ORBIT - Online Repository of Birkbeck Institutional Theses Enabling Open Access to Birkbecks Research Degree output Making Speech-Matter: Recurring Mediations in Sound Poetics and its Contemporary Practice http://bbktheses.da.ulcc.ac.uk/35/ Version: Full Version Citation: Pester, Holly (2013) Making Speech-Matter: Recurring Mediations in Sound Poetics and its Contemporary Practice. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London. c 2013 The Author(s) All material available through ORBIT is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Deposit guide Contact: email 1 Making Speech-Matter: Recurring Mediations in Sound Poetics and its Contemporary Practice Holly Pester Birkbeck, University of London PhD 2013 2 I, Holly Pester, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. ---------------------------------------------- 3 Abstract This thesis produces a critical and creative space for new forms of sound poetics. Through a reflective process combining theoretical research and poetic practice – performances, text-scores and installations – the thesis tests the contemporary terms of intermedial poetics and sound poetry, establishing a conceptual terminology for speech-matter. Beginning with a study of 1960s sound poet Henri Chopin and his relation to the tape machine, I argue that this technological mediation was based on a poetics of analogue sound hinged on bodily engagement. Social and physical properties of the tape machine contribute to a mode of practice that negotiates the body, machine, and effort. Exploring Michel Serres’s concept of parasitic noise and the relation of interference to lyric appeal, via the work of Denise Riley and Hannah Weiner, I understand sound poetics as a product of lyrically active noise. Through an analysis of radio address, a conceptual link is drawn between lyric poetry and technological mediation, which posits the radiophonic as a material effect of transmission and also a mode of hailing. This is tested through sound poems that are investigative of distortion and echo. Addressing the conceptual limits of Intermedia, a new critical model is established for a poetics of sound operating in present-day media technologies. This alternative model, based on a concept of milieu, is a means of negotiating a poem’s materiality and context, in order to posit a work’s multiple connections and transmissions. This model is tested through the text and installation work of Caroline Bergvall, and subsequently realised in my own gallery installation that investigates links between sound, milieu and archive. Through this research into mediated speech, new platforms for intermedial sound poetics are produced. This project offers a model for practice-based research that produces knowledge of speech- matter by way of the ‘black box’ of poetic practice. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Carol Watts for her support and guidance throughout this project. I am also grateful to my friends and colleagues in the English Department at Birkbeck for their counsel and motivation. Much of the practice work in this thesis was developed through commissions, invitations and opportunities from the international art and poetry community including, Text Festival, Serpentine Gallery, Documenta, Maintenant and London poetry readings. This research project was funded by the AHRC. Thank you to my family and friends, especially Daniel Rourke. 5 Contents Introduction Making Speech-Matter and the Apparatus of Practice-Based Research 7 Chapter One The Media Object of Sound Poetry and the Performative Body 24 Image Page (author's own photographs of Henri Chopin journals) 66 Portfolio Remarks One The Feedback Loop of Effort and Song 67 Chapter Two The Transmission of Sound Poetry: Sonic Hailing, Noise and the Radiophonic Turn 86 Portfolio Remarks Two ‘avert our ears as we do’ as Poetic Practice 122 Chapter Three Contemporary Intermedialities in Poetics and a Conception of Milieu: Reflections on the Work of Caroline Bergvall 1400 Portfolio Remarks Three Announce, Amazement, a Mess 174 Image Page (author's own photographs of art installation by Holly Pester) 192 Chapter Four ‘I did not know till afterwards’: Reporting on the Practice of Archive Artwork 193 Image Page (author's own photographs of art installation by Holly Pester) 227 Conclusion Making Speech-Matter as Practice-Knowledge 228 Portfolio Description of Performances and Publications 234 From this Swam 236 Buddy Holly is on my Answer Machine 237 6 Effort Noise, a Space Shanty 241 Majel Barrett, a Space Shanty 246 News Pieces 248 Danger Scale 260 Katrina Sequence (description) 267 All Shook Up 268 This is Papa 269 He's in Texas 272 Shadow was amazed… (loose script) 274 The Squid's Poem, To Draw a Blank 276 Juggle Fish, a black box shanty 281 Bibliography 285 Audio CD x 2 1. From this Swam (from recording of Third Annual Sussex Poetry Festival, Nightingale Theatre, Brighton, 8th June, 2012) 2. Buddy Holly is on My Answer Machine 3. Effort Noise, a space shanty 4. Majel Barrett, a