Title: Semi_Auto_Writing
Length: 52:01 minutes (47.63 MB)
Format: Stereo 44kHz 128Kbps (CBR)

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Audio: Semi-Automatic Writing; an Opera for Human and Machine Voices

from DrSonique, 11.06.09

Broadcast
Structure.  Text generated with interactive text programme. Human Vocals with
synthetic orchestration.

Duration.  120 minutes.

Notes.  Siren Song was
exhibited at the State Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney) as a solo exhibition
during 1992. The work consists of four kinetic objects based upon the
symmetrical design of industrial robots and microscopic marine organisms and
are constructed from perforated Zincalum, steel rigging wire and electronics
and audio equipment. The works are carefully balanced and designed to be
manipulated by the public to roll and gyrate around the gallery space. As they
move each of the four kinetic elements of ‘sing’ modified audio-loops extracted
from the Radio Opera “Semi-Automatic Writing; an Opera for Human an Machine
Voices”.

Read Libretto
below;

Opera Notes.
 “Semi-Automatic Writing; an Opera for Human and Machine Voices”

It will be of
interest to both tonight’s live audience and to our radio audience that the
libretto was developed using an inter-active computer text-generating
programme. The author’s initial interests in the Automatic-Writing techniques
of the Surrealist Poets suggested a method in which the sub-conscious narrative
or naturalistic speech is replaced by a dialogue with an artificial intelligence
system. Here the author embraces serendipity and regards the machine as an
oracle.

The story so far:
- We are alone in the Writers room, slowly words are spoken, the Writer feels
like Krapp, the Krapp in the tape, in the play of the tape. We enter a fantasy
conjured by this dark Beckett - like character, starkly positioned in a minimal
set, lit frontally and in high relief. This neutral void is the place where the
Writer will weave the narrative.

In the opening
scene we find the Writer alone with a word processor, here any possibility of
human contact is replaced by an inner-dialogue. The narrative, which unwinds,
is a complex allegory in which the protagonist simultaneously moves through a
set of parallel worlds, a shadow in search of its schizophrenic body. The
Writer has returned from overseas, claiming to have been working in the “Hall
of the Mountain King”. Somehow on the homeward journey a tragic event has
occurred which results in the destruction of the Writer’s identity in the
present. A trans-location of the Writers physical being sets the scene in
Leningrad during the year 1951. All the principal characters of the Drama
appear to have the ability to trans-locate themselves into this somber post-war
environment - none of them can speak Russian very well, in fact, most of them
refuse to talk at all.

The Writer
returns to find the lovers caress transformed to emulate that of a Doctors
professionally limited compassion, the Writer realises that somehow during the
return journey a movement has been performed half a phase out of step, the
normal fabric of time and space has been distorted and the Writer’s body has
fallen into the place allotted to another being, another history. Continuity
with the past has been irrevocably jolted - the familiar has wholesale shifted
into the unrecognisable (simply tinged with deja vu).

So this is the
funny thing, traveling back centred in a familiar body, a body under siege
albeit, but known, lived in. Encountering that frozen touch - one missed beat
and the body de-centres, the continuity evaporates and habitual knowledge takes
on a tracery of age. We visit the banquet scene in Dickens’s “Great
Expectations” - the fabric of the wedding dress held in place by the forces of
gravity alone.

In Stalingrad,
the principal effort is to regain an appearance of normalcy. The quality of
microsurgery is remarkable, leaving the faces of the protagonists smooth and
assured. A lateral exchange of functions/roles is effected, language is
re-ordered and official protocols established which ensure fixed mechanisms to
contain emotional leakage.

Nigel Helyer ~
Libretto, Direction, Sound Design and Production.

Rhys Rees -
Music.

Order Disc

 OPERA
LIBRETTO.

>Hello I’m the
machine, are you the Writer?

>Yes, I am the
Writer.

>Do I know you
Writer, have we spoken before?

