PHONETIC KEMP INC.

MICHAEL MARKERT – OICETOPOLOGICAL INTERFACE FOR GESTURAL NAVIGATION IN LINGUISTIC SPACE

Sound installation, 2007

"kII (Kempelen 2.0) is a voice-topological interface for gestural
navigation in linguistic space. The hand serves as the speech organ during the articulation process.
The device is operated by means of the sensorial determination of the opened state of both hands, their position in space, their relative
height, and other parameters which are assigned to the jaw and tongue position in the mouth as well as to pitch and rhythm.

Phoneme production is based on phonetic laws. A spoken language is produced through the implementation of musical scales and speech rhythms whose context of meaning is not characterized by the conveyance of information but by the abstraction of the voice in
tonal linguistic space.
Articulatory-topological phonetics deals with the speech process -
parts of the body serve as speech organs during the articulation
process. It is therefore historically linked to Kempelen's motif of
speech generation for the voiceless: voice generation for the
speechless."

Text: Michael Markert