Stills from Operat(tion)

SOUNDAGE A DIGITAL OPERA(TION) 

 

 

Instructions To Read/Hear Two

(or how to infect you with too ear - a 'third ear')

 

Gertrude Stein has been saying for over a hundred years now, 'Let me listen to myself and not to them …' In her text Two: Gertrude Stein and her Brother she says 'Sound is coming out of her …' And with this opening she goes on to say that sound sounds sound and so, meaning and ultimately being, repeatedly. Stein's project introduces us to the notion that to 'work in the excited-ness of pure being … to get back that intensity into language' is to build a new relationship to sound. In saying sound, Stein has positioned a new 'subject/object' to be heard in language, that of a sound theory that I name soundage. Through this notion she positions herself as a sounding board to reflect this enigmatic and 'basic' sound quality of language and languaging - expounding/performing/

theorizing what sound in language is and does.

 

There are many ways through this labyrinth of a text, and none of them are the 'right' way. I have decided for the sake of future scholars of Stein to offer my detailed readings of the text here. I do this for a number of reasons. Stein's register of meaning repeatedly interrupts any sort of analysis, making of it a mockery, though she states she does not intend to. Her ideas are always spilling out of the work, out of language and meaning. So I am going to outline Two theme by theme and page-by-page. Though this takes a number of pages it is the most essential way to ground what I wish to go on and say about Gertrude Stein's contribution to knowledge.

 

Reading is always a rereading of text a ventriloquiseing project, a reinterpretation of the 'original'. Any reading tends to disruption. This one is no exception. The text contains its own instructions for both reading and understanding it. Performed here as a digital opera, Two is transcoded to be read anew.

 

 

Below is an extract of text featured in SOUNDAGE A DIGITAL OPERA(TION) in turn taken from Gertrude Stein's work Two: Gertrude Stein and her Brother (written 1904 published 1951)

 

 

 

'Sound is coming out of her. Sound has been coming out of her. Sound can come out of her.

Sound coming out of her is coming out of her and she has not been hearing not been hearing the sound that has been coming out of her. Sound has come out of her and she is listening and sound can come out of her.

 

Sound comes out of her. Sound coming out of her is expressing that thing, is saying something. Sound coming out of her is expressing something, is saying anything. Sound coming out of her is expressing everything, is saying everything. Sound is coming out of her. Sound has been coming out of her. Some sound comes out of her. Sound comes out of her.

If sound comes out of her it is a sound that expresses that thing expresses sound coming out of her. Sound does come out of her. Sound coming out of her does express this thing does express sound coming out of her.

 

Sound coming out of her comes out of her and is expressing sound coming out of her. Expressing sound coming out of her is something sound coming out of her is doing. Sound coming out of her is something. Sound is coming out of her.

 

Sound is coming out of her and that sound has been the sound that has been expressing that that sound is coming out of her. Sound coming out of her is something that has that meaning that has the meaning that that sound is coming out of her. Sound coming out of her is something that the sound coming out of her is not explaining. Sound coming out of her is something that the sound coming out of her is not suggesting. Sound coming out of her is something that is not relating to her having been one having had sound coming out of her. Sound coming out of her is something expressing that thing expressing that sound is coming out of her …

 

Sound is here something? Here is something. Here is something coming, continually coming out, forward into now, by being said repeatedly by being said…Sound comes out of her. Is coming - out. Something that is expressing … Sound coming out of her is expressing that thing, is saying something. Sound coming out of her is expressing something, is saying anything. Sound coming out of her is expressing everything, saying everything… If sound comes out of her it is a sound that expresses that thing expressive sound coming out of her. Sound does come out of her. Sound coming out of her does express this thing does express sound coming out of her ... '

 

 

* The word Soundage is a new term I have coined/used to articulate a particular matrixial or undifferentiated space that erupts as a relationship between sound and language.                                                                                                                                                                       

Below is an extract from the piece Soundage a Digital Opera(tion)