Between sonic expression and linguistic meaning lies gibberish.
Babel Project celebrates gibberish through voice, text-sound and instrumental performance.
Through gibberish performances, workshops and lectures, The Babel Project probes and expands the sonic possibilities of music and language, creates new accessible sound and new forms of communication between the performers and the audience. In these performances, sometimes the instrument “speaks” whereas gibberish “makes music”.
Gibberish is a non-sense speech that does not convey information, but relies on the music of language. Over the centuries, gibberish has broadened the possibilities of human communication in ritual, everyday speech and art. In glossolalia, it is seen as a manifestation of the Holy Spirit and the return to an Edenic language unsullied by sin. In everyday speech, it manifests itself through the garbling of words, through children’s games and through professional jargon. In art, it expresses fantasy and escapism, as well as protest. The radical avant-garde – Futurism, Dada, Merz, and Fluxus– used it to undermine rationality, the establishment and the existing order.