http://gu.com/p/332hf

Londoners by Craig Taylor – review

Craig Taylor has painstakingly transcribed hundreds of Londoners' thoughts and feelings about the city they live in. His labour of love builds an impressive monument to the capital

In da house

Poor quality photo of the interior of an empty room with all the furniture moved outside except for three short cylindrical blocks, comfortable for a child to sit on or an adult to rest a foot on while standing.

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Old old life

Glass Apartment

From Franny & Zooey, Salinger gives us a wonderfully detailed description of the Glass family apartment:

There was a Steinway grand piano (invariably kept open), three radios (a 1927 Freshman, a 1932 Stromberg-Carlson, and a 1941 R.C.A), a twenty-one-inch-screen television set, four table-model phonographs (including a 1920 Victrola, with its speaker still mounted intact, topside), cigarette and magazine tables galore, a regulation-size ping-pong table (mercifully collapsed and stored behind the piano), four comfortable chairs, eight uncomfortable chairs, a twelve gallon tropical fish tank (filled to capacity in every sense of the word, and illuminated by two forty-watt bulbs), a love seat, the couch Franny was occupying, two empty bird cages, a cherrywood writing table, and an assortment of floor lamps, table lamps, and “bridge” lamps that sprang up all over the congested landscape like sumac”.

found images

workshop for 'The Big Draw' with RSPB at Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow. Oct 2012

workshop for 'The Big Draw' with RSPB at Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow. Oct 2012

New Wallpaper

Accented Stories

Installation incorporating Accented Stories*, Listening Devices** and Parquet Carpet Tile Floor.

* Stories of loved ones from non-native English speakers, collected, listened to, transcribed, read, transformed, listened to, re-read, mouthed.

** Steel, foam, Sleep Therapy Pillow Speakers, card, PVC, glue, staples

Glasgow School of Art Degree Show 2012

Accented Stories/Listening Devices Development

Fictional Transcript

Titles

Brigid Being Teresa

 

Language Centre Pitch

Being... Voices

Sometimes a story told with sounds and pronunciations that we are not familiar with, can resonate deeper due to us listening harder. When we speak to friends who do not speak our language as well as we do, we speak slower, gentler. We laugh at words mispronounced and spend time talking about the misinterpretation of certain words and phrases. We are seeing language grow and find its way from them to us, and us to them.
In March 2012, I asked 25 friends, all non-native English speakers to send me an audio file of them speaking about a person they have loved, a family member, or someone they had strong feelings for. I got some responses promising this, some saying it was too hard, emotionally and practically. Finally I received 8, 7 of which are featured in this book.
When I listened to the first recording by Teresa, I was moved by the honesty and emotion in the words. It was important to me that her accent would travel with the story, on any paths I would take it down. ... humour, filtration, tranlation, transcription, sculptural sound, mouth sculpture, phonetic falsehoods, physical exertion, restraint, manipulation, control, force, hesitant, weary, gutteral, tongues, ..... 

Listening Devices Test

Hannah Being Eva

In 2011 on my exchange to Budapest, I spent a lot of time listening to people speaking English in other accents. My speech and accent changed to accommodate the listening skills of non-native English speakers. I would speak slower, with more of a neutral accent. At the same time as this, I was learning Hungarian in the art school. The lessons were provided free for all exchange students who wanted to learn. I had begun to study Hungarian shortly before I went to Budapest, and was excited to learn more, and use what I’d learned. I soon discovered a phenomenon. My Northern Irish accent is an ideal tool in the basic pronunciation of Hungarian. It didn’t occur to me when I was learning alone, but when in the class with English, Scottish, French, Polish and German people, I soon realised that I could make sounds that others had trouble with, or found impossible.

I see this as a sort of magic that lies within languages. This discovery of mine made me fall in love with Budapest, Hungary, the language, the people, everything. I wanted to learn Hungarian fluently, move there, be Hungarian. This was serious but fleeting love. I have now been back in the UK for almost a year, and have forgotten the majority of Hungarian I learnt.

Whilst in Budapest, I made a video of Marissa, a friend speaking about a man she was in a relationship with, and a situation that occurred on a camping trip. The way she told the story was so poignant, in my opinion largely due to her sometimes awkward use of English and her beautiful German accent. The fact that she was talking about a difficult emotional situation made the words heavy and deeply affecting.  She didn’t realise I was filming until afterwards, and when I told her I would like to use the footage she told me I could not use the video of her face, as she was wearing clown make-up. However she agreed that I could use the audio any way I liked.

As I listened to her story more and more, and tested it to see how I could use it, I felt like the words needed to be seen. I began transcribing the audio, first into clear English, then, in a sense, phonetically. I wrote the words I heard, as I would say them if I was imitating Marissa. I did this because I had listened to the audio so many times, that I could perform it without looking at the words. My everyday speech had always been peppered with silly accents, but now I would increasingly chat with a German accent. 

I wanted more stories in more non-English speakers’ accents, honest and intimate stories, descriptions, situations. I wanted to discover things in the words and phrases and pronuciations, the choice of descriptive words, the hesitant, thoughtful, translation of emotion into another language than the mother tongue of the speaker. I wanted to hear and see, and experience the physical exertion, emotional and mental concentration required when you don’t speak the language perfectly. 

As I began to receive audio recordings from friends I met in Budapest, I realised that I was lucky to have gained the trust of these people. I had not expected to receive such personal and emotional material, in fact I thought I would receive quite objective descriptions of loved ones. But in fact, I asked for the impossible. One cannot describe a loved one or family member objectively, even if it is just a decription of their physical attributes. I was overjoyed to listen to the combination of deep feeling and unfluent English, having to remind myself constantly that English is these peoples’ second or even third language. 

Accented Stories is not about the political, social, educational aspects of languages, but a personal exploration into filtration of emotion and memory through translation, listening and speaking. 

Listening Devices Development