uniforms In 1986 we were invited to the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. For this occasion we created The Audio Steelworkers. During a preparatory visit I discovered that the city is home to the Voest Alpine, the biggest steel mill in Central Europe. We borrowed 10 fireproof coveralls, on which I mounted amplifiers and loudspeakers (Fig. ). HP Kuhn created a tape based on live recordings from the steel mills. During the week-long festival we had 10 walk-on performances in various locations in and around the city. The Audio Subway Controllers (1987) were created for the festival Die Anweisung in Berlin. In the Berlin subway, each station has an attendant who uses the PA system to advise passengers (with more or less emphasis, depending on his or her mood) when and when not to get on the trains (Einsteigen, bitte! and Zurckbleiben! are the phrases they use, translating roughly as All aboard please! and Step back!). I systematically recorded all the attendants voices along one subway line and had Hans Peter compile them them onto two separate cassettes: one with approximately 30 All aboard, please! voices and another with 30 Step back! voices. Because this was was an official festival project, the Subway Authority loaned me seven authentic subway attendant suits, under which we could fit the audio corsets. As it turned out, the suits also had extra-large inside pockets for the amplifiers, batteries and cassette players, so that we had ourselves an instant Audio Uniform. <See page: 84, Fig. 5> The performance consisted of playing the subway voice collages while patrolling the subways in which they had been recorded. Needless to say the combination of subway voices being played through authentic suits caused a certain amount of consternation among the subway passengers (and employees). In 1988, we created TheAudio Bicyclists for the Festival des Arts Electroniques in Rennes. This city in the Bretagne area of France is crazy about bicycling, which provided the inspiration for the theme of this project. I had 10 audio jerseys (the typical nylon knit sportshirts that bicycle racers wear) built with loudspeakers sewn into the lower back area (reinforced with leather), where the cyclists usually keep their water bottles and energy rations. Conveniently for us, we discovered that Bernard Hinault, the five time winner of the Tour de France, lived on the outskirts of Rennes. We agreed to let us interview him and the musician Ralf Buron (himself an avid cyclist who had joined the Audio Gruppe as sound man in this situation) used the taped interview to splice together a word collage that sounded in some parts like a techno-rap: Jai gagn was the basic chorus line of the Audio Cylcists cassette. The local sports center recruited 10 amateur racers and organized a route through the streets of Rennes, complete with an official master of ceremonies and obligatory Audio Cyclist trophy for the Rennes, complete with an official master of ceremonies and obligatory Audio Cyclist trophy for the winner at the end. There were even solo races against the clock, during which a metronome sound was played through the speaker-jerseys. The Guitar Monkeys was conceived for the Berlin Atonal Festival (1986), a series of punk and avant-garde rock concerts.

132

Ten performers with little or no experience with playing guitars wore black leather vests with loudspeakers mounted on the lower back section and an amplifier in the inside pocket into which one could plug an electric guitar or a microphone. In some cases , for extra volume, we did away with the leather vests and simply strapped large loudspeaker boxes onto our backs like backpacks. <See page: 85, Fig. 6> Each member of this rock band could individually amplify his or her instrument without having to be on stage. Most of the time we played in the middle of the audience or in stairwells, hallways or other niches particular to the space (men and ladies rooms have unique acoustic qualities). The Guitar Monkeys were basically a noise and feedback band -- and an intensive one at that: imagine not just one loudspeaker giving off feedback, but ten at once (from below, above, and around you). We purchased our guitars at the local Berlin flea market with a budget limit of 10 $ per instrument. Instead of usual contact microphones, we used cheap Piezo ceramic loudspeakers as pick-ups. Even after the Atonal Festival, the Guitar Monkeys stayed busy in local underground clubs and went on tour (one critic dubbed us the grandchildren of Jimi Hendrix and described the music as post-industrial punk). Guitar Monkeys marks an important step in the development of Audio Uniforms because it made the performers personally responsible for their sounds, while previous Uniforms only permitted them to play pre-recorded cassettes. It was during the Guitar Monkeys European tour of 1989 that I happened to meet the director of lAeronef in Lille who asked me to design a new Uniform for the festival Les Arts au Soleil, which was going to take place on the beaches of northern France. This is how the Audio Ballerinas came into existence. <See page: 86, Fig. 7> The audio ballerinas I had been experimenting with solar cells as a power source for the Uniforms (usually we use rechargeable 12-volt batteries) and came to the conclusion that they had to be mounted on a horizontal surface in order to catch as much of the suns rays as possible. The artist Susken Rosenthal helped me build a transparent disc-like skirt out of plexiglass that could hang loosely on a belt from the waist . On this surface we placed the solar cells and electronics. A visiting dancer friend who saw the prototype explained to me that we had created a tutu -- the skirt-like piece of clothing that dancers wear in such classical ballet pieces as Swan Lake. This is how Audio Tutus came into existence. We also discovered that the hard but flexible tutus were ideal for mounting speakers, microphone jacks and amplifiers, not unsimilar to a disc-jockeys mixing board. Under the guiding impulse of our new chief engineer , Manfred Thiem, we started trying out new equipment-- for example, a digital chip (256 K) for sampling sounds, an electronic metronome, a photovoltaic resistor (to be used as a light sensor) and even a miniature receiver. In the end, we had a plexiglass dress that could spontaneously pick up sounds, record them digitally, play them back, amplify them, repeat them (via an electronic looping device), and alter them via a down- and up- pitch mechanism. For example, the tutus could record five seconds of the sound of a bell tower ringing nearby and instantaneously play back the sound. The additional electronic features allowed the wearers to change the speed of the loop or the tenor of the pitch (like a rudimentary sampler) to make the pitch change to the sound of that of a heavy brass gong or, in the other direction, to that of jingling bells. This piece, called Digital Memory , is at the core of an Audio Ballerina performance.

