Various

The work on this audio compilation is part of an intermittent ongoing tradition of artistic investigation of spoken language. The pieces included here negotiate potential oppositions such as semantic play and abstraction, musical and narrative structures, speech and song, one voice and many. Influences have been drawn from many sources including poetry, music, song, theatre, typography and graphic art, philosophy, radio, performance art, linguistics, fine art, literature and of course the keen observation and experience of the very many varieties of human communication that we all encounter and participate in every day. The concerns of these contemporary artists in many cases relate back to their historical antecedents such as the poets, performers and other artists working with sound in the early part of the twentieth century, including the Futurists, Zaum poets, Dadaists and Lettristes who sought to invent new languages and new words in order to express their vision of reality and to deconstruct and reduce the power of language. Other featured artists are examining and revealing the experiences and complexities of contemporary society by engaging with how spoken language works and manifests itself. These works reflect more recent developments in linguistics and the psychology and philosophy of language revealing how meaning is negotiated and transmitted between individuals and groups, across cultures and through languages and their translations.