Category: Art

An unknown number called me, sometimes twice a day, on and off for about three years. I never answered and no message was ever left. Searching this number online revealed conflicting reports from various sources. It is the gas company wanting to install a smart meter. Scammers pretending to be the gas company. Automated sales pitches in unknown languages. Rogue injury claim lawyers. Even a mysterious man who says ‘I’d like to speak to…’ then hangs up.

Unknown number is set in a call centre without boundaries. It is an inexhaustible system, inhuman yet made by/of humans, repeating itself to infinity but always on the edge of collapse under its own absurdities.

Voices:
Victor Bock, Raya Carbone, Rick Carbone, Thom Driver, Les Gibson, Gregory Hari, Peter Harris, Aylin Leclaire, Glenn Ryszko, Claire Sellwood and the synthetic entities Olivia, Lisa, Lenny, Sarah, Kathy and Fred.

Where is the emotional weight of a song located? How does it engage in pathos? This is a song that listens, lets the body take over, and sings with what Roland Barthes called the ‘grain’ of the voice, or ‘the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue’.

The late naturalist and photographer Dick Proenneke lived his last thirty years alone in the wilds of Alaska, in a self-built log cabin. Here he comes back to life to build another cabin within the videogame Minecraft, while questioning how notions of authenticity are transmitted through voice.