The Whole Inside is a generative sound mural combining artificial and human voices. Using nine Visaton speakers, Pure Data and data projection, the artist confronts femininity and violent misogyny, by which the body is being depersonalized, leading to subsequent dissociation as a defense mechanism to cope with traumatic events. The work is based on a graphically violent text sourced from the incels.me (“involuntary celibates”) forum.
The Whole Inside was selected for the Longlist at the Aesthetica Art Prize 2021 and is published in the ‘Aesthetica Art Prize Anthology: Future Now.’
2019 runner-up prize for The Whole Inside. Ithaca Prize, University of Brighton, by Ithaca Studio
credits:
Audio programming Pure Data, soldering, sound design, voice: Olivia Louvel.
Visual conception, 3D body scan, dots slides (design, film, editing): Olivia Louvel.
3ds Max animation: Antoine Kendall.
Technical support: Joshua Clark-Legallienne, Bob Morton.
INSTALLED AT
Sound Diffusion Laboratory, Digital Music and Sound Art, Grand Parade, University of Brighton, U.K. Saturday 1st + Sunday 2nd, June 2019. 12pm > 5pm. /// Private view, May 31st. 4pm > 9pm
The Whole Inside was to be reinstalled at Festival Sonorities, Belfast, 2020, but was cancelled due to the pandemic.
With this work, I investigated my own body, retracing my narrative whilst exploring an explicit sociopolitical agenda: the violent misogyny of the Incels. Initially, I envisaged my body to be cast with the abdominal area pierced in the middle. This would have required me to collaborate with a sculptor. I then opted for a digital translation using a 3D body scanner, collecting my own physical data. The body initially perceived as a vertical sculpture became horizontal, a grid to follow. An array of nine Visaton speakers follows the contour of the body. The piece in its display is not a sonic intimidation but of a narrative dimension, tracing a fragile sonic line on the curved delineation of the body, revealing itself to the experiencer through time. I was drawn to the potential of the Visaton piezo speakers to incorporate sound and voice in a non-conventional manner: within the mural of data projection, the voices are expanding from the wall, from the projected body, as a relief.
Read O.Louvel, ‘A generative sound mural: The Whole Inside. Sounding the body’ in Leonardo Music Journal, MIT Press, vol. 30, December 2020, p.29-32. https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/lmj_a_01080
Made possible with funds from the Norman Cook Digital Music and Sound Art Breakthrough Award.
Exists when installed.