SPIEL | performance for prepared mouth

SPIEL | performance for prepared mouth from Peter van Haaften on Vimeo.

Created in Pure Data

PETER VAN HAAFTEN | MICHAEL MONTANARO

Performed by Nien Tzu Weng

Spiel is an in-situ performance for prepared mouth.

​While absorbed in conversation you notice a stranger approaching. With a curious instrument affixed to their face the visitor leans in, and listens. The mouth opens, patterns of rhythm and sound emanate from within: voices recognizable as your own.

Spun out of focus, words reveal their ingrained subtleties as the collector of conversation captures the sentence but not the sentiment. Vocal exchanges are recalled and reflected. Voices are transformed by physical formant inflections, while acoustic hallucinations seem to reference what might have been said.

An étude on hearing lips and seeing voices, the performer’s mechanically augmented vocal tract reshapes and filters conversational spectra into new modes of mis-communication. Spiel physically unravels the tenuous synesthetic relationship between what is seen, heard and understood.

//bookings contact: peter@petervanhaaften.net

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Credits

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PETER VAN HAAFTEN | MICHAEL MONTANARO

PETER VAN HAAFTEN

Creative direction, composition, sound, interactive design, programming, and electronics

MICHAEL MONTANARO

Original concept, creative direction, and visual design

TATEV YESYAN

Visual design, mask fabrication

NiEN TZU WENG

Performer

Research collaboration: Topological Media Lab / Concordia University [an “in time” FQRSC funded project]

With special thanks to: Greg Salinger, Nicolas Bernier, Garnet Willis, Navid Navab, and Laboratoire Son / Matière (Université de Montréal)