Ruta Remake
INTRO
Provoked by the notion of „the lack of women’s voices”, RR project works to map out relations concerning a politics of identity in the Lithuania of today.
RR unfolds as a search system that is suggested as the play between forms, ranging from the remainders of the „Homo Sovieticus” through to the Modern Capitalistic Model.
INTERVIEWS WITH WOMEN
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Writers, linguists, philosophers, music theorists and critics join the RR project to investigate the contemporary state of women’s voice. Trying to find the body in the voice they decode the dichotomy between sound and voice, voicing and language, „becoming” and „being”.
Through the shared recollections of media women build a pathway to navigate through a collection of samples that reflect social construction and metaphysical qualities resulting as a Voice Archive.
PARTICIPANTS
Marija Ausrine Pavilioniene / philologist, Solveiga Daugirdaite / literary critic, Viktorija Daujotyte / philologist, Egle Laumenskaite / sociologist, Laima Kreivyte / art critic, Margarita Jankauskaite / art historian, Rasa Kalinauskaite / journalist, Ruta Gostautiene / musicologist, Veronika Janatjeva / musicologist, Zita Kelmickaite / musicologist, Karina Firkaviciute / musicologist, Audrone Zukauskaite / philosopher, Daiva Sabaseviciene / theatre critic, Daiva Budraityte / musicologist, Daiva Raciunaite / musicologist
FRAGMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEWS
“… Perhaps the difference is between your voice inside, the one which is solely yours, what is only heard by you, and the one which is heard by others and then you start hearing it, this is exactly socialization. That voice becomes an expression of human socialization, the distance, which you have to manage. Of course, you lose your inner voice to a certain extent as you no longer hear its strangeness. And in the recorded voices, especially, if you listen to some old records, you hear the socialization, as a some kind of time buzz, noise, because after all voices of different epochs and voices of different people are marked by time…
… Sometimes I think, that when I work for the radio nowadays, when I construct voices by myself, because later, when you record voices, a montage is done, and the main thing, performed by you – you cut out pauses. It seems to me, that if we consider voice as a construct of modern epoch, that is the voice without pauses. These days people avoid pauses, they fear pauses. Because voice without pauses is information and the more information, the more it is valuable. Although I think that
the voice principally resists such castration, as perhaps the most valuable elements are sighs, natural inhalations, exhalations, some kind of bodily physiology, everything what is inclusive in pauses. While, during the montage, especially if it is done by someone else, not by you, these pauses are most often removed. You just observe it how physically bits of voice, in this case – the tape are cut out. The voice is no longer there…”
RASA KALINAUSKAITE / journalist, Vilnius
“… What is interesting, is that at that time voices radically change, the ones used in Lithuanian music and cultural heroes change quite radically, too. Such heroes help to express, embody, create, construct different individual and cultural identities. It is characteristic, that especially women’s voices totally dominate creativity of the 70s, the music which we still consider valuable and significant to our national tradition…
However, there is a change in the very type of woman and vocal, with which she relates her identifications.
We may say that woman-mother practically disappears. This remains a character which is still slightly important for pop music of that time. We remember many of such works, which address mother staying somewhere far away…”
RUTA GOSTAUTIENE / musicologist, Vilnius
“… Well, of course, this is mother’s voice, which you identify as woman’s and there is
no other way. But this is closer to a metaphysical sphere. You hear it, of course. I can not remember it now, but when you have some kind of variant yourself, then probably that voice is heard and sounds as if from inside, although that relationship there changes significantly with age.
While speaking about that external, social one it is difficult to remember now. Of course, in those days no one worried about any gender differences and I do not think that there could be some differentiation between masculine and feminine voice. But I think, that this was Soviet Lithuanian television after all. Those were the good old announcers, these who spoke in mature voices from chest, not like Valinskienë now,
really. Now I do not even remember, Kybartienë was probably there, and the others, because time was somewhat unlimited…
… Such natural, elemental, with no involvement of consciousness, that metaphysical „I”, my voice, not the one I use when I speak internally with my self, which does not even have any characteristics of voice, perhaps less than thoughts….? But this happens in rare cases of life. And I have heard it once in my life, when I gave birth to my child. It was the only time when I normally heard my voice, not embellished, not transformed in a way. So this is such a feminine voice as they say, so ugly, we may say, but so natural. So this is the moment I remember, but it really happened not in my childhood…”
VERONIKA JANATJEVA / musicologist , Vilnius
“… I think is that there is not so much woman’s voice, because when does a woman have a chance to mostly show her voice culturally? Where woman could show her voice well is in the delivery of baby. And there was such a situation: a woman from the bathroom of the maternity home is calling another woman and saying: “Look, they want to force the delivery”, but she is determined to deliver the baby in a natural way. “Why do they want to force it?” “Because I scream a lot”. In other words, screams of women in child-birth have become a legend; everybody knows, that they scream there and it is terrible there, while it is striven to culturize it somehow, it is not nice to scream. Now they will make you not scream, so that you do not show your deepest and most real voice you have. For instance, I do not scream in such cases, so I think “am I so much restrained or am I so much influenced by those cultural things?”, so that even in these situations you do not let yourself to express…”
SOLVEIGA DAUGIRDAITE / literary critic, Vilnius
“… And let us take a look at what happened on the radio, for instance. In those days, those Soviet times, a radio announcer used to be a profession, a radio host, namely a special voice, projected, modeled. The modern radio does not longer need people of such a profession, at least overall; there is a tendency, that this male or female speaker should use his or her voice, without having so strongly adjusted voice. It means that there is a requirement of such a natural voice, perhaps listeners have a
bigger trust in this natural voice, even an errant voice with language mistakes, which we do not any longer consider a deadly sin, because it is natural for a human to make mistakes, make mistakes while speaking… It is difficult for us to rely on this adjusted, set voice, because we tend to rely on the primarily spontaneous, natural voice…
Generally, after all, we will get back somewhere where everything starts, as much as a human has freedom. The more a woman is free, free to think, free to project the world in one or another way, the more she is free to speak, and the more she is free to speak, the better her voice acquires freedom to be one’s self. And in that sense sometimes you may think that this voice is a somewhat metonymy of a human being, that in the voice human is very naked, human is naked in the voice…”
VIKTORIJA DAUJOTYTE / philologist, Vilnius
“…I find it remarkably beautiful, when women, especially in Dzukija, say and emphasize that it is very important to sing outdoors. Voice only resounds in the forest. For instance, a Samogitian would never say that. Because the forest in Samogitia is gloomy, dark, whereas in Dzukija that pine forest is splendid.
And for instance when they say, that we are setting out to pick mushrooms, well, so they say you, let your voice go so far that it can be heard in a great distance. And sometimes you think that this is the connection between human and nature… So I am asking, why is it so easy to sing in the forest, why is it so important to sing there? She says, because in the forest you let your voice go that far so that trees can hear you.
So that hearing and the resounding is very important to them. Then I am asking, wait a moment, do your girl-friends also sing? No, she says, I sing alone. Because if I do, someone will pick up my mushrooms before me. So on the one hand this is individualism and on the other hand, this is a sort of dialogue with the tree,
the nature. Someone is always listening to you anyway…”
ZITA KELMICKAITE / musicologist , Vilnius
“… The biggest challenge to us and at the same time the biggest opportunity in that challenge is to find an authentic relationship with someone else as different. That relationship is very frightful, as it has to come out of itself to a different person, which is unknown to you, and you do not know what will happen from it. And that opening up to someone else, as different, opens up ourselves, who we are.
This very often means speaking, face, motion, and voice, speaking also in a broad sense. I mean, we invite someone else to a real conversation, to a profound relationship by voice, to a certain extent. We invite to one or another relationship by using voice. Voice is like code…”
EGLE LAUMENSKAITE / sociologist, Vilnius
“…Another example could be the love affair between Narcissus and a nymph Echo, well-known to everyone. We know, that Narcissus becomes fascinated with his own image, while the nymph Echo becomes fascinated with Narcissus and the voice of the other. Her problem is that she cannot say anything from herself. In other words, there is no auto-reference, although it can repeat only someone’s echo. So, we can ask, whether this myth, or this polaricity shows the drama between manhood and womanhood, whether it speaks about two stages of the subject’s dialectics. Suppose, Narcissus is a modern subject, which observes himself and in this way constitutes himself, and for instance we can presume, that nymph Echo is a contemporary subject, which exists only in the shape of echo, repeating the other person’s voice and she can have no other constitution.
We may now shift to the question why there exist such feminist strategies, striving to recreate a specific woman’s voice. How can we evaluate such strategies? So my position is not so much sceptic, but rather temperate. First of all, I think this seems suspicious, that from the beginning there exists a mechanism of repression, that here the woman’s voice has never been represented, as it was either identified with specific masculine speach, integrated with that let so-to-say patriarchal structure, or it was considered a silence, a secret, something, which can not be put into words, is misterious, etc.. And let us say it is proposed to compensate this lack by recreating a specific woman’s speech. So we may ask whether this emancipational mechanism is not some kind of mechanism of patriarchal structure. Whether that so-called authenticity, which we have to strive to achieve has not been forced on us by the same patriarchal society? Let us say, I always find suspicious those women’s features, which are aggrandized by feminists. This is an emotional, very private, sisterly, patronizing speaking. Is not this authenticity a some kind of patriarchal construct?
