Babel-13

Babel-13 is a cybernetic language system for Cyborg Choir, a sonic tool for achieving communion with the cybernetic presence. It is operated by a vocalist who simultaneously controls the digital singers with a MIDI controller which is mapped to relevant parameters of a MaxMSP patch. The four digital singers appear as four faces on the User Interface with eye-like features that receive information and mouth-like sonograms that broadcast their spectral signals.

As an instant of sound is frozen, time seems to stand still… As frozen layers are autonomously reanimated with the press of a button, what was once complex to imagine becomes trivial, the trivial sometimes complex… Just as if we were learning a new language, we begin to hear the same sounds in new ways.These new manners of articulation render the Cyborg new frontiers of expressive sound.

“helical spacetime”(right) is a recitation of a poem in Babel-13. The half-spoken, half-sung recount of metaphysical epiphany is delivered a bit like liturgy over a sparse accompaniment.