Speaking without lips

Performance by Jakob Scheid

"Speaking without lips"

Talking machines. Presentation and performance

THU 23 JUN, 19:00

Under the title "Speaking without lips", the Viennese artist Jakob Scheid presents his current project: a flock of small, mechanical speaking machines. Scheid gives an insight into the background and motivation for this work as well as his sources of inspiration. Above all, however, the machines have their say: they engage in dialogues, scold each other, say what always had to be said or simply talk past each other. What they say remains incomprehensible, because the speaking machines speak in a para-language - between children's babble and Viennese sound poetry. The machines have no lips, but they have a lot of staying power: unwaveringly, they take their breath again and again and repeat their prefabricated phrases, but the answers also come only from unwavering machines.

"Speaking without lips" is Scheid's last project in a series of kinetic sound objects. Expressive noise machines, experimental musical instruments, self-playing sound machines and remakes of historical music automatons (including Wolfgang von Kempelen's speaking machine) were created. The works play with the possibilities of audiovisuality, as a music-theatrical interaction of sound and movement. They revolve around questions of liveliness and use the suggestive power of mechanical movement and analogue sound production.