133

In each place where they perform the first task of the group is to find a particular local sound -- a sound that is indigenous to that site or country-- that can be used for this piece. A few examples are Lenins piano in the Lenin Museum in St. Peterburg, or a well-known jodler in Munich (Fig. ), an aborigine native playing the didgeridoo in Australia (Fig. ), and, more recently a Japanese shamisen (a sort of high pitched banjo) in Tokyo. A group of Ballerinas will record this sound, loop it and play it back individually (via the pitching mechanism) while spreading out over an extended area (of a room or garden or park), thus creating --from one original sound-- a multi-acoustic and mobile concert. These new additions allowed us to do away with the Walkman stereos and pre-recorded cassettes we had been using previously. At the same time the Audio Ballerinas still had the option of using contact microphones and Piezos, similar to the Guitar Monkeys, but instead of attaching them to old guitars, they fastened them onto other instruments, such as umbrellas or a simple metal rods, which functioned like giant phonograph needles being dragged on the ground and amplified via the electronics and solar cells on their tutus. Hence the title of the piece, The Earth as a Record Player. Acoustically speaking, the sound of this piece can be liked to a team of sanitation workers dragging empty garbage cans on the street. With their photovoltaic sensors the Audio Ballerinas can react to light: not unlike a Geiger counter responding to radioactive substances. The pitch of the sound changes according to the intensity of the light (radiant energy). This occurs when either their own shadows or the shadows from their surroundings (tree, clouds) interfere with the direct light as they dance through the space. In effect, they can thus translate their body movements into sound. With their receivers, the tutus render audible the radio waves travelling through the air. My favorite sound is actually the white noise between the radio stations. What started in 1989 at the festival Les Arts au Soleil (Arts in the Sun) with a contract to build 10 solar-powered for a series of performances along the beaches of northern France soon grew into a fullfledged troup. When I returned to Berlin with the electroacoustic tutus I recruited a group of local dancers, trained them to operate the tutus and organized a series of performances in the re-united Berlin. What began as a limited project soon blossomed into a performance group: the Audio Ballerinas was no longer a project but a real group including a core of dancers, a choreograph, 2 engineers and myself as director/ manager/ and performer. From simplified group choreographies in the street some of the dancers started working on solos and individual choreographies for staged indoor situations (Elizabeth Brodin with her Seguirya piece) <See page: 87, Fig. 8> <See page: 87, Fig. 9> <See page: 87, Fig. 10> Our basic bread-and-butter performances are still the work in public spaces and on the street: the mobility and the site-specific versatility of our electroacoustic clothes lend themselves obviously to almost any outoor situations. On the other hand it was with great interest that I took up the challenge in 1994 of cooperating with a Berlin alternative theatre , Theater zum Westlichen Stadthirschen, where, together with the Regisseurin Elizabeth Zundel, we put on Audio Drama. In this piece the actors all wore electroacoustic clothes and performed in the middle of the audience in order to showcase the fact that they were wearing their sounds and that the sounds were being produced by their movements.

