I had way dirtier things in my mouth (2021)
video composition (4:43 min)
for Composite By The Number
‘Composite By The Number is part of Composite Noises Series. It’s primarily an art project. The gas is to impose music/sound/noise pieces using number-data that are born of our current crises. These compositions/composites are shareable, which means that other artists, besides the one who made it, will be able to perform the piece. It is imagined that while this particular musicking/sounding/noising is a metaphor for dehumanizing the value of these numbers, allowing others to perform what is composed/composited is a metaphor for communing - of remembering that we are all in this together. We are more connected than we think.’
Composite By The Number is a project by Dayang Yraola in collaboration with Millet Yulo.
video stils composition and performance
I HAD WAY MORE DIRTIER THINGS IN MY MOUTH is a comment on Corona naysayers’ conspiracy theories, fake news and the viral aspects of spoken language. It’s based on data measuring the amount of aerosols spread while breathing and speaking in an unventilated room during 4:43 minutes.
Each of the 4 performers chooses his/her own instruments/sound sources, each performer chooses 1 of 4 the available aerosol-symbols as an personal indicator to produce sound.
No aerosols means no sound, few aerosols mean few sounds, more aerosoles indicate more sound, more volume, more intensity. Interpretation of other inputs is up to the perfromer.
performers: Neil Young Cloaca (USA), Pilla Piano (Mexico), Andrea Rinaldi (Italy), Tintin Patrone (Germany)
‘The word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host. My basis theory is that the written word was literally a virus that made the spoken word possible. This virus came from outer space.
From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may have once been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. Modern man has lost the option of silence. Try halting sub-vocal speech. Try to achieve even ten seconds of inner silence. You will encounter a resisting organism that forces you to talk. That organism is the word.’
William S. Bouroughs
‘A virus operates autonomously, without human intervention. It attaches itself to a host and feeds off of it, growing and spreading from host to host. Language infects us: its power derives not from its straightforward ability to communicate or persuade but rather from this infectious nature, this power of bits of language to graft itself onto other bits of language, spreading and reproducing, using human beings as hosts. Georges Bataille similarly argued that communication was best understood from the perspective of contagion. In Bataille any human being is no more than a conduit for communicative process, a channel for ideas which pass through him/her.’
Bernardo Attias
’ saw this guy on the train And he seemed to have gotten stuck In one of those abstract trances.
And he was going: ’Ugh . . . Ugh . . . Ugh . . .‘‘
Laurie Anderson, Language is a virus