Andrew McLellan’s work for LA2015 engages the disintegrating effects of contemporary speech, silencing subvocalisation (important to comprehension), and the syncing of two slowly accelerating texts – one displayed as a Spreeder-like exercise on screen, the other a monotonic speech to create a Guattarian ‘machinic orality; a refuge for semiotic polyvocality’.

Here’s some Q&A

LA: what will the audience experience and how will they feel?

AM: No, not an easy Q. Likely a diuretic confusion.
There will be two ideologies presented simultaneously at high-speed – one ‘read’, one ‘listened to’ – but both of those activities presume their aim is some degree of comprehension. The speed should be so that both texts are more absorbed together (starting from a familiar reading rate – I’ll begin with a tutorial). So between the presented texts there will be ambivalence. I think the audience will feel ambivalent, hopefully strongly ambivalent.

LA: what are your aims / why do this?

AM: Firstly, on the blogosphere, arguments are increasingly heard by like-minded individuals which eventually will manifest as an extreme – you find your forum or community and you find similar voices there in the echo-chamber (see attached picture). I wanted to synthesise together what I perceived as two different ideologues that overlapped topically (but would be unlikely to ever converse with each other). To simulate the effects of online communities, I also created a feedback circuit for my computer to converse with itself from an original ‘blog post’ to produce more extreme viewpoints (a very fitting line it came back with was “The latest technology as unilateral directories”).

Secondly, a solution to the wealth of text published and circulating each day, speed-reading techniques are being instrumentalised (with in-browser plugins, apps, etc.). But these usually desire to eliminate subvocalisation (to put it crudely, your reading voice). We have speed-reading but at the loss of listening and a voice. Is there such a thing as speed-hearing? Perhaps – to try it out I will replant the voice in speed-reading.

LA: what will you experience and how will you feel?

AM: I will experience being in a different position to the audience. I will not be an audience member but I may still feel ambivalent.

LA: what do you mean by subvocalisation?

AM: Subvocalisation is the internal monologue many of us hear while reading text (generally an idealised version of our own voice). It is not purely ‘of the mind’ as muscles of the mouth and larynx have been shown to respond to reading stimulus. Subvocalisation is also a phenomena most speed-reading methodologies seek to eliminate – so reading without a voice. So if you don’t have your own voice, who is reading? Who are you reading for?

If, as Mladen Dolar suggests (following the Deleuze man and the Guattari man), speech deterritorialised the mouth as solely an intaker of food, and speech was in turn deterritorialised by meaning, then what happens when you have meaning (the text) and no voice? You have the mouth for food again – so it’s no surprise than many techniques to eliminate subvocalisation advise you to eat, snack, etc. while you read. Chew gum and suck lollipops at high WPM (Words Per Minute). It’s a textual efficiency dividend awarded by oral occupation.

LA: what’s it like to work with ceri hann?

AM: Always a pleasure. If I don’t quite agree with a polemic, it’s only a matter of time before I witness something that illustrates and confirms it. Very frightening.