Tu’ nicht tréb über èth hè Zwirn (do not trip over the wire)

Tu’ nicht tréb über èth hè Zwirn (do not trip over the wire)

Interactive sound and video installation 2003

This piece is a portrait of Louis Wolfson. Wolfson is a writer and a schizophrenic. His mother tongue, English, haunts the hidden recesses of his brain. To evict this harping mother, Wolfson obsessively studies languages to substitute for the sonority and meaning of his native language. He is his own linguistic diaspora. These dis/replacements occur in his mind and in his speech. What sounds like English to the listener, globe trots avoiding the English speaking countries of Wolfson’s mind. Word for word he replaces each English word for a word with similar meaning and sound in French, German, Russian and Hebrew. Thus “Don’t trip over the wire” becomes “Tu’ nicht tréb über èth hè Zwirn”.

The computer is a machine whose mother tongue is Boolean mathematics. We want it to speak to us in other ways. We want so desperately to speak to it, to give it commands and orders, to ask it what the cosmos means and to have it tell us. We harp at this machine to speak our mother tongue. Sadly it can’t. But it can only form programmed substitutions. Thus, we must translate for it. These failings in meaning are also the failed substitutions of all translations. How can language work? Is poetry the only working language of translation?

In the installation three videos continuously loop. One video is projected onto the wall and the floor. This projection is the artist intentionally falling to the point of exhaustion. The other two are displayed on video monitors on the floor of the installation. The videos switch between images of the artist holding his finger in his right ear and smiling for seven minutes; holding his finger in his right ear and frowning for seven minutes; holding his finger in his left ear and smiling for seven minutes; holding his finger in his left ear and frowning for seven minutes. When the frowning video is on one monitor the smile is on the other. The monitor images refer to Wolfson holding his fingers in his ears while he studied languages to avoid hearing his mother.

The text for the piece was created by running the phrase “do not trip over the wire” through German, French and English translation software. The resulting phrase from each translation was run through the next language translator—i.e. the English phrase “do not trip over the wire” was next translated into French; the resulting French phrase was then translated into German; that resulting phrase was translated back into English, etc. This was done repeatedly until the result of the translations did not change. All the resulting English text is read repeatedly in the piece.

The space is strung across with wires from wall to wall. These wires are connected to sensors that trigger French, German and English translations of the text. When the viewer stretches the wires these texts are read by the software and pronounced a whispering computer voice. As the viewer “trips over the wire” he/she triggers a cacophony of voices that stutter out various translations of “do not trip over the wire”. The piece creates a schizophrenic and obsessive space of language.