Aspirate (a breath in need of an explanation 2) 2007
Phantom Power
Carnegie Arts Center, Tonawanda NY 2007
(wood, reflective mylar, tape, black velvet curtain, speaker, dvd player)
Kinetic sound sculpture that "made real" an "h," using the physical responses of materials to pre-recorded audio played back through the sculptural object. The recorded audio is a series of aitches removed from their spoken context from the mouths of different speakers.
A pure aspiration or glottal fricative with no vocalization in the larynx, the letter "h" has (beginning in the second century A.D.) been a source of contention in that it is not actually spoken so much as exhaled. Despite attempts to consciously remove this “excessive breath” from any language using the Roman alphabet, aitch indicates a space in the rhythm in speech that is present without being sounded. Aitch has remained as “the trace that our breathing leaves on language.”