Live recording of the performance based on the human voice and limited body movement.
As an audio piece, it may be regarded as an experimental improvised oratorio in 7 parts. 

Prologue 00:00
Genesis 07:49
Initiation 17:30
Communication birth 27:19
Myth construction 31:25
Threat of speech. Deconstruction 37:33
Epilogue 48:33

«Bye to language!» is my interdisciplinary project where 11 performers explore the nature, functions and potential of their voices, the relationship between silence, sound, voice, word, noise and subjectivity of these concepts. It is the process of tracking the connections between perception, understanding and cognition by moving the boundaries of the usual communication paradigm.

We aimed to examine the problem of speech restriction in conditions when communication becomes dangerous.
We have reminded ourselves that, in fact, human hearing is a much more developed instrument of perception than sight.
We tried to recreate the origin and development of speech, language and communication by transforming information into a ritual*.
 
The performance is based on non-fiction documentary texts that performers have overheard or spotted in the media, scientific publications, manifestos, or public statements for 2020. These texts in 7 languages became “lines” and "libretto" in a structured improvisational performance.

«Bye to language!» was performed, recorded and filmed in the divided space of PostPlay Lab in Kyiv, on February 12th, 2021. 
A movie version by Valeriy Simonchuk was premiered on May 7th, 2021.

Performers: Yaroslav Boruta, Nataliia Vainilovych, Yana Gumennaya, Den Gumennyi, Dariia Komarova, Nastya Kuzmenko, Den Pinko, Edward Reese, Mariana Savchenko, Valeriy Simonchuk, Tetiana Skubenko.
Author: Mariana Savchenko
Art: Valeriy Simonchuk

*Digital communication is extensive communication, it does not establish relationships, only connections. 
 ...Rituals are processes of embodiment and bodily performances. In them, the valid order and values of a community are physically experienced and solidified. They are written into the body, incorporated, that is, physically internalized. Thus, rituals create a bodily knowledge and memory, an embodied identity, a bodily connection. A ritual community is a communal body (Körperschaft), and there is a bodily dimension inherent to community. To the extent that it exerts a disembodying influence, digitalization weakens common ties. Digital communication is disembodied communication. 
 Ritual acts also include feelings, but the bearer of these feelings is not the isolated individual. …Collective feelings have nothing to do with individual psychology. …Unlike emotions and affects, feelings can be collective. Digital communication, however, is predominantly affect based: it tends towards the immediate outpouring of affect. 
 …The neoliberal regime isolated people while at the same time invoking empathy. Because it is a resonant body, however, ritual community does not require empathy. The demand for empathy can be heard in particular in atomized societies. 
  …Digital communication is increasingly developing into communication without community. 
…Communication without community can be accelerated because it is additive. Rituals, by contrast, are narrative processes that do not allow for acceleration. Symbols stand still. This is not the case with information: information exists by circulating. Stillness only means that communication ceases, stands still. It does not produce anything. 
 …In a society governed by ritual, there is no depression. In such society, the soul is fully absorbed by ritual forms; it is even emptied out. Rituals contain aspects of the world, and they produce in us a strong relationship to the world. Depression, by contrast, is based on an an excessive relation to self. 
 … When there are no rituals to act as protective measures, life is wholly unprotected. 

—— «The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present», Byung-Chul Han

«Бувай, мово!»

«Бувай, мово!» /«Bye to language!»

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Prelude № 7 "Mirage"

While we cannot see small nanoscopic objects like proteins or other molecules that make up virtually all living matter including our cells, tissues, as well as pathogens such as viruses, our computational algorithm allows us to make its material manifestation audible.  This piece is a musical representation of the amino acid sequence and structure of the spike protein of the pathogen of COVID-19, 2019-nCoV (protein data bank identifier 6VSB [1]). 

MUSICAL DECEIT

A virus’ genome hijacks the host cell’s protein manufacturing machinery, and forces it to replicate the viral genome and produce viral proteins to make new viruses from it.  This musical art teaches us something about the fine line between beauty of life and death as an opposite pole.  As you listen to the protein you will find that the intricate design results in incredibly interesting and actually pleasing, relaxing sounds. This doesn’t really convey the deadly impacts this particularly protein is having on the world. This aspect of the music shows the deceiving nature of the virus, how it hijacks our body to replicate, and hurt us along the way. So, the music is a metaphor for this nature of the virus to deceive the host and exploit it for its own multiplication. 

HOW IT IS DONE: 

What you hear is a multi-layered algorithmic composition featuring both the vibrational spectrum of the entire protein (expressed in sound and rhythmic elements), the sequence and folding of amino acids that compose the virus spike structure, as well as interwoven melodies - forming counterpoint music - reflecting the complex hierarchical intersecting geometry of the protein [2].

Scientific references:

[1] Wrapp et al., "Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation," Science, 2020, DOI: 10.1126/science.abb2507

[2] Buehler et al., "A Self-Consistent Sonification Method to Translate Amino Acid Sequences into Musical Compositions and Application in Protein Design Using Artificial Intelligence," ACS Nano, 2019, DOI: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b02180

Viral counterpoint of the coronavirus spike protein (2019-nCoV)

Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein (2019-nCoV)

瑪驪雅蒳 (MǍLÍYǍNÀ)
Mariana Savchenko is a sound artist, music producer and sinologist, originally from Kyiv, Ukraine.

«Бувай, мово!» /«Bye to language!»

瑪驪雅蒳

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