space shanty 5. News Pieces 6. News Piece (extract of sound installation for StAnza Poetry Festival, 14th-18th March, 2012) 7. Danger Scale (from recording of Icelandic and British Poets, Maintenant reading series, Icelandic Embassy, London, 26th November, 2010) 1. (Katrina Sequence) All Shook Up 2. (Katrina Sequence) This is Papa 3. (Katrina Sequence) He’s in Texas 4. Shadow was amazed… sound installation for Word of Mouth exhibition, Cartel Gallery, London, 9th-11th March, 2012 (extract) 5. Shadow was amazed… sound piece for Radeq, temporary arts radio station, V22 Summer Club, London, 2nd August, 2012 (extract) 6. The Squid’s Poem, To Draw a Blank 7. Juggle Fish, a black box shanty (from recording of if p then q Press reading, The Betsy Trotwood, London, 8th September, 2012) 7 Introduction Making Speech-Matter and the Apparatus of Practice-Based Research This thesis seeks to claim a critical and creative space for the production of sound poetry. It develops a language and methodology through which to build a practice of experimental poetry that analyses speech and its materiality. Through an initial investigation into the works of sound poet and tape machine pioneer, Henri Chopin (1922-2008), this project moves towards a consideration of contemporary practitioners of the intermedial. In doing so this thesis understands the role of technological media as key to the theorisation of sound poetics. My research locates 1960s European sound poetry, such as Chopin’s audio-poésie, as a technological moment in which enthusiasm for newly developed tape machines provided an analytical response to the mechanics of analogue sound. From this historical starting point this thesis continues to probe the poetics of transmission and communicative signalling as a broader, politically problematised area, in which contexts of speech- exchange are sites of disharmony. It should be noted here that my use of the terms signal and signalling is somewhat informed by Information Theory. Therefore, I am interested in the Physics, the materiality, the semiotics, the audio theories and the personal politics of the verb to signal as much as signal as a noun relating to signs. Where I use such phrasing it should be understood that communication sciences are a backdrop to my understanding and experimentation with the terms. I am deliberately evoking the various interpretations of ‘signal’; material signal such as a radio wave, a sound, a sign and a signifying gesture.12 An ongoing question in this project is the effect of modes of transmission on a ‘signal’, and how these transmission effects are inflected back into poetry. My questioning therefore relates to both the wider procedures of practice and the specific mechanisms of poetry works. How does poetry move across media? How does mediation alter the fluency of poetry’s sound and text? 1 My research throughout this thesis maintained an active interest in expanded theory relating to the communication of information and plays on the broad definitions and contexts of signalling. Whether this be mathematical theory relating to the measurable amount of distortion in a signal’s information (see, Claude Shannon, ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’, The Bell Systems Technical Journal, 27 (1948), 379–423, 623–656), telephony or any act of communicating a sign (see, James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (HarperCollins UK, 2011)). 8 The ultimate product of this research is the conception of ‘speech-matter’. This term, which invokes speech, mediation, distortion and materiality, launched this project and provided the foundation through which to secure a productive dynamic between practice and research. Speech-matter is at once a terminology, an apparatus for practice, and a critical modality through which this project engenders a poetics. The Format and Construction of this Thesis This thesis is comprised of four chapters of research and critical reflection, a portfolio of poetic practice work with a CD of audio versions, and three shorter chapters of portfolio remarks. I see these various components operating in distinct cycles, yet also working together as a connected machine. The points at which the components connect are what make this thesis a product of practice-based research. I engage with the historical category of sound poetry focusing on the 1960s poetry, composed through the tape machine, and develop a practice that responds to this while experimenting in new forms of sound poetics.3 Regarding the format of this thesis, there is an alternation between the conceptual models drawn from the field of my theoretical research and the processes in my portfolio. The physical body of the thesis alternates between theoretical chapters and the portfolio remarks, with various threads of argument developing across each cycle. This is to ensure that the respective perspectives from which I conducted research are given equal status, and also to support the process of feedback between practice and theory.