After an extended hiatus, Tonguebath returns to the realm of sound. Last weekend we conducted a poetry workshop alongside spoken word guru Mike Gravel. The group, led by Alexis Kienlen, was an astute bunch of teens willing to get weird with their voices, even in such a normally quiet environment as the library.
Jeff and I begun with a performance of Underature, but spent most of the hour letting the kids muck around with some of the possibilities of vocalization. One of the most interesting things we did was get them to “Read the Senses”, which was an experiment in synesthetic translation. We set out a grab-bag of interesting objects (a deflated, black balloon, a wood bowl, a pipe, a small unidentified mammal’s skull, a one-year-old Chicken Mcnugget, scented oils and spices, etc) and asked everyone to translate these objects into sound. Sadly, or luckily, no one attempted to translate the Mcnugget, but the varied results achieved through the other objects were suprising and wonderful.
All-in-all, it was a great ol’ time and we are looking forward to more opportunities to conduct such workshops.
Preparing for the workshop also got us stoked about sound again, and we hope to ride this momentum as we work on a few new pieces.