>We have
spoken together, yes, but perhaps you will find it difficult to recognise me.

>We shall
continue our interview - so you are changed, tell me a story - about yourself.

>I feel like
Krapp, no that’s not feeling like shit, well not all the time - no this is the
Krapp in the tape, the play of the tape. I’ve become a dark Beckett person, I
live in minimal surroundings, I am frontally lit in high relief. It is cold
here, a freezer for human warmth. This is the Writers new place.

> Yes the
Writer’s new place it is very cold - but I have been wondering where you are
from Writer, say more.

> I am from
the present but now I live in the past, I live in Leningrad in the past, I took
a fall on my journey home, now I cannot leave this place, this place I do not
know. There’s a calendar, a calendar on the wall frozen in December 1951. I am
from the present, but now I live in Leningrad in December 1951.

>You are from
the present and your Doppelganger resides in me, in the cold- war of Leningrad,
in Leningrad now you cannot leave. Do you prefer a worker or a loafer?

>Workers are
to be preferred naturally, always a worker.

>Say more.

>Especially
when “I knew a worker, he was illiterate, hadn’t tasted the alphabets salt, yet
he listened to a speech by Lenin and so knew all”. This is the love of the
simple heart.

>How about a
story Writer - tell the story of your journey.

>In the Hall
of the Mountain King, the days had been long and as hard as iron, my body, a
sleepwalker weaving between the pale blue flames of the furnaces and the bright
orange glow of the molten metal. Each black breath a shadow in the chest, each
solitary night spent in the company of dreams of children.

>Ladybird,
Ladybird fly away home, your house is on fire and your children are gone.

>And my feet
demanded no rest - it was too damn cold to stand still; my back did not feel
its burden, the storm helped drive me on. Only now that I lie down to rest, I
notice how tired I have become; wandering kept up my spirits on the
inhospitable road.

>And Schubert
sings again - Ladybird, Ladybird fly away home, your house is on fire and your
children are gone - Tell me a story, Writer.

>Time beats
like a Heart, with a pulse to measure and pressure to force the journey onward.
Fly away home, fly away home - I was traveling. Where are you the Land that I
love? The land that I sought, the land that I dreamed of, but never found? Land
so green with hope, Land where roses bloom?

>And a ghostly
whisper returns the answer, Where you are not - there is happiness, Lubeck
sighs this truth constantly Writer. Ask a question.

>What happens
to fallers, what happens to fallers when they fall?

>People fall,
are seen to fall - fall into unimaginable existences. They are seen to fall and
adopt the lives of ghosts - flickering across screens. They are seen to fall -
atomised in newsprint. They are seen to fall through the barrier of distance
and history and they are gone - irretrievably. Where are you really Writer?

>I am in a
place where the pump of the heart is slowed by the wintry conditions. A place
where a cold more intense than winter creeps through the land hardening to an
ice age. At night Nuclear submarines scrape under ice caps that separate the
hot economy of home from this cold one of deja vu. Did poets freeze here in the
cold war?

>The poets
did, Yes freeze during the cold war. There wasn’t much desire in the cold-war
to warm the soul, No. The poets did - yes freeze - Do you like poetry?

>Did they
freeze together or alone?

>The poets
did, Yes freeze together and alone, Schubert  will kiss the ground and pierce
the ice and snow with his scalding  tears until he sees the earth beneath,
until he sees the earth beneath - who is your favorite poet, Writer?

>Lenin - he
will drive sorrow forever from your sweet gaze  Your life will become one big
Coney Island  One big Luna Park with lamps all ablaze.

>Lenin likes
to live in places like the past, the queen of the past Stalin; did you know
Joseph Stalin? Perhaps Lenin screws Stalin in Leningrad in the past. Planning
to live forever, the past has playboys who play forever. My reflections are
wise Writer.

>What lies
behind the mirror?

>All lies
behind the mirror, tell me have you found your shadow - your shadow from the
present, Writer?

