aria

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to work with Wendy McMurdo on a film she made with VERL.

The film, which was shot in Bristol Robotics Lab explored the uncanny and the blurring of the real and unreal within the world of robotics research – this is Wendy’s particular area of research. I got involved in order to further explore the operatic voice as an embodiment of a dichotomy of the human voice - animal and artifice (uncontrolled/controlled; verbal/non-verbal etc). I created the whole ambience for the film from sound mined, appropriated and remixed from Olympia’s Aria (The Tales of Hoffman, Offenbach – this is the aria performed by a singer acting as a mechanical doll). Using new technology I was able to separate and sustain frequencies from the soprano’s performance, to literally scrutinize and unpack the operatic voice. The soundtrack explored the uncanny,  the natural and the synthetic, the theatrical and the virtuosic in areas of correspondence between robotics and voice.  
I hope to post a clip of the finished film, in the meantime here is the score on it's own.