Writing Executable Audio: On the Variophone and Oramics
Translating or executing?
In the last few days, I’ve become incredibly interested in Yevgeny Alexandrovitch Sholpo and the variophone (1930), as well as Daphne Oram and oramics (1959). Both Sholpo and Oram drew sound onto 35 millimeter movie film. With a little work, they could then listen to these drawings. Writing could be played. It could be animated.
Here’s an example film strip drawing for the variophone, and here’s an image of the oramics machine. If you prefer movement, then a significant portion of the following video, “Theremin, Variophone et musiques nouvelles russes 1930,” is dedicated to the variophone. There’s also a lot of theremin action in there, too, so you can’t really resist.
In Protocol, Alexander Galloway writes: “Code is the only language that is executable” (165, emphasis his). Granted, in the case of the variophone and oramics, we might not have “language,” per se. For one, unless they were somehow formalized to compose music, I’m not sure what the grammar of either would be. So call these soundings “noise.” Fine with me.
What we do have are graphic images that are systemized and written and can actually be heard—they can be executed as audio. Here, the graphic images for the variophone or the oramics machine differ from, say, the grooves of a long play (LP) album in that sound (e.g., of a musical instrument) is not just recorded and stored to be played back later. Instead, sound (once heard or not) emerges from the act of writing. While I would imagine (and I am only speculating) that both Oram and Sholpo could read their graphics much like a musical score, a score cannot enact itself. Scores are not executable, and record grooves can only reproduce.
Whereas Galloway’s notion of code implies both “semantic meaning” and the “enactment of meaning” (166), I’m wondering if a system of executable audio, including Sholpo’s and Oram’s graphic images, could still be an example of code. Of a system that can actualize a phenomenon—that can actualize a sound—through the graphic image without ever making sense. Executable audio might be code without denotation or connotation, where a shape, a line, a figure never intends to mean, even if it is put into a sequence.
Yes, yes: Executable audio could not escape the desire for meaning-making. It will forever be nested or embedded in interpretations, in explanations. All code is. Nevertheless, it’s interesting to posit a code without semantics.
Obviously, I need to think through the implications of all this. In the meantime, here’s an excerpt from Oram’s “Rockets in Ursa Major.”
