ROUTING

 

ROUTING (2023) 

video, 8 minutes Geneviève Castrée’s Les Perdants/Les Perdantes sung before a computer mic into Google Translate, which transcribes the audio into French text, then translates the text from French to English.

The same with new issue’s English cover titled The Losers— voice brings song to computer mic, the audio of which Google Translate transcribes into English text, then translates from English to French.

The unit by unit conversions characteristic of Google Translate and misheard interpretations between human voice and computer ear create a translation event of anxious shifting, shutting down, nonsense, and accidental poetry.

This video is a screen capture of selected outcomes from the above experiment. It was screened at The Owl Music Parlor with voice performance of both French and English renditions of the “original text” to simulate live translation.