04.10.03
Revisited in 04.07 for Volume Issue#13 (Archis)
Theremin Sans — Text by Martha Read
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Theremin Sans demonstration
Brian Roettinger has adapted the theremin from a musical instrument into an instrument of non-musical notation. Any musical instrument could be used to represent letters of the alphabet; (one could imagine a morse code-like adaptation of say, the piano, to represent words, and how that might sound). This, however, is not a code whereby a short note followed by two long ones denotes, say, a “D”. Instead, he has devised a system based directly on letterforms and their anatomy, and the way they sound when drawn in the air next to the theremin. Reversing (and perverting) the order of things whereby the spoken word came first, to be followed by the written word, here the written word is, as it were, given a voice — returning to the theremin the “vox” that was once removed, and making of it electronic vocal chords, with the hands acting as the mouth. It is an adaptation both rational in its conflation of the visual with the aural, and absurd given the existence of speech as an effective system of communication.
Read the entire text here
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04.10.03
Revisited in 04.07 for Volume Issue#13 (Archis)
Theremin Sans — Text by Martha Read
+
Theremin Sans demonstration
Brian Roettinger has adapted the theremin from a musical instrument into an instrument of non-musical notation. Any musical instrument could be used to represent letters of the alphabet; (one could imagine a morse code-like adaptation of say, the piano, to represent words, and how that might sound). This, however, is not a code whereby a short note followed by two long ones denotes, say, a “D”. Instead, he has devised a system based directly on letterforms and their anatomy, and the way they sound when drawn in the air next to the theremin. Reversing (and perverting) the order of things whereby the spoken word came first, to be followed by the written word, here the written word is, as it were, given a voice — returning to the theremin the “vox” that was once removed, and making of it electronic vocal chords, with the hands acting as the mouth. It is an adaptation both rational in its conflation of the visual with the aural, and absurd given the existence of speech as an effective system of communication.
Read the entire text here
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