VOLTA, electricity as a reading medium

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The spectacle of science and technology is sometimes used by artists to divert and use an audience’s attention. This is the case with ’VOLTA’ by Yann Leguay, which exploits the ‘plasma speaker’ technique (a variation of Tesla coil speakers), using electricity “as a source”. Two symbolic microphones produce a pure electrical arc, which resonates with a sound file sent through its high voltage. The content is a text from a radio residency (with the ∏-node collective), whose words were obtained by translating the noise of the network, interpreted by speech-to-text software and then read by Jean-François Blanquet. The underlying technical forces (voltage, noise, data stream) are anthropomorphically shaped as voice, still with a strong machine accent, building a melancholic retro-futuristic device, vocalising the exposed network.

 

Yann Leguay – VOLTA