Ghosts of the Uncivil Head - Bus Gallery - August 2006

This sound installation explores 'the ear that doesn't hear and the mouth that doesn't speak'. Those little disembodied voices in our heads which are paradoxically associated with both logical thought and schizophrenia. And what of those little disembodied ears, which must be doing the listening? Who do they belong to? What is overheard and what is said over and over again?

The installation consists of four speakers, wireless headphones and a custom tracking and database playback system written in Max|MSP and Jitter. Four actors, under the direction of a facilitator engaged in 6 workshops based around improvisational techniques, word ‘games’ and emotional translation exercises. These workshops were used to develop a ‘script’ appropriate to the project – a ‘script’ in which self-conscious statements and unconscious emotional tones could be explored.

The script was broken into 7 topics: Fashion, Work, Bedtime, Regret, Vitriol, Intimacy and Lust. Each topic has between 10 and 15 ‘lines’. During recording each of these lines was delivered by each actor in 4 different emotional tones: Soothing, Unsure, Confident and Angry. In addition to these 4 variations of the base script, each actor recorded 2 ‘Responses’ to each line of the entire script, as well as various ‘Yes’, ‘No’ and ‘Guttural’ noises. In total some 2,400 individual samples make up the final database of sounds available to the interactive.

Each actors voice has been assigned to one of the speakers in the interactive. As you move throughout the space, your position is tracked, and the emotional tone of the samples being played, as well as the volume of the audio signal to each speaker and the headphones is varied accordingly. These variations represent a spectrum between ‘public’ or ‘overheard’ statement and ‘private’ or ‘intimate’ musing. So that, for instance, standing close to one speaker will mean that the voice assigned to that speaker will only be audible through the headphones, while all the rest are only audible through their respective speakers, or vice versa. Constant movement changes the tone of the voices (increasingly aggressive the longer you move about), while standing still silences all voices except the closest speaker, and ‘calms’ the other voices into their ‘Soothing’ state. Whichever speaker you are closest to will engage in providing either Response’s, Yes’s, No’s or Guttural sounds.

Ghosts of the Uncivil Head represents 6 months of development and workshops. Thanks are due to the actors and pre-production assistance provided by the artists below.

Emily O'Brien-Brown (voice), Craig Peade (voice), Irene Guzowski (voice), Greg Parker (voice), Dario VaCirca (performance facilitator), Dan West (sound recording) and the kind support of SoundHouse.