The Rattle, the Hidden Noise, the Inner Voice

“Duchamp’s work was a collaborative one, made with the assistance of his friend and patron, Walter Arensberg. Duchamp invited Arensberg to insert an object (the nature of which was unknown to the artist) inside a ball of string which Duchamp then clamped shut between two screwed metal plates. Duchamp said of it ‘A Readymade with a secret noise. Listen to it. I will never know whether it is a diamond or a coin.’ The conceit is a powerful one. The inner voice (essence, meaning, intention, investment) of the piece has been (ostensibly) supplied not by the artist, but by his patron. It is, (…)Arensberg poses as the ventriloquist of Duchamp’s dummy (or rather, rattle).” Jon Wood, With Hidden Noise: Sculpture, Video and Ventriloquism

 

“A man plucked a nightingale and, finding but little to eat, said: You are just a voice and nothing more.” Plutarch, Moralia: Sayings of Spartans [Apophthegmata Laconica] 233a

 

The human ambition to sing like a bird is probably as old as birds and ambition. Whistles make that longing viable as they turn silent human breath into sounds often resembling a bird call. The legend of Saint Francis, a pious man able to speak with birds and understand their language, is one of the many examples of the quest for interspecies dialogues.