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Proverbial Botany is a language-based sound project. It grew out of my interest in botanical literacy and plant related proverbs while being an ESL instructor at MOSAIC Language Learning Centre in Vancouver, BC, in 2016.
By way of community outreach I invited adult learners, who might otherwise not have access to Vancouver's local artists and contemporary art practices, to collaborate. What it involved: Plant names in connection with the speaker’s own memory of experiences with the plant world, his/her/their botanical literacy or lack of such literacy, formed the focus of this work. Remembering proverbs / idioms included sayings in the speakers’ first language, as long as speakers could explain and translate these into English. In collaboration with the New-Music Composer Andreas Kahre, my recordings with interviewees were integrated in a sound-composition. The scripted words in-motion (based on my manuscript) were designed and composed into fonts by the Digital Media Specialist Derek Tan. This video concentrates less on semantic aspects and more on particular linguistic sounds of that which is being voiced through speaking. Meaning, that speakers' grammatical and lexical errors in their use of English are irrelevant within the given context. Additional Note: My own spoken section in German (which still needs translation into English) comments on my viewpoints regarding the seemingly generational gaps and losses of concepts within a nature-centric language and its potential extinction. |