Sound poet Anne-James Chaton performs his piece “Évênement nº 1” in this video.

Reading against a constantly repeating recording of his own voice, Chaton produces a densely layered sound-world that immediately drew me in. It’s a disorienting and propulsive work, and I just wish I knew enough French to get that extra layer of meaning out of it!

(Source: youtube.com)

I had been waiting for this video to show up on an actual video site (a few weeks ago when it first shot around the nets, it was a big browser-killer .mov). Michael Winslow imitates typewriters from history using only his mouth and a pair of microphones. Fascinating to see, actually, how much of a role his “playing” the microphones has in the sound.

(via immanent discursivity)

So you know how I posted that Dada video roundup inspired by Marie Osmond’s rendition of Hugo Ball’s Karawane?

Well, the professor I’m TAing for just sent me the ACTUAL VIDEO AND IT IS AMAZING. Not only does it include the whole of Karawane, but it also includes a basic introduction to Dada and sound poetry. I’m giving a guest lecture next week for MIT’s Digital Poetry class on sound poetry and musique concrète, and this is so going to be my introduction.

(oh yeah, and while I was procrastinating on my thesis presentation the other day, I grabbed a little bit of the video to make this inane thing.)

update: tumblr is misbehaving and making the video small, sorry about that! (Also, just learned something I obviously should have known: “I Zimbra” by the Talking Heads uses Ball’s “Gadji Beri Bimba” for lyrics. Excellent.)