What You Cannot Hear (2011)
My telematic work “What You Cannot Hear” exploits artifacts of digital streaming in real time via MaxMSP. It was released on a CD accompanying Volume 22 of Leonardo Music Journal in November 2012.
Liner notes as published in Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 22, November 2012:
Performance artist and full-time phone sex worker Cameryn Moore had a weekly phone-in talk show on an online live audio streaming service that featured a frank discussion of adult sexual fantasies. Moore’s work is not sugar-coated -- it can be disturbing in its honesty. Despite the fact she had labeled her show as “adult content,” the streaming service chose to abruptly cancel her account.
“What you cannot hear” is focused on bringing attention to audio data compression artifacts combined with clips of Cameryn Moore reading one of her own erotic stories, both of which are things you presumably “cannot hear.” The entire piece is performed live by sending sounds via Skype into the online audio streaming service.
At various points in the piece I use very high and low frequency sounds to explore the narrow frequency bandwidth of the system, i.e., small filtered clips of Cameryn’s voice, sine tones and noise sweeps. Different volume levels of white noise are juxtaposed against other sounds and the system itself to reveal gating mechanisms in the system. In a small section at roughly the halfway point in the piece, I utilize inherent noise filtering and “joint stereo” to bring Cameryn’s voice to the forefront, playing with the idea of what she is not allowed to say. Her "dirty" words are slowly unearthed as the audio drifts to the active channel, though they have now been muted by G-rated sound editing. Gradually increasing reduction of sampling rate and bit rate further dramatize the limits of the low-quality digital audio.
Liner notes as published in Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 22, November 2012:
Performance artist and full-time phone sex worker Cameryn Moore had a weekly phone-in talk show on an online live audio streaming service that featured a frank discussion of adult sexual fantasies. Moore’s work is not sugar-coated -- it can be disturbing in its honesty. Despite the fact she had labeled her show as “adult content,” the streaming service chose to abruptly cancel her account.
“What you cannot hear” is focused on bringing attention to audio data compression artifacts combined with clips of Cameryn Moore reading one of her own erotic stories, both of which are things you presumably “cannot hear.” The entire piece is performed live by sending sounds via Skype into the online audio streaming service.
At various points in the piece I use very high and low frequency sounds to explore the narrow frequency bandwidth of the system, i.e., small filtered clips of Cameryn’s voice, sine tones and noise sweeps. Different volume levels of white noise are juxtaposed against other sounds and the system itself to reveal gating mechanisms in the system. In a small section at roughly the halfway point in the piece, I utilize inherent noise filtering and “joint stereo” to bring Cameryn’s voice to the forefront, playing with the idea of what she is not allowed to say. Her "dirty" words are slowly unearthed as the audio drifts to the active channel, though they have now been muted by G-rated sound editing. Gradually increasing reduction of sampling rate and bit rate further dramatize the limits of the low-quality digital audio.