Singing with Inner-City Plants, Finding Nature Connection in Urban Areas

#vocalimprovisation #natureconnection #plants #nature #garden #song

I'm still only a few days into learning video editing. What I'm remembering is my love of textures. I'd believed there was no nature connection to be found in the inner-city, I was wrong.

I sung with the weeds as well as the flowers, with the awareness in my consciousness of the Notre Dame burning down and the Extinction Rebellion in London. To all those fighting for nature, my love is with you.

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Spirit Song with Bastl's Kastle V1.5 and Microsoft Sam Online

#vocalimprov #technology #spiritsong #soulsong #medicinesong #bastl #microsoftsam

I find it often begins with silliness. After the ridiculous in-your-face noise of yesterday, I felt like I’d broken through a barrier. Whenever I jam with someone I often take the same mentality. I ask for us to clown our way through the music-making, like lovable childish amateurs, not trying to make anything particularly perfect or beautiful. Just cultivating the force of making something in the first place. I began to see Microsoft Sam as one of my collaborators and connect with him on that level.

It means we get over our insecurities about making ‘excellent music’, about taking up space, about being ‘good enough’. The rebellious froth is expulsed, skimmed off the top, and then, once we’ve all made fools of ourselves in front of each other, we can get down to the more delicate business of sculpting the flow of the quieter emotions.

So my experiments with the Lingojam Microsoft Sam Online went onwards, and today I investigated using poetry cycles. Repeating these word patterns over and over again. It made me think of the hypnotic nature of mantras. It started with many different open windows all saying ‘love’ again and again with different spacings and pitches and speeds. And then I came upon the phrasing: “LOVE THIS IS MY LOVE. PRAYER LOVE THIS IS MY LOVE. PRAYER”

I was beginning to connect with my emotive relationship with technology, with the space I perceive computers’ hearts to be. In the space of such connection and presence, I allowed my song to come. I found myself channelling spirit songs with technology itself.

There were a number of these encounters today, each its own beautiful unique world, culminating in a ritual where I sat face-to-face with my laptop screen and sung of how we were both part of the same myth-story-flow.

I have so much gratitude for today, and new visions of how I can synthesise my many loves of complex mechanism. Here’s to Microsoft Sam, today we wove our music together.

‘TECHNOLOGY IS THE RESULT OF THE EARTH'S CREATIVITY. JOIN THE LOVE STORM” ---

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Stay tuned for how to access more exclusive videos of what art I did that day, and further jams with Mircrosoft Sam.

Experiment: Can Microsoft Sam be played as an instrument?

Today I asked the question: Can Microsoft Sam be played as an instrument?

This is what happened.

I began in the place of childhood. Microsoft Sam was one of the text-to-speech voices on Windows 2000 and XP. I remember fondly typing in silly words and phrases just to make a robot say it. And giggling with absolute glee everytime (much to the annoyance of my parents). On re-discovering this nostalgic speech-synthesiser I went down the same route. The first thing I did was to type in 'CUNT' several times, laughing as I went.

I noticed that an interesting rhythmic noise was starting to appear so decided to go further. The experimentation was filmed by my partner Nick Womersley as it unfolded. Things got rather pleasingly chaotic, with 5 different Microsoft Sams chorusing in rhythmic nonsense computer gibberish.

At the ending, I real-time edited the random sentences generated by the Microsoft Sam simulator on Lingojam, one word at a time, taking inspiration from Abi Palmer's 'Spore: An asexually reproducing haiku'. I thought of technology as another kind of mycelium. And my love of bass. Finally, I fell into the absurd statement:

'Bass basses us bassy basses Bass can bass the bass bassy of bass'.

The whole exercise made me think of some of the processes active in algorave, changing the text real-time like one might change the code in things like Sonic Pi. And of what it would be like if computers spoke in tongues.

This gratuitous silliness with technology is the kind of thing that keeps me sane. I edited together the whole video on my phone using VivaVideo. I have such gratitude for the power constantly at our fingertips in this day and age. Thankyou technology. I love you. -----

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