TRACT
For words themselves to be so subjected, as things, to fire and dissolution, they would need to be moulded of matter, and to admit the crackling, voiceless noise of angels. The letters and symbols forming these words are themselves forged in crystal trees, locked in drab muck or concrete, dragged through the baking snow as the same crystalline bell which forged those very words issues forth its endless and repeating glassy red toll (nevermore, dismembered).
The TRACT device provides a versatile excitation (vocal) source for coupling to experimental physical vocal tracts (tubes, clay models, 3D printed models of vocal tracts). Running from a 9V power source, TRACT drives a small 8 ohm speaker which is then coupled to the experimental vocal tract.
TRACT features 32 vocal excitation modes (without any filter), which range across algorithms from the classic era of computer speech synthesis, through wavetables, to simulations of physical models of the glottal folds. These modes are subjected to a control for the speed /frequency of the excitation and for one single parameter.
The TRACT device was developed for the TRACT workshop, as part of Parallel 07 produced by Vancouver New Music, March 2025. With thanks to Giorgi Magnesi, Dan Kibke and all at VNM. The workshop aimed to develop a series of performance protocols and hybrid physical /electronic instruments, to open up human speech and vocalisation to other, foreign material processes, to other living and non-living beings and to the geologic.
Manual: http://1010.co.uk/org/TRACT.pdf