Playing with Words: Spoken language as material for composition

Playing with Words is an ongoing research project investigating artists’ practices with the spoken word.

The initial project investigated a variety of artists’ practices from a range of disciplines including literature, music and performance and resulted in a book; a CD and online audio compilation; a symposium at Tate Britain; software tools; sound works and a conference paper. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and ran from 2008 to 2011.

The project arose out of Lane's experience of working with recorded spoken word as compositional material, particularly ‘Hidden Lives’ (1999) and ‘The Memory Machine'(2003/4). The experience of making these works along with others such as ‘Hidden Voices’ and ‘Hidden Lives2: the House of Memory’ started ongoing wider research. One strand of this research is into other artists working between the sonic and the semantic possibilities of spoken word, and the other is into developing new creative software that could be used specifically with spoken word material.

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