Nipper is a custom-software driven sound installation piece designed to pair with one of Angela Bulloch’s drawing machines. The drawing machine changes the axis of its drawing in response to sounds made by Nipper. Since this interaction was evocative of one machine talking to another, I decided to use my voice as the main source of sound. First, I recorded the longest continuous note I could sing, which turned out to be about a minute long. This note therefore fixes the maximum possible duration that Nipper can perform. Each time Nipper plays, it first selects a start point within my original sample, then randomly determines a duration to play from that start point (within the bounds of my original vocal drone). Finally, before Nipper plays again it randomly selects an amount of silence between one to twelve seconds. The title is an homage to the the dog seen listening to a phonograph in Francis Barraud’s famous photograph, an image appropriated more famously by RCA and HMV.

MORE INSTALLATIONS