Spoken Word with Electronics is an audio series of unusual stories and commentary, paired with modular electronic sounds and noises.
Hi, everyone, welcome back to the show. This week the subject is dentistry. I've always been good about going to the dentist. Give me the chair, man! It's like getting a tattoo every six months on your teeth. But due to the pandemic I hadn't been able to get a cleaning for seventeen months, and one of my few fillings (the silver kind from the 1980s) didn't survive. So, pandemic delay accepted, I received the rough prognosis: I NEEDED A CROWN. So this week is dedicated to that very noisy drilling procedure.
Make your own tooth: Using a blend of contrasting highly modulated voltage into filters and pitch on a few synths, we emulate the musical scraping and drilling of the experience. Eurorack and event generators provide a good amount of variety to add in sounds of water, random bits of flying pieces, suction, etc. Dental crowns are fascinating, really. Not too painful, but it turns your mouth into a lego set. The mouth is like a small workshop in your face. There's nothing it can't do, or become! Hear our electric tooth tribute in this week's introduction.
Contrasting the discomfort and humor of the dentist, audio this week is a montage of some of the best parent protests against forcing masks on their children. Hand a microphone to a pissed off parent and there's no end to the surprises! You find that in the raw audio section of this week's episode.
We also visit a coin fountain and travel back in time. But there's no time travel for teeth! Don't miss your cleanings. In between, be sure to floss!
Postscript: In memory of video artist NANCY CAIN
This week's show is in tribute to Nancy Cain, who passed away on Sunday August 22. Nancy is well known to video art activists for her work in Videofreex. (If you make ANY non-corporate video, from art to a tiktok post, you owe her a thanks for paving the way for your access to such ideas) I knew her as Paul Krassner's truest friend – his long time wife of many decades. She was 81 and an incredible human. Here's to you, Nancy. Read her book, incidentally: It's incredibly vivid and inspiring.
(Fellow Videofreex artist Skip Blumberg confirmed this sad news of Nancy's passing)
Connect with SWWE via Dentist Procedure and Replacement Cap on Bandcamp, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google .
Thanks and have a good week, Ethan
