I jumped headfirst into this project the other day when I came across an article on Audible Range Magazine’s site about what scholars and linguists think english will sound like a century from now. They provided three audio clippings from separate readings of Tale of Two Cities: one spoken in the old english of approximately 200 years ago, one in contemporary english, and one in the projected estimate of english in 100 years time. The first and third iterations are mostly indistinguishable from our modern-day utterance of the language, highlighting the enormous transformation english has undergone within the last 3 centuries alone.

I thought that using the multi-convolve function in Max would be a lit way to draw a sonically driven depiction of linguistic evolution over time. I first started by playing around with some impulses that I thought would have an interesting, discordant texture to them (sawing through high-density foam, slamming my metal tabaret drawers close, etc.). To establish the relationship of a consistent sonic progression with the evolution of the english language, I directed my exploration of impulses towards musical relationships. I strummed the strings of a piano which I divided into thirds- the old english was convolved with the lower pitches, the contemporary with the middle ones, and the future with the highest pitches. I recorded the convolved audio together but staggered them so that the convolution from the separate files would not create an overwhelming output (I still definitely did not achieve this, lmao).

To take the theme of evolution one step further, I decided to convolve the old english narration of Tale of Two Cities with Nicki Minaj saying the word “ass” in her straight banger, “Anaconda”. It’s a playful juxtaposition that emphasizes the spectrum of functions and contexts for which english has been used from the past up until modern day. I also honestly just wanted to see what it would sound like.

The four latest tracks: