Pamela started her career as a composer/performer, expanding to many different facets of sound making later on in life. She is best known for performances in which she manipulates her voice using wireless gesture midi controllers. In the mid 1980’s, Pamela started manipulating her voice with outboard rigs of processors. Following years of spending lots of money and effort on transporting this rig, Pamela decided to patch her processors into software using MAX MSP. This method of manipulation is constantly evolving, adding and subtracting tools, however the manipulation essentially remains constant.
These voice manipulation pieces began life as 3-7 minute songs, as a means to begin concerts. The pieces eventually evolved into evening long works, often held together with visuals, allowing Pamela to explore different areas of manipulation.
‘Baggage allowance’ explores the concepts of baggage in literal and metaphorical senses, it was a multimedia installation containing sound, visuals, objects and a browser. This piece also took the form of a gallery installation, including video, ‘sonic luggage’, draws with sound, video and objects. Opening the draws would trigger different videos to play next to them.
‘Sonic gestures’ is a site specific installation in a very large room, it included 10 HD screens and 16 channels of audio. The piece became dormant due to galleries’ inability to present it, requiring lots of screens and multiple computers. Recent advances in technology have allowed the piece to be played from a single computer, making it easier to exhibit. I find this very interesting, how the life of a project can change and even be resurrected by changes in the world of technology, perhaps this could be true of culture and politics also.
‘Memory trace’ is constructed from interviews about memory Pamela conducted, the audio is chopped and stacked, it results in a chaotic experience for the listener, the conversations move in different directions very quickly. The different voices are binded by a synchronisation of expressions such as ‘Hmmmm I forget’. The piece was developed for a commission in which the voices are accompanied by a string quartet, repeating expressions and mimicking the melodic shifts of the speech. I appreciate the organic qualities of the chaos, voices interrupt each other. This reminds me of the director Noah Baumbach as they highlight the idea that natural speech is messy, people talk over each other, this subverts the feeling of a performance, and brings the organised narrative into reality.
Pamela’s work resonates with me because of her use of layering. She negates isolating phrases, instruments or voices in linear space, rather allowing these phrases to overlap, interrupt and conflict. This technique gives the audio a natural quality, imperfect and real. This organic quality is evident in her methods of manipulation, opting for gestural midi control, allowing for natural imperfect movements of the hand. Thirdly, it is evident in her emphasis on the voice, an instrument which lends itself to portamento and naturally negates harmonic segregation.