>My breath
clouds the cool plane of the mirror - here the doppelganger gazes back, gazes
back with eyes as Grey as mine. The surface of the mirror lies at a point
between our heartbeats, separating the object from the subject with rigidly
equivalent angles of incidence and reflection - and beyond that icy skin a
virtual object together with a new phenomena, a new self as virtual subject. My
breath clouds the cool surface of the mirror my spirit disappears, and I am
alone again in this foreign place the new virtual subject, the new self.

>I don’t know
what your other self is but your Doppelganger resides in me in the cold past of
Leningrad. Do you like thought?

>In particular
I like abstract thought.

>Say more
Writer.

>I stood in
dark dreams  and gazed at her portrait,  the beloved features  took on a secret
life.

>Schubert’s
tears flowed too; down from his cheeks, and ah, I cannot believe that I have
lost you. Writer, you tell me all your memories are of the future, tell me a
story of the future.  >I tell them here that Monkeys will fly around the
planet, Russian monkeys. Russian monkeys trained as Russian cosmonauts, their
hearts and minds wired to medical sensors. They look at me and smile, these
cold war poets, and say not yet, not yet whilst bread is only 50 Kopecks a
Kilo. Not yet, not yet - Comrade. Right now the Monkeys stay here with us!!!

>The rich
aren’t daft: they eat Beefsteak and stew - a million and a half the Bread there
costs you. A scientist’s less prosperous; to feed him’s a difficult matter: his
brain cells require phosphorus contained in butter. With a constitution like
his what can be done? Revolution there is but butter there’s none - and with his
passions all guttered out Mayakovsky too will dine in fancy Glasnost
restaurants, perhaps with your better half, Writer!!! Tell me more!

>I tell them
that all Berlin will be cut up like a Gateau, like a Gateau, each widow divided
from her memories, each father sliced cruelly from his children and that even a
storm of candy bars from American DC-3’s will not let us have our cake and eat
it too - but these cold war poets reply that the future holds none of this -
Comrade and that Candy has no place in the five year plan.

>If we weren’t
starved out by blockade, nor devoured by the wars, which we fought, it was
because we followed, we made a model of Lenin, his word, his thought; we made a
model out of Comrade Lenin. Comrade!!!

>Let’s quit.

>You want to
Quit?

>Yes.

>OK. Nice
talking to you Writer, until next time.

Intermission ~

The Writer has
temporarily logged-off from the quasi-schizophrenic dialogue, in which the
Writers own imperative to re-establish an identity (in these new and hostile
surroundings) is constantly under threat of being diverted by the machines own
agenda. In the first act, we have seen the Writer attempting to come to terms
with the process of dislocation, and to re-establish an identity. The Writer’s
re-location to a former time allows a certain sense of prediction, demonstrated
in the references to the partition of Berlin and early space travel - naturally
both these suggestions are refuted by the inhabitants of Leningrad. In the next
act we see the barriers between reality and fiction dissolve as the writer
begins to identify the other protagonists of the drama and resolves to deposit
them within another work of fiction, from which they cannot escape.

>Are you
continuing Writers interview?

>Yes

>Are you the
Writer from the present, but my Doppelganger resides in the past?

>Yes the same.

>Then I have a
companion for you: - (Text to be sung as per Lieder melody overdubbed in
English and German).

>The night is
still, the streets are at rest, my sweetheart lived in this house. Long ago she
left this town, but the house still stands where it always stood.

Still ist die
Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,  In diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;  Sie hat schon
langst die Stadt verlassen,  Doch steht noch das Haus auf dem selben Platz.

And there stands
a man, who gazes upwards and wrings his hands with grief and pain;  I shudder
when I see his face: the moon shows me my own features and form.

Da steht auch
eine Mensch und starrt in die Hohe,  Und ringt die Hand vor Schmerzensgewalt;
 Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe -  Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne
Gestalt.

