We Are the Transcribers was written and produced by Veronica Simmonds and Andrew Bateman with Andrew Patterson as The Bosses. This piece was originally a video which you can view here.
Veronica and Andrew say:
What's a transcriber, you ask? Well, it's a human who listens to words and then writes them down for other people. It's a dying art that we were trying to capture. In the making of this piece we were trying to cultivate the monotony, drudgery, brutality of transcription work which we were both doing a lot of at the time.
You will notice that there is an almost drone like quality to the typing sound that is playing throughout the entire piece. The idea was to really hammer home through the hammering of the keys, the brutal non-stop feeling being a conduit of human language which we were both at that moment in time. Non-stop typing was one technique that we tried.
What's inspiring Veronica in the world of audio:
Inside the world of sound I am inspired by Sindre Leganger's piece Still Glowing Strong. The space, time and poetry of this piece will be with me always.
And outside of it:
I was recently floored by Leigh Ledare's exhibition The Task at the Art Institute of Chicago. This arresting situational film was so fucking real that at first I had to laugh until I had to feel it all.
Constellations says:
With the demise of Pop Up Archive this week, we thought we would do a special send off to the program that once saved our fingers from the toil of typing. Pop Up, you are gone, but never forgotten.
Veronica and Andrew's piece confronts the pure pain of the hustle. The foregrounded typing a steady, constant reminder of the small acts we have to do to make it from time to time.
Get some rest, it's December.
Andrew Bateman is a filmmaker and digital media artist in Toronto. He's currently working on a film about emails he gets for Andrew Batemans around the world as he picks away at a PhD in communication and politics. His work has been featured in Norway, Berlin, Istanbul, Brussels, and Toronto.
Veronica Simmonds is a sonic sorceress. A daughter of community radio, born at CKDU 88.1, she cut her ear teeth at the CBC producing the critically acclaimed podcasts Sleepover, Alone: A Love Story, and Tai Asks Why. Her radio documentaries have aired on CBC, ABC and BBC.
Her audio art work has lived in a weather observatory in France, a hair dryer in Pittsburgh, and a grain silo in Norway. She's a life long swimmer and her love of lakes led her to co-create the interactive web experience bodyofwater.ca. Her love of hair led her to create her show Braidio where she braided hair on air. These days she's listening to Lovers Rock, her daughter's fork drumming and the incessant beeping of her washing machine.
Listen to more Veronica's work on her website here, and through the shows she's worked on including Tai Asks Why, Alone, Sleepover, Braidio.