Lydfabet

Background

During 2005 I first discovered and found inspiration in the sheer joy and playful creativity in the works of the Danish poet and author Vagn Steen. During the sixties he was one of the first Danish poets to make use of a computer in composing a poem and in our digital age I have found some fascination in the hands on aspect of the cardboard punch cards that were used to program computers at the time.

Many of his poems are structured by their (typo)graphic layout and I was wondering how these graphic poems might be presented through the medium of sound alone.

The Lydfabet

With the idea that it might be interesting to record Vagn reading some of his poems and then use the recordings as the basis for a series of sound pieces I suggested that we use the alphabet as a means of ordering the large pile of poems available.

In the event Vagn ended up composing a new series of short poems based on each letter of the Danish alphabet. With the scheme of a poem a day for the month of April 2006 we began a daily ritual of recording and listening to the results. It soon became clear just how different the sound of the Danish language is from its written form and Vagn often returned to the writing board and made the appropriate adjustments or re-compositions. After this initial process of writing, reading, recording and listening I began to dissect and reassemble the sound files of the final poems in order to further bring out various aspects of the sound of each letter.

Structure:

The short poems which provided the point of departure for the Lydfabet are in their electronic extensions placed against a structural grid based on a numerological table which assigns a number to each letter of the alphabet:

1 = a i j q y
2 = b k r 
3 = c g l s
4 = d m t 
5 = e h n x
6 = u v w
7 = o z
8 = f p

This table has been used in assigning a tempo and time signature as well as reverberation/delay time to each letter.

Form:

The basic material was originally intended for use in semi-improvised live electronic performances and exists as a ‘set’ – put together with Ableton’s ‘Live’ software – which means that within the defined set structure there is freedom to improvise and shape the materials in various ways depending on mood and context.

The final form for the fixed recording found here is a series of 29 vignettes of 30 seconds each. A journey through the alphabet within a quarter of an hour.

PREMIERE

The Premiere of the Lydfabet at Møllegade’s Book Shop, Copenhagen, 23.05.09.

eBOOK

Download the Lydfabet as an eBook for listening/viewing in iBooks on your iPhone/iPad or Mac.

(Other eBook readers should work too but haven’t been tested.)

MORE:

See some of Vagn’s poems in versions for the web by Christian
Yde Frostholm

Also take a look at some very inspiring examples of Swedish concrete poetry from CYF’s website: afsnit p.

For an interesting example of concrete poetry taking place at the other side of the world see South African Willem Boshoff’s KYKAFRIKAANS which has also recently been given an aural interpretation.

And to round it all off: one of my favourite visual representations of the alphabet on the web – Oliver Reichenstein’s iABC.