I think there is no necessity for us to use compensational mechanisms. Maybe we should try looking into a specific woman’s subject situation, as to a certain metonimy and ask whether the woman’s subject metonimically represents the entire situation of contemporary subject? As Þiþek says: “is not woman more a human being than a man?” In this sense we can ask, whether Echo is not such a contemporary hero, which represents the very contemporary subject, in other words, the subject, which exists only by repeating another person’s echo, other voice and being unable to say anything from himself. In other words, is not the contemporary subject the echo of the voice of the other ?…”
AUDRONE ZUKAUSKAITE / philosopher, Vilnius
“… In other films woman is good as long as she does not speak. Ideally, woman should not speak; she would better die the same way as appearing on the screen. Then it happened in the film “Feelings” – there were a man and a woman, she gave birth to twins, such a double reflection and she died, so he stayed with the twins and a cow and then the real story started…”
LAIMA KREIVYTE / art critic, Vilnius
Participants of RR, Ruta Baciulyte, psychologist and Ruta Gostautiene, musicologist suggested two methods to re-collect the voices. The first routes from the construction of social and behavior patterns that constitute the present state of mind of the transition period, whereas the second re-route the initial search from a discussion on the timbre of the voice to writing, to weaving where finally the concept of a soundscape was growing into a garden of language.
PLANT
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In RR context, Rûta Baèiulytë and Rûta Goðtautienë suggested a specific weaving pattern named Ruta (rue) that refers to a perennial plant having a strong, heavy odor and a bitter taste; also known as a ‘herb of grace’. In Lithuania, this palant was imbued with different meanings, such that over the course of time it has as well routed through gardens and common language to become an icon representing virginity and femininity, despite the reputed efficiency of the plant in inducing abortions.
PATTERN
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The Ruta pattern is selected to provide a system for a sound notation, a shuttle for composing the voice threads of the archive, as lines of information and as routes, joined in patterns unpacking relationships between voice and language.
APPARATUS
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The investigation of the voicescape found its point of the departure in an instrument that works with the phenomena of an „ether-wave”, suggested by Lev Termin who created Thereminvox – one of the first high-frequency electronic instruments, which generated sounds similar to the singing voices.
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RR project begins by updating the original Thereminvox through a TheraMIDI device. This device is designed for a user’s hand to mediate between sets of acoustic samples by using two light-sensitive resistors linked through a MIDI interface. The hand’s movement within light casts shadows, and these register output and representation, according the logic of an inverted film. Thus the new TheraMIDI based navigation approaches the user as a performer to chart through the sound archive of voices in a real time weaving the patterns that compose a sound fabric.
SAMPLES
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The Voice Archive is a collection of audio samples of women’s voices in the Lithuanian media. The search list for this collection is a compilation of the actual references made by Lithuanian women intellectuals and producers during interviews with the artists. The resulting Samples’ collection reflects a social construction and metaphysical qualities, featuring sets of samples ranging from speech and narratives to a chanting and songs.
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MIXES
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The sound artist Otto Kränzler joined the project to interpret the Ruta pattern and translate it into a language of sound. Otto has devised a conceptual and technological system to weave samples of voices into the mixes controlled by the Ableton Live.
Steven Greenwood, programmer was invited to write a script that would code the navigation through the voicescape by connecting the midi notes to communicate with the construction of samples and real time mixes.
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Playing RUTA … and listening / by Otto Kränzler
“The two sensors of the “Theramidi” produce 2 MIDI signals: #Note-On-Events, conceived as vertical, and volume values, conceived as horizontal (controller 7). Since the incidence of the light and the sensitivity of the sensors are analogue, these tend to be fluctuating and somewhat unstable values. A script for the Macromedia director Steven Greenwood calibrates the note-on-events in 13 half-octave steps, corresponding to the 13 layers. The volume values are calibrated to correspond to the spots in the weaving pattern. Allowing for some practice and careful attention to feedback, this makes it possible to perform in a reliable and reproducible way. Since the weaving pattern involves the representation of a plant, the 63 sound mixes are selected and arranged such that a movement along the plant produces what is perceptible as an auditive process of growth. By means of a dense layering of sounds from each of the 13 categories, the semantic content is suppressed or cancelled out, thus intensifying the phonetic and onomatopoeic mood. This can easily be appreciated in traversing the “empty” parts of the pattern, which correspond to the pure background texture.
The lowest layer consists of very breathy, consonant-laden language. Layers 2 to 5 range from poetic language, recitation, bright and excited verbal sounds through to cries without recognisable verbalisation. Music is added from layer 6 upwards. The highest level of mixing is reached in layer 10, where the original sound already contains a considerable element of reverb. The final layers consist solely of music, for the most part songs sung by female voices with various accompaniments. After the incessant flood of stimuli of the middle layers, the ultimate layer, 13, involves a return to a gentleness similar to that of the first. In this, something suggestive of a blossom, or of many small blossoms, becomes apparent.
