Stockhausen
Karl-Heinz Stockhausen’s 1956 piece ‘Gesang Der Junglinge’ (Song of the Children) analysed song verses into their elementary phonetic components and deployed electronically generated aperiodic sound – more commonly known as ‘white noise’. The Disabled Avant-Garde also generate white noise in this piece by varying the syne-waves produced by a loudly whistling boiling kettle. As with Stockhausen, a vocalist intones ‘inside’ the white noise (but using a different song – something by Roy Orbison). The total effect produced is to provide the listener with no idea whatsoever of what it must sound like to be profoundly deaf’.
That is the official description for Disabled Avante-Garde’s video “Stockhausen”. I must say, however, nothing may encapsulate the internet better than image of a disabled little person in a wheelchair, plastered in heavy makeup, accompanied by a tiny, confused dog and a conveniently placed broom, giggling gleefully as a man waves his posterior in front of her — all set to the tones of a screeching tea kettle.