Shamanic Disco was born out of the melding of two specific forms of repetitive ritualistic sound forms: shamanic chanting and disco rhythms. Our performance incorporates the use of a meditation labyrinth, inspired by the Finnish jatulintarha. The audience will be invited to step in as an immersive experience during the piece. The conceptual basis of the piece is the soul communication through both sound and rhythm that cross the boundaries between individuals.

For both Reetta-Stiina and Dili, the Sound Poetry course has been an amazing experience of our creativity and artistry breaking open and breaking free.

Broken open
Rikki auki

The material for this work has been a recording of an everyday, casual discussion between the artists. The narrative content has been cut out, giving space for filler words and phrases like “like” or “you know,” and other non-semantic sounds uttered during a conversation.

Words and sounds are rearranged, taken apart, multiplied, and modified into a composition where intelligible sounds exist next to, under, and on top of sounds no longer recognisable as human. The result is an arrangement with hints of spoken language, where the interaction and qualities of voice as such become the content. The semantic meaning disappears in an extended rhythmic limbo of always being about to say something.

happy |ˈhapē| adjective (happier, happiest) feeling or showing pleasure or contentment

Finland Finland Finland Finland Finland Finland Finland Finland. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. Is Finland the Happiest Country in the World? Yes. But how did it get this way?!

The piece attempts to explore Finland’s happiness through a combination of euphoric field recordings, joyful cultural references, and cheerful local histories.

What is the voice? It is never just one pure sound. One voice is always a chorus of voices. The richness of the voice is the sum of a number of distinct frequencies. The sound waves overlap and combine, and the balance of these amplitudes is a major factor in the characteristic sound of each voice. That’s why any voice has its own unique timbre.

In this performance, I’m using Google Translate as a chorus. To create the synthetic artificial voice, one needs to put many different sounds together. Google Translate works the same way with translation: it improves itself based on billions of words translated every day by people all over the world. It is literally the chorus of the world. The classical distinction between protagonist and chorus doesn’t work anymore. Millions of voices becoming one voice.

To create an artificial voice with different timbres, contemporary technology uses voice databases—libraries of people’s recorded voices speaking different languages. In one of these databases in Wikimedia, I’ve found the recorded voice of the first minister of education and culture during the early Soviet Union. In this speech, he was talking about the importance of recording a human voice and its possible future. It is the starting point for my performance.

room:
-Alex can’t talk
inside computer.

there is some information related with the name,
several cases of achievable wishes, someone sue itself.

outside:
– did you disable my dead ray?
– you are going to jail
– Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.

Une femme avec un sac à dos rouge. A man kicking a soccer ball, obscured by the edge of a blue car. Trois oiseaux. Pensif, a man with a bag stares. La fumée monte. Au fond, des vitres cassées. Busses come by, their number always hidden by the trees. Un couple, une carriage, trois enfants. Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr. Un vélo jaune. There is a light blue sign, unassumming, advertising the café’s special. La fumée se dissipe. Un autre sac rouge et un paraplui. Il fait gris. Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr. A 1950s magazine cover reminds me to drink coffee. La lettre H et un contour blanc. Longue pause. We are one kilometer away.Une femme avec un sac à dos rouge. A man kicking a soccer ball, obscured by the edge of a blue car. Trois oiseaux. Pensif, a man with a bag stares. La fumée monte. Au fond, des vitres cassées. Busses come by, their number always hidden by the trees. Un couple, une carriage, trois enfants. Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr. Un vélo jaune. There is a light blue sign, unassumming, advertising the café’s special. La fumée se dissipe. Un autre sac rouge et un paraplui. Il fait gris. Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr Gr. A 1950s magazine cover reminds me to drink coffee. La lettre H et un contour blanc. Longue pause. We are one kilometer away.

Essee tapahtumasta Noesis-verkkolehdessä | An essay on the event at Noesis magazine (In Finnish)