the trauma of birth

“‘There is an old story that King Midas had hunted for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, for a long time in the woods without catching him. But when he finally fell into his hands, the King asked: ‘What is the very best and the most preferable thing for Man?’ The demon remained silent, stubborn, and motionless; until he was finally compelled by the King, and then broke out into shrill laughter, uttering these words: ‘Miserable, ephemeral species, children of chance and of hardship, why do you compel me to tell you what is most profitable for you not to hear? The very best is quite unattainable for you: it is, not to be born, not to exist, to be Nothing. But the next best for you is—to die soon.’
Nietzsche : The Birth of Tragedy”

Otto Rank, The Trauma of Birth

the result of initial explorations of a signal flow utilizing a midi arpeggiator and sampler, with various parameters connected to a control surface as modulator. this entire signal chain is then used as a carrier signal of a vocoder, with a pitched-down vocal recording used as modulator. the resultant gestures are made by watching the waveform of the vocal recording and moving the control surface sliders to taste, usually in tandem with the observed changes in the vocal waveform. several more instances of the arpeggiator/sampler>vocoder signal chain are made, each with variations in sampler pitch and vocoder bandcount, while having the same parameters of arpeggiator rate and gate mapped to the control surface. all are recorded simultaneously, and then this material is edited down and mixed together to get to the finished piece of fixed media.

this piece explores different sounds and possibilities of this basic setup by utilizing variations in: pitch settings within the sampler, vocal recordings for the vocoder modulator, general vocoder settings, and degrees in coincidence of mapped parameters between concurrent signal chain instances. there are some aspects that by design will not change between iterations: the seed sample within each sampler, the element of manipulation by control surface as a means to create gestures, and each signal chains basic setup of sampler>vocoder.

the piece name is taken from the similarly named book by Otto Rank. the book explores the notion that our births remain the fundamental sources of trauma in our lives, and our personal psychological complexes naturally stem from this universal experience.