Original work by Lesley Flanigan
Voice Study for Headphones (#2)
This is an extract. The full piece is 13'12".
The artist works outside of language to coax, vibrate and still the listener with a passing, building vehicle of sound, built of her own breath. Resonating harmonics recall devotional music sung since time immemorial.
The intuitive recording process of the artist derives from her interest in the live moment. This study was recorded in a single take, with minimal editing, and created specifically for the proximity of headphones. In this, it subverts the current trend in sound art away from personal headsets, to bring instead what the form has to offer, into an even tactile arena. The voice crystallises, giving and giving until we can surrender to its entirety in this topology of experience.
Higher ranges continually lift the listener, describing a palpable, soaring architecture as only sound can, and then lower tones suddenly support from below; the voice a hand, a branch, a cradle. The omni-dimensionality of hearing immerses us in its process, explored as direct link to the brain, heart and lungs as it describes forces and consciousnesses that we have as yet, no name for.