The theme of “growth” is handled not so much associatively, or in terms of content, as formally, by means of condensing and loosening the fabric of sound. In the word Ruta we hear echoes of the French ROUTE (= road), the English ROOT, and also the German RUTE (= rod), a further reference to the process of weaving. These conceptual associations become programmatic, especially the suggested method of interweaving. In contrast to the mixes of John Cage (Fontana Mix, Rozart Mix) the algorithm is in this case no longer used when it comes to performance. The algorithm has exhausted its purpose in the process of sound composition; thus there is arguably a greater kinship here with the simultaneous compositions of Charles Ives, despite various acoustic parallels to aleatoric currents in contemporary music. And isn’t there something suggestive of sound mixing in Gustav Mahler’s use of an off-stage orchestra?
The essential difference from reproduced musical works is, however, that in this case the visitor can personally attempt to make the plant grow by playing with the interactive arrangement. For experience, practice, communication? As question, experiment, game? That is up to the individual. The sensors are hardly more difficult to handle than a computer mouse, but they give a clear sense of manually controllable malleability.
By gesticulating a sound sculpture in the air, one plays with the very same medium that carries the sounds to the ear. It is not a step towards the frequent dream of music controlled by mind (whereby brain signals produce music from a computer). Rather, it is music making with both hands. Not IT plays, but I play.
For sure, the entire sound is already contained in the pre-recorded surface of the weaving pattern. No sound as such is generated through interaction. The foundation is a sound pool, well stocked with historical and ethnic material. The medium of the sound composition is not electronic synthesis, but rather the extreme degree of layering through mixing achieved by the use of spatial dimensions.
In a stationary sense, the sound sculpture is therefore complete when the performer appears. But in order to manifest itself in its specific form, sound always requires time and here the performer has full liberty: how, in what sequence, with what changes of place and what movements, with what gestures and how rapidly or meticulously does one investigate the surfaces and corners, the lines and edges of RUTA?
One also has to learn to listen to this density of sound. To comprehend what this fluid medium is, through which changes something is conveyed, and what is marginal and hence less relevant to communication. Linguistic content, musical rhythms and cadenzas disappear behind the “format”, the arrangement, the form of combination. Density is important – pitch less so – euphony is fundamental. Texts dissolve in textures. Language is reduced to random word fragments breaking through the undergrowth, the sense of language to random associations arising there from contradictory musical impressions threaten to annihilate one another: a seeming zero-sum game quite in the spirit of the new mass media, which no longer puts across messages for the masses but rather the message of the masses.
The listener can either use skill and care in selecting or rest content with what is given by chance. One can ignore what comes across as too insistent, mistrust each unexpected treat and avoid all largesse. Far away and uninvolved, for periods one feels perfectly content, but still one fails to resist the urge to get involved. With luck one will provide parcels of precious virtuosity to others of one’s ilk, parcels consisting of constantly fluctuating, changeable, partly anonymous, partly pseudonymous substance.
The person who merely listens is only passing through.
Who will listen to such sounds until the demigod Composer lets it be? The performers are our best audience.”
VOICE LAB
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RR in Vilnius was presented in the context which has initially provoked this research and in which it was discussed. The RR system includes two parts – a Voice archive and the female voices reflecting on the role of voice. However, in the space of CAC it was extended by including a third group – young female composers and djs that “read”, “rewrote” and “reproduced” RR Voice archive, thus modulating a settled scenario of female voice. Otto Kränzler was invited to feed the lab while mixing Stuttgart experience with young vibe of Vilnius.
CURTAIN
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The woven linen curtain closes the window light to supply the underlying condition of the performative machinery that operates with and within RR. The curtain, as suppressive institution, that controls the appearing voices, introduces a work by female workers from a linen weaving factory who join to create a new pattern.
The found footage from the film archive of a weaving factory suggests the discovery of a headscarf with the ruta pattern, worn by female workers. As a kind of chador, the headscarf is an inevitable part of the uniform. The suppression which is celebrated by the ruta plant, is undermined by the digital strategy of the Ruta pattern, that is generated into the weaving of the curtain.
FABRIC / HEADSCARVES / EDITION
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RR remake, that was presented in Vilnius, featured a new element, namely one of fashion. In collaboration with artist Sandra Straukaite, a fabric has been designed for this remake. Its ornamentation is based on a mix of a camouflage pattern and the Ruta pattern encountered on the curtain as well as in the film archive footage. In this remake of RR the fabric turns into multi-functional headscarves camouflaged in the way that does not hide the Ruta notation, but extends it, re-reading the traditional functions and connotations of this piece of clothing and opening a new possibility of playing “from the headscarves”.
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Online kiosk features a fashion collection as a separate element of the complex ongoing project Ruta Remake.
In collaboration with artist/designer Sandra Straukaite, the unisex collection for work and rebel has been designed.
More about limited edition at www.vilma.cc/ruta_remake
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