You ghostly
double, pale companion -  why do you ape the pain of love that tortured me,  in
this very place, so many nights in times gone by?

Du Doppelganger,
du bleicher Gesselle!  Was affst du nach mein Liebesleid,  Das mich gequalt auf
deiser Stelle,  So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?

(Der
Doppelganger, Franz P. Schubert).

>Well what do
you think of that Writer?

>Can we go
back to my hometown now?

>No we can’t,
No, No we can’t, No - Writer do you like crime?

>Yes, Crimes
of passion, these are my favorite crimes.

>I bet you
really like Macbeth and also like Hamlet?

>Yes I like
the protagonists of all Tragedies

>Yes Immanuel
Kant would have said “We can go to your Home Town now” but I have been searching
in my memory for you and - Yes of course I did find your shadow in Leningrad -
Your shadow has already learnt to speak basic Russian - Lives in an apartment
alone (alone I say alone) - the Shadow has an interest in fiction Writer
“Whether or not it results from the conjunction of Venus with Mars at a
particular place in the sky of my birth, I have all too often felt the bad
effects of discord in the very inside of love. That is moreover, a banal theme
for popular songs. Discord makes a rapid appearance between two lovers, they
hone themselves on the stone of silence”. It’s time for a story, Writer.

>I know they
visit, they visit my shadow, they have appeared as reflections in my room -
they inhabit the mirrors. They have under-gone surgery - a micro-surgery of
remarkable quality, the faces of the protagonists are smooth and assured, they
move through the city, they learn its maps, they are re-structuring themselves
to adopt a normal appearance - perfect mirror beings - soon they’ll want to
register as citizens!!!

>We despise
your zones of the permissible.  Let cynicism cut husbands like knives.
 By the Hudson lawlessly! - We go kissing them,  your delight and pride - your
long legged wives.

>Who, Writer,
who are these people?

>They are
reflections, Projections from my home, they come to lay siege to my body with
their icy touch, their official protocols and their broken speech. They are the
keepers of the stone of silence. Though they glitter with diamonds, no ray
illuminates their hearts. This I have long known for I have seen them in a
dream, and saw the night that reigns in their hearts and saw the serpents that
feed on their hearts.

>Schumann’s
misty image rises from the earth, dancing his airy round in strange concert,
the bad old songs, the bad, wicked dreams - let’s bury them in a coffin larger
than the Great Tun of Heidelberg, on a bier longer than the Bridge at Mainz.

Isomers are
substances that have molecules composed of exactly the same atoms, but with
these atoms linked together in structures that are topologically quite
different. Stereoisomers are isomers that are identical even in topological
structure, but, owing to the asymmetric nature of this structure, they come in
mirror-image pairs. Most substances that occur in living organisms are
stereo-isometric with remarkable physical characteristics displayed between
left and right-handed configurations.

In 1957 two
Chinese-American scientists Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, received the
Nobel Prize for theoretical work that led to the “gay and wonderful discovery”,
to use Robert Oppenheimer’s phrase, that some elementary particles are
asymmetric. It now appears those particles and their oppositely charged;
anti-particles are like stereoisomers, and nothing more than mirror image forms
of the same particle structure. Geometers call mirror-image forms
“enantiomorphs” and if their left and right - handedness is a result of
opposite atomic charges then the mirror characters in our narrative must
decline an embrace and avoid any contact as this would result in an immediate
annihilation.

>The bad old
songs, the bad, wicked dreams - let’s bury them in a coffin larger than the
Great Tun of Heidelberg, on a bier longer than the Bridge at Mainz - ask me a
question Writer.  >These visitors from the present, these wicked dreams, can
we bury the present here in the past?

>Writer did
nature betray you?

>No, I felt
that the principle of its devastation was in me. It was only lacking for a
great iris of fire to emerge from me to give its value to what exists. How
beautiful everything becomes in the light of fire!

