THE PROSODIC BODY
an experiential field of research intermixing the arts and sciences of prosody through movement performance exhibition cross disciplinary and cross cultural collaboration publication teaching architecture retreat vocalization breathing somatics and medicine
begun in 2006 by choreographer Daria Faïn and architect/poet Robert Kocik

Earliest Prosodic Body community experimentation: construction of a dark retreat / dark listening space two stories underground in an abandoned Wall Street bank vault; sounding of each phoneme all at once; community conduction of phoneme sequences, 2008.
Follow-up proposal for the realization of a permanent anechoic dark retreat practice-space and lab in the midst of the hustle & bustle and hubbub of Lower Manhattan. With the generous support of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
Poetry, speech and the sciences of prosody such as phonology and biolinguistics share the same basic set of prosodic correlates: rhythm, intonation, intensity, sonority, etc. Prosody is affective and interactional. We'd be mutually unintelligible without it (a pathology called aprosodia). Tone of voice causes the condition, transforms the instant, makes up the mind. Prosody conducts conversation, betrays the unspoken, regulates bioprocesses and co-occurs with gesture and intention. Developmentally, prosody is the precursor of both language and music. Ontogenically it is the murmured Motherese. The contemporaneity of the impulse to speak and cosmogenesis is beyond belief.
CONSTRUCTION

THE LANGUAGE OF PROSODY
The language of prosody is... the language. The Prosodic Body interrelates and interrogates 3 dimensions of language:
1 the physicality of speech and writing; the segments (phonemes, syllables, roots, etymons, morphemes, the tones, pitches, intensities of amplitude and stress, the places and manners of articulation and their entrenched phonotactics) in interplay with the suprasegmentals (rhythms, stichs, syntax, strophes, sentences, sound structures) along with breath, gestures, movement and entire embodiment
2 the emotionality, musicality, intentionality and interactivity that are the language of prosody
3 "use'" of language, as a gift given, resolved that our compositions are dedicated to balance and wellbeing
Thus The Prosodic Body is an extensive inquiry into the use of, and nature of, language, with language as its own foil. Is language no more than a cipher or ruse for what we actually mean? How is it related to what's real or true? (It's true that this sentence is not exactly what I feel.) Our interrogation is of course particularly pointed with regard to English. It's not fair to state that the all the globe's environmental-economic-inequity crises are consequents of the sonic and connotative qualities of superpower English. Given the same opportunity for imperious, exploitative overreach, what country would act otherwise? But it is fair to ask, why didn't we, of all peoples, American English speakers, made up of all peoples, crack the code and do otherwise? Ask Karl Rove. Must language be on the fence about harm and helpfulness? ("We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." K. Rove.)
These are a few of our modes or further prosodies generated over the last fifteen years through our working process:
reENGLISH UNDISCOVERY REPARATIVE NARRATIVE
IMPLICATE PROSODY OPTATIVE TUNES
POLITICAL ECONOMY PLEAS COSMOGONIC EMANATION
INLAK'ECH (TRANS SUBJECTIVE INTER CHANGE)
BIOCHEMICAL SOUND SEQUENCES SONIC AMULET
PHILOLOGICAL FAIR TRADE PHONOTACTIC UNSHACKLE
SUCH WORDS (ENLIGHTENING WHATEVER THEY SAY)
TOTALLY CATAPHATIC NONARBITRARY SOUND MEANING WORD THING CORRELATION (OR ONTOMEMES)
PHENOMENAL PHONOPHANY
DE RE IF Y WORD EMPTINESS (NOT NONSENSE)
HYPOXIC HEARING (FORGETTING TO BREATHE — THAT ENRAPT)
GRAMMATICAL YOGA (AFTER BHARTRARI) BHEDABHEDA IS'ISN'T

A KA HO In Rgveda X.12, Creator is still No One. Not an indefinite pronoun, The Indefinite Pronoun known as "Who" (in Sanskrit Ka.) Who is also Hiranyagharba, the Within Which — Who, who is also the wherein from which Who whom-self comes. The World Egg, if you wish; Cosmic Cell or the all alone gravitational singularity, if you prefer; the infinitesimally dense and infinite dot. The Yelm, or seed of seed; Golden Womb. Who, from whom — once everything eventually did exist — nothing is different. An early (perhaps earliest) phoneme cosmogony is the recitation of the 3-syllabled a ka ho —attested jointly in the Pancavimśa and Jaiminiya Brahmanas, in the first half of the first millennium BCE. As the story goes, Who and Word (aka Prajapati and Vak) are all alone. Who thought "Let me send forth the this Vak, to pervade the whole universe." As Word "rose upwards as a continuous stream of water" Who segmented the stream, first by uttering "a" to form the earth, followed by "ka" to create the intermediate space of the atmosphere, finally uttering "ho" to demarcate the heavens. Accordingly, the a ka ho sequence maps microcosmically within the mouth as it follows the ancient articulatory phonetics of Sanskrit, moving from the back of the throat through the palate to the lips; from the lowest position (guttural, 'a,' earth) to middle 'k' and then to top and forwardmost 'ho,' enacting the coming forth of the cosmos. (As a footnote: the Vedic-era phonology/pronunciation manuals (Pratisakhyas) crucial in the accurate oral transmission of the hymns) grouped the phonemes according to both place and manner of articulation, i.e., into guttural/palatal/retroflex/dental/labial and stop/approximate/sibilant. The groupings were charted as vargas (magic squares) that could be recited horizontally, vertically or diagonally while maintaining the emanative pattern from backmost bottom to forwardmost top positions. Although a ka ho was the initial event (merci infiniment,) even considering the rounded breathiness of the final "ho," it nonetheless lacks the spaciousness and reverberative nature of our whole, ongoing cosmogenesis. Below, as a practice proposal, I've simply — as minimally as possible — filled out a phonic spectrum for the initial burst, allowing sound to carry space and diversification in every imaginable direction — and back. These sequences can be improvised and chorally conducted in any and every way. a ka ho oh ak a ʊn dæ i ir bɔ uh

phonemic emanations
GRAPHICS & READING ROOMS
from the ongoing continuously updated and reoccurring exhibition titled
UNDISCOVERY



glymphps










































