Made at Embodying the Video Essay camp, July 2023

un-voiceover mini-assignment: Using audio recording equipment of your choice record original sound made with a body (yours or a willing subject) to replace or augment an excerpt from your media object. Further, map this sound to a specific object, character, environment, etc. within the frame in relation to the scene.

For this mini-assignment at camp, I really wanted to introduce everyone to contact mics. We broke into groups and everyone worked together to experiment with the contact mics and get to know each other, and each other’s projects.

I had used contact mics in 2018 as part of a residency sponsored by Media@McGill at Ada X in Montreal with Nik Forrest and Jackie Gallant. We were experimenting with my vaginal canal as recording studio and did some recordings to figure out what Uterine Concert Hall was and was not using a contact mic in place of the speaker to hear what vaginal space might sound like.

The sound featured in this video is from those sessions. I have effected and processed it. I think this is a recording in which I was moving my legs as though on a bicycle.