spirit trumpet
“The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them” ― Philip K. Dick
This is a series of performances based on spiritualist seances involving the use of ‘spirit trumpets’. They “were often present at seances in the heyday of physical mediumship. Typically, the trumpet would "float" about the darkened room (sometimes luminous bands having been affixed to the trumpet so the effect could be visualized), and "spirit" voices would issue from it. There were many trumpet tricks. If the medium's hands were not controlled (a practice intended to prevent trickery) he or she could simply move the trumpet about, a rubber tube being attached through which the medium spoke. Sometimes, a removable luminous band was employed and moved about at the end of a telescoping rod. In these instances, the whispered voices did not actually emanate from the trumpet; the illusion that they did worked on the ventriloquism principle: it is not easy to locate the source of a sound, especially if misdirection takes place. If controlled, the medium had clever techniques of getting one hand free or could use a secret assistant dressed all in black.” (taken from here)
In my performances sound is channeled through the trumpet using a tactile transducer causing it to move around on the metal plate, the vibrations being picked-up by a contact microphone attached to the plate and then fed into a feedback loop between the two. The signal is manipulated with various mixers, amplifiers, self-built circuits and eq. The sound is then amplified through an external speaker. Within the often monotonous and cacophonous sound produced on occasions it is possible to distinguish sounds similar to that of human voices or vocal formants.