134

We used this situation to create, develop, and refine a number of solos that are included in much of our present indoor repertoire (Audio Ballerinas and Electronic Guys) . In particular pieces such as Seguirya and Feedback Fred were originally conceived in this piece. <See page: 88, Fig. 11> Feedback Fred actually originated in the days of the Guitar Monkeys. This audio character as I like to term these solo-type performances essentially wears a large loudspeaker on his back, strapped back-pack style with a corset-type body brace and equipped with a 30-watt amp and microphone that is kept clamped to his mouth via a black face mask . Essentially he plays feedback in the true sense of the word. By moving through a room and monologing through the microphone he produces different sound effects due to the phenomenon of feedback. He is also fitted with various knee and- elbow protectors as his actions also involve somersaults and other semi-acrobatic stunts in the room. Dramatically speaking he is a cross between the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hamlet: he expresses himself oratorically, but his speeches are limited due to his actions and constant struggle with his-selfproduced feedback. He is a melodramatic character but he is also a clown. Seyuirya is a piece that Elizabeth Brodin (a principle dancer in the group) developed using light sensors, it is a millimeter-accurate piece involving a spotlight directly above her head. Originally conceived for an audio tutu the piece has progressed to the point that she uses a small loudspeaker box strapped to her back which enables her much more freedom of movement. In her hands she holds one light sensor and one infra-red sensor. The sound is created from the play between her hand and body movements within the circle of light. The international success of the Audio Ballerinas has not however kept us from building more Audio Uniforms. <See page: 88, Fig. 12> In 1983 the Audio Guards were created for the city of Oslo using uniforms similar to the Royal Norwegian Guard who stand in front of the Kings palace (not unlike those at Buckingham Palace). However we equipped our Guards with audio vests that were used to amplify their shoes and umbrellas (instead of their rifles), and used exactly the same choreography as the real guards (choreographer: Sygun Schenk), deliberately amplifying the movements and steps with our electronics. Our changing of the guard performance occurred at the same time as theirs, but took place in front of the Museum of Modern Art. Along the way I must not forget to mention that in 1986 I was awarded a small artists grant from the city of Berlin. In return for the grants the artists were supposed to present the city with a work of art (usually a painting). For this occasion I built an Audio Frack (Frack is the term for an elegant evening jacket with tails) for the mayor. For the sound I went around the city recording the voices of people saying Berlin tut gut (Berlin does you good) which was the current tourist slogan for the city. I compiled about fifty different voices repeating the sentence and presented the Jacket complete with audio cassette to his office, explaining to him that it would be appropriate for him to present himself in the apparel for the opening of the biennial International Electronics Fair that was going to take place. He responded with a polite letter indicating that if he used the jacket it would put his press attach out of work. <See page: 89, Fig. 13>

135

Another unique situation was an invitation to Riga during a major Berlin art exhibition that took place there in 1990. For the occasion we visited a local electronic factory where we bribed (there was no other way to obtain one) the chief executive into providing us a cassette player from the latest production (model: Riga 2000). We took it back to the hotel and spent the night taking it apart and fitting the parts onto the plexiglass tutu that we had brought with us on purpose. The next day we had a local dancer perform with it at the train station, she plugged a radio receiver onto the tutu and amplified the Radio Free Riga radio station while walking from the station. Mistaking the performance as a political demonstration , a crowd formed and followed us all the way back to the hotel where the guards refused to let them inside.
<See page: 89, Fig. 14> The audio geishas In 1997 I was invited to Tokyo to prepare a series of the Audio Ballerinas performances at the Intercommunication Center (ICC-NTT). While shopping around in a local department store I came across some dolls wearing extravagant robes and playing interesting looking guitars and small drums. I was informed that these were Geisha dolls wearing kimonos. This is how the idea for Audio Geishas came into my head. It was an even more logical idea than Audio Ballerinas (who had come from the solar idea) because these dancers actually played music: it was only logical that hey should also wear electroacoustic kimonos. I was thrilled at the idea. The next step in the process was to find the electronics for the dress. To be honest we find all the parts for our clothes in surplus electronic parts catalogs: the digital memories I believe are leftover from end-of-line Korean of Chinese productions for talking dolls or answering machines. In fact it is accurate to say that we use modern garbage to create our electroacoustic clothes: most the electronics we use can also be found in the toys that litter a ten-year-olds playroom. Whenever I consider building a new art work I first look inside bargain bins at local electronic shops. In Tokyo there is a whole city area (Akihabara City= Electric City) where they sell only such products. Accompanied by a local electronics expert we searched through the alleys and narrow shops until we found pretty much what I was looking for: a Casio Voiceman. This unique instrument is a sampler with a small keyboard that allows the user to sample live sounds and pitch them with the keys. Back in Berlin I hatched a plan with Manfred Thiem to cannibalize the instruments and replace the keyboard with light sensor that were spread out over the Kimono so that external lighting would trigger the sounds: by moving around the Audio Geisha would give off sounds. I also purchased a small portable guitar amplifier that we fitted into the traditional belt section of the clothing . Additionally we equipped them with acoustic microphones , infra-red sensors, radio receivers and guitar jacks so that they could fulfill other audio tasks. The premiere of the Audio geishas took place at the Intercommunication Center in May 1997 with a follow-up performance in the streets of Akihabara City. <See page: 90, Fig. 15> We had the Geishas produce feedback through their microphones and amps, this was then recorded by the Voicemans and subsequently pitched and triggered via their light sensors. Interestingly enough the sound is remarkably Japanese.

