The conceptual axis of the project _Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause_ is rooted in poetic actions regarding machines, language, codification and the audible texture of narration. Each work, in its singularity, positions itself as an organ forming part of a larger complex system: a discourse surrounding the culture of listening—the audible, acoustic technologies, the gesticulation of narration, the audible texture of the voice. In speaking of “poetic actions in regard to machines,” I am referring to variations that occur through phenomena such as the codification of language, the encryption of the orality of the expression in particular circumstances, involving the innovation of machines and the functions of specific devices, tensing the voice that narrates as much as the systems that listens. The narrative behind each one of these speaking machines and listening systems is found in the link they share with the genealogy of automatons and a desire implied in an archeology of science fiction. 

The machines of _Five Variations of Phonic Circumstances and a Pause_ are constituted as mechanisms whose particular use is processing sounds or, more precisely, phonic circumstances.  Each of them contains and expands a type of imaginary associated with machines, instruments and specific technologies whose sonorous/phonetic quality is exposed to one of the eponymous variations. 

The machines’ goal is to translate and interpret sound events—noises, orality, readings, narrations, murmurs, secrets, music—by changing them from one phonic register to another, transmuting them into text and code. These devices lie somewhere between science fiction, Victorian steam technology and the latest artificial-intelligence and speech recognition technologies. The five variations refer constantly to a number of communications model and format transformations, which create tension in the relationship between scientific knowledge and the human factor and additionally emphasize the dislocation experience present in the contemporary media’s expansive range.

Links: www.taniacandiani.com www.cincovariaciones.com

Curator: Karla Jasso. Laboratorio Arte Alameda

Tania Candiani (MX). The starting point for her research processes is language, text, the political implications of the domestic, of what is public and private, and of “the others.” Her translation strategies among systems—linguistic, visual and phonic—and practices generate equivalences and associations, where there is a constant nostalgia for the obsolete that makes us consider the discursive content of artifacts and of former projections of future. As one of her fields of interest, the production of works in collaboration with inhabitants of defined sites aims at an exploration of language as everyday knowledge, and at the revelation of urban rituals when faced with an expressly generated circumstance. Tania Candiani has been a Guggenheim scholarship fellow in the creative arts category and part of the National System of Creators since 2012.