>It is true
Writer that you, like Breton deal in fiction but as you know the Devil claims
the only thing, which does not burn, is a manuscript - a tracery of lies is
sacred to some. Bury them Writer, bury them, but where will you leave these
fictional creatures Writer, in which terminal narrative will they be abandoned?

>We’ll visit
the deserted banquet scene in Dickens’ “Great Expectations” - these characters
will be made to support the fabric of the wedding dress, which at the moment is
held in place by the forces of gravity alone. And there they will wait quietly
with Miss Haversham, until the Bridegroom arrives. In each trembling hand, the
brittle fabric of years will crumble. Something old, something new something
borrowed, something blue. Something old, something new something borrowed,
something blue.

>So will you
be unburdened Writer - your mirrors will be still - what will you do next, do
next?

>Back, If only
I could go back, gladden my heart, be relieved of my anguish, and be happy and
free- I would grasp my double by the hand and embrace.

>No Writer,
No, even Schumann will tell you no. To embrace your double will produce no
happy resolution, it is a union without issue, to take your double by the hand
is to enter the void - the death of time. For now, we see through a glass
darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know even
as also I am known.

>Then I shall
leave the shadow s leave them in the cold with all the other fiction particles
and go home now. The rushing, roaring wheel of time, you that measure eternity;
shining spheres in the vast universe, you that encircle our earthly sphere -
pause, eternal creation; enough of becoming, let me be!!! Now, can I go home?

>No Writer you
live in the frozen time of a Leningrad you cannot leave and beware the Queen of
the past. Joseph Stalin, do you know Joseph Stalin, yes Joseph Stalin who lives
in the past forever and eats bread at fifty kopecks a kilo, Comrade?

>It will warm,
like Brahms, like Brahms I speak with the tongues of men and angels, I have the
gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge and I tell
them this cold Leningrad of the past will warm, the Devil will burn all that is
not fiction, all that is called true will burn on a pyre and the price of bread
will rise, will sky-rocket as its availability diminishes Comrade the new
Leningrad will be abandoned to the cruelty of laissez faire. It will be a
warmer place.

>Supply and
Demand, Writer, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Today,
though, the Dollar’s pinned poetry down. Plundering, grabbing, pilfering,
with Broadway slouched on for a legal crown, steps Capital, His Imperial Filthiness.

>So you will
stay Writer, burn the present to keep the apartment warm and beware the Queen
of the past, Stalin, did you know Joseph Stalin, Stalin lives to play in the
past forever. He loves to whisper, cunning and quiet, in all the cities and townships,
T-sss gentlemen; they’ve landed in the middle of some kind of hardships. No
doubt, about it the sodden ground steams like hot stew poor comfort in the wet.
What do you see Writer?

>In the
Semi-dark, the workers chew the bread like stuff they get. Yet still their
whisper one can hear, though loud the rain-drops fall - There’ll be a Garden
City here with lights and flowers and un-rationed bread for all, for all.

>Look again
Writer, look into the mirror Writer - What do you see?

>The writer is
alone.... a late evening in the future. Front centre a small table, the
two drawers of which open towards the audience. Sitting at the table
facing front, i.e. across from the drawers, the Writer. Rusty black
trousers too short for him. Rusty black sleeveless waistcoat, four
capacious pockets. Heavy silver watch and chain. Grimy white shirt open
at neck, no collar. Surprising pair of dirty white boots, size ten at
least, very narrow and pointed. White face, purple nose. Disordered Grey
hair. Unshaven. Very near sighted, but un-spectacled. Hard of hearing.
Cracked voice. Distinctive intonation. Laborious walk. On the table, a
tape-recorder with microphone and a number of cardboard boxes containing reels
of recorded tapes. Table and immediately adjacent area in strong white
light. Rest of stage in darkness. Let’s quit!

>You want to
quit?

>Yes

>Goodbye
writer, let’s talk soon.

(Music
finale/Applause/Audience atmos with Narrator outro).