John Mallia - Boston, Massachusetts
Transcriptions (2003)

Media: amplified pencil, manual typewriter with case, electric typewriter with case, amplified pencil (with attached phono cartridge), pencil sharpener, guest book, comment cards, speaker drivers, magnet with coil and mylar, tactile transducer, amplifiers, table, music stand (or lectern).  

Visitors to the exhibition may sign the guest book with a pencil amplified by means of an attached phono cartridge, making the physical recording of their signature, information and comments audible to other visitors in the immediate vicinity of the installation. Visitors are also invited to use the two available typewriters (1 electric, 1 manual) to fill out comment cards. The typewriters are not amplified, but a tactile transducer, designed to exaggerate vibrations caused by bass frequencies, is attached to the underside of the table on which the typewriters are set up. The transducer causes the table and typewriters to vibrate and resonate in synchronization with typed rhythms that have been pre-recorded.

The sounds of live transcription (amplified pencil and typing) occur against a quieter backdrop of pre-recorded material also derived from the sounds of handwriting and typing. The recording plays continuously through speaker drivers mounted inside the typewriter cases. All of the recordings were made while transcribing the following text taken from Claude Levi-Strauss’ The Raw and the Cooked: 

Musique Concrète may be intoxicated with the illusion that it is saying something; in fact, it is floundering in non-significance.

For me, the statement’s meaning is negated by its own anatomy when patterns of articulation emerge in the sound of its repeated transcription, producing their own, abstract, semantic sphere.

John Mallia is a composer/sound artist whose recent work includes multi-media installations, electro-acoustic sound projections, and sound sculpture. He was recently composer-in-residence at the studios of the Institut de Musique Electro-acoustique de Bourges, France. He lives and works in Boston, where he teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Northeastern University.

 

top