Performed at CIT 4th floor, RISD on May 12 2022
SPEAKJAZZ is a live performance where the performer’s speech is automatically translated into a jazzy sound of two-handed piano and a drum. The performer’s speech is erratically transcribed on the monitor using a speech detection algorithm with a second delay. It is purposefully muted by overlapping the real-time algorithmic music, de-signifying the meanings of the speech.
MAX-built music-making algorithm, built in collaboration with Shawn Greenlee for the piece, mainly uses pitch detection, is a de-signification device, embracing glitches and mistranslation as musicality. Accordingly, in SPEAKJAZZ 01 on artspeak(2022), the artist statement is deconstructed, mistranslated, and remixed into jazz and machine transcription. And by this musical designificaiton device, the performance questions the meaningfulness of artspeak.
MAX-built music-making algorithm, built in collaboration with Shawn Greenlee for the piece, mainly uses pitch detection, is a de-signification device, embracing glitches and mistranslation as musicality. Accordingly, in SPEAKJAZZ 01 on artspeak(2022), the artist statement is deconstructed, mistranslated, and remixed into jazz and machine transcription. And by this musical designificaiton device, the performance questions the meaningfulness of artspeak.
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Source Unknown
from Threatening Music Notation(@ThreatNotation)
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Music notation generated from https://piano2notes.com.
Above is the first practice of using pitch music transcription algorithm. The original sound file I fed to the algorithm was the iPhone sound recording of me walking down the stairs to the apartment office to talk to the staff. The result of misusing the technology turned out to be this glitch-only MIDI file. And apparently, this does not sound anything like the original.
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Full pages can be read in this link.
No. 4 in G and Gb major is a two-channel video that explores the misuse of a music transcription algorithm. By inputting the same poems in two different languages into the pitch detection algorithm, I generated two four-handed piano music sheets, which are unplayable for human players as they are solely made up of unintentional glitches.
“Errors, ever unpredictable, surface the unnameable, point toward a wild unknown. To become an error is to surrender to becoming unknown, unrecognizable, unnamed.”
Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism (New York: Verso), 74.
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SPEAKJAZZ 01 on artspeak (2022)
In SPEAKJAZZ 01 on artspeak(2022), the artist statement is deconstructed, mistranslated, and remixed into jazz and machine transcription. And by this musical designificaiton device, the performance questions the meaningfulness of artspeak. MAX-built music-making algorithm, built in collaboration with Shawn Greenlee for the piece, mainly uses pitch detection, is a de-signification device, embracing glitches and mistranslation as musicality.
MAX Patch built for SPEAKJAZZ (in collaboration with Shawn Greenlee)