136

burak arkan, ali miharbi akbank sanat conference hall 10 november 2007

network arts en

Generative art is the art that is created via algorithmic processes, compilations, or compositioning. It doesnt have to be necessarily computer based, the code can be executed via non-automatic methods. Generative art is not a movement nor ideology, it is a system based art making method. The artist creates the core recipes, formulas, and templates, then leaves the system to run itself. This presentation starts with the historical references of generative art, discusses the new media dilemma, that is representation vs. real, and concludes with the examples from activisms in the network.

137

138

festival ekibi.festival team

Festival Yneticisi ve Sanat Yneticisi.Festival Director and Artistic Director Ekmel Ertan Konsept ve Editr.Concept and Editor Nafiz Akehirliolu Organizasyon Sorumlusu.Organization Coordinator zlem Alk Halkla likiler.Public Relations Handan Yalva Kaplan amber07 Kimlik Tasarm.amber08 Identity Design Gne Resul Grafik Tasarm ve Uygulama.Graphic Design and Application Gne Resul Web Tasarm ve Uygulamas.Web Design and Application alar Akpnar Prodksiyon Sorumlusu.Production Coordinator Kemal yican, Glay yican Dkmantasyon.Documentation Deniz Erk Asistanlar.Asistants Dizem Kaftan Esen Baysal Gizem Candemir

139

ana sponsor.main sponsor

etkinlik ortaklar.event partners

hizmet sponsorlar.service sponsors

mekn sponsorlar.venue sponsors

140

teekkrler.thanks to
Derya Bigal (Akbank Sanat) Grgn Taner (KSV) smail Glal, Tlin Ersz (BB TA) Pablo Asuero (nstituto Cervantes-Estambul) Recep Tuna, Daniel Stork , Laura Bins (Hollanda Konsolosluu) Ahmet Alkan (Sabanc niversitesi) Aydn Silier (Bimeras Kltr Vakfi) Osman Kavala (Anadolu Kltr) Meltem Aksoy (T TBT Program) Deniz Girgin (Bilgisayar Hastanesi) Mihran Tomasyan ve plak Ayaklar Dans Kumpanyas Mustafa Avkran, vl Akran (Garajistanbul) alar Akpnar (Nerdverk) Zeynep Kl Dnmez (Mimeray) Gizem Candemir (Difzyon) Suzan Hatem (NGM) enol Yksel, Berna Yavuzlar (Wall) Lokman ahin (MAS Matbaas) Hseyin elebi

141

amber07 Sanat ve Teknoloji Festivali / amber07 Art and Technology Festival Necatibey Caddesi No:66 Kat:1 Karaky, Beyolu, 34425 stanbul Tel: +90 212 243 2204 info@amberplatform.org http://www.amberfestival.org http://www.amberconference.org BIS, Beden-lemsel Sanatlar Dernei / BIS, Body-Process Art Association stanbul 2010 ISBN 978-605-88807-2-6

Tasarm / Design : Oya Citci Fotoraflar / Photographs : Deniz Erk, Ekmel Ertan, Zeynep Oray, Gencer Yurtta eviri / Translations : Berna Ekal, Nafiz Akehirliolu, Elif Tirben Renk Ayrm, Bask, Cilt / Color Reproduction, Printing, Binding : Mas Matbaaclk A.., stanbul amber07 Katalou Hollanda Konsolosluu ve Mas Matbaaclk A..nin destei ile baslmtr. 142

143

amber07 Sanat ve Teknoloji Festivali amber07 Art and Technology Festival stanbul, Turkey http://www.amberfestival.org http://www.amberconference.org http://www.amberplatform.org

BS Beden-lemsel Sanatlar Dernei BIS Body-Process Arts Association