Audio Art- Heinz 57
When I saw that language was listed as one of the approaches, I got curious about the idea of trying it out. I picked specific languages after chatting with my parents on the anniversary of a family member’s passing. As we reminisced, I realized how little I knew about where our family came from. This reflection got me interested in using languages from the regions of my ancestors, so I chose a sentence from a tattoo that some family members have.
I started by talking to several relatives to put together a list of our family origins. Once I gathered all this info, I had to narrow it down since it covered a lot of places. I focused on the ones closest to me generationally, and sounded the best, and translated the sentence into each language. Some family members who spoke these languages helped record their parts, while I recorded the English version myself. For the other languages, I used an online translation tool.
After getting all the recordings, I started editing them together. I wanted a chaotic and overwhelming sound to capture the feeling of being with my family. I had a bunch of ideas on how to do it, so I made several versions. But I hit a snag when the human-recorded clips didn’t mesh well with the online translation clips. To fix that, I decided to use the online translator voice for all of them since I couldn’t get all the languages spoken by my family.
After sorting out the recording stuff, one version turned out to be better and matched the feeling I wanted to show, so I made some minor tweaks for a smoother flow in the final cut. The title of the project came from a funny comment my dad made when I showed him the long list of our family origins; he joked that we were like “Heinz 57,” coming from a little bit of everywhere. I can see this project being displayed in a gallery, playing over speakers, with the translations listed on a wall.
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