(shaky begining) Thesis skeleton : +

Introduction

The situations I find myself in, become an urgency for my work and research. How to understand an environment as a stranger to it. I find being a stranger both here and in my country. Detached from there even before leaving. And unattached, floating here, surrounded by foreign voices. At the beginning is a bliss not to understand, to have no relationship with meaning. Then after some time the pleasure of being isolated from the production of meaning of the voice , turns into a delicate, permanent discomfort. My curiosity asks if it will be possible to translate this feeling and bring it back to the streets. Maybe this time as something curious and pleasant. This question becomes the reason for my project and research in the past and following months.

For the last month and a half I have been experimenting with placing the box I built the first trimester in different locations in public space. A box that allows members of the public to leave voice messages that could later be played back on the device. The locations could be in any city, they are not loaded with any particular context. A street and a bar, places existing in any city, in any country. Like the locations displayed on tourist maps . Very neutral but at the same time very local. Up to now my experiments make a spontaneous voice map of each place. An exploration of isolation and connectivity in public spaces. I have initiated the creation of a little fragment of contact, a way of briefly communing in a typically disparate and isolating city.
Next step is provoked by the question, well what if it is not one box, but a few. What if they are in different places, cities, countries? And what if they are all connected so that the recordings can reach different locations and somehow talk with each other. That is not something that I ask myself, but was something that came out of talking to people that hosted the box and also listening to the recordings themselves. As if there was a need to reach somewhere else.

Finding myself in constant flux, transition, on the border of feeling comfortable and anxious, at home but still foreign, I see why I am fascinated by the object voice. Mladen Dolar identifies the voice as a “zone of overlapping, the crossing, the ”extimate. It is somewhere between interiority and exteriority. Voices contain a certain public moment in time. Voices enact the social space that is embedded in the every day. The voice is an intersection between personal and social.

Chapter 1 / How did this voice come here

In the following chapter I will make a brief historical overview of the disconnected voice, before and after the telephone. This chapter will follow how the disembodied voice shifted its meaning and position, from mystical to ubiquitous. I will argue that recently it has started to return to its mystical qualities due to voice calls are not as common as before. This will contextualize and elaborate why it is important for my project to employ the disembodied voice.

Historical overview on the disconnected / disembodied voice (from ventriloquism, speaking machines to the telephone) ----> and then -->
The telephone and how the acousmatic property of the voice becomes universal, and hence trivial
The invasion of the voice in public space with mobile phones (few years ago) and the less present voice in public space now (channelled in message, email). Does this mean voice is gaining back its acousmatic property?

In my project I try to examine the returning qualities of the voice without body.

FOLLOWS

The displaced voice has always been an ambiguous object. A source of awe but also excitement. Dating back to ancient Greece, where Pythagoras's students could not see him but only hear his voice. The etymology of the word acousmatic comes from the greek word akousma : what is heard. Pythagoras students were called akousmatikoi (hearers).

From imitating to synthesising the voice

Ventriloquism --> from religion, to witchcraft, to performance and entertainment

Ventriloquism could be traces very early in history but I shall touch upon it as such that appeared in the eighteenth century. This was the period when the practice developed as a performance, a spectacle that was established as such by the late 18th century.

Speaking machines synthesising human voice speech...or is it more correct to say voice

Wolfgang Kempelen's speaking machine.

The sounds of the machine have very little linguistic qualities, but imitate non-linguistic human voice sounds.

Project related---> Faced with a recording device, sometimes people tend to make sounds that are very much like the one of the speaking machine of Kempelen.

In any of the cases above, the voice is not dispatched completely. The direction is clear. There is a source, whether the ventriloquist dummy or a speaking machine and the voice comes out of there, as if attached on a string. An invisible but relevant string. This metaphor is made real with the appearance of the telephone. The telephone wire is the string. A voice successfully compressed into a wire, a line. Voice that is extended to travel distances. Alexander Graham Bell is credited with inventing the first practical telephone. He was awarded the first US patent for the telephone in 1876. From that moment on, the voice slowly lost its mystical acousmatic qualities. The excitement of the disattached voice slowly faded and it become a trivial event. In the late nineties, mobile telephony became present. Mobile phones liberated the users from the physical environment. The disembodied voice could appear anywhere.It started to be carried in the pocket. Voice infiltrated the environment as people conversed with each other in public space. This dialogue of mobile telephony in public space still remains somewhat disconnected as it is half coherent, with the other half hidden from the passer-by. A public half-dialogue, part of a private conversation. A monologue extracted from a dialogue. Not being able to grasp the whole, leaves a lot of room for guessing and imagination. *Such fragmented representation of a dialogue, distributed in space relates to my project. In most recent times, mobile phones are smart. No longer they serve to only transmit the voice trough space. Smart phones are our omnipresent communication tool. In our bag, pocket, hand. Mostly in our hand rather next to our ear. Voice calls are being pushed away by other means of communicating, easier ones, visible rather than audible, giving us a chance to be continuously connected, without disturbing the environment. Voice calls are becoming a sort of an event. A voice call signifies some sort of urgency. It is no longer a casual event. Does this mean that the disembodied voice is slowly winning back its mystique power, its ambiguity?

*Somebody who detains you with his speech was once said to be 'buttonholing', you, recalling the practice of physically crooking a finger in the buttonhole of one's interlocutor. Steven Connor / non literal --> relate to the button of the box

*The distant voice is also often enclosed, in boxes, suitcases, cupboards, or even underground. When it is thus enclosed, the voice is imagined as coiled upon itself with the kinetic tension of compression. Steven Connor

Voice is one of the principal ‘extensions’ of man MacLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Chapter 2 / The voice of a place / when a voice does not come from your pocket

In this chapter I will outline the connection between voice and space. Why is it important to place the disconnected voice static in public space. How does the voice change its character once it remains ( is recorded)? It becomes a document of that place in time. It becomes an object. When voice comes from a specific, fixed place it is the object of a location. One has to be there, and does not carry the opportunity to talk in his own pocket. It is no longer attached to your personal object. The voices and languages inhabiting certain physical areas, create the sonic atmosphere of a place. The boxes provide playful performative moments for passers by to break from routine and enter into a network of anonymous voices, travelling an unplanned journey trough cityscapes. / mention (sound) derive and situationist international /

The voice as an object that remains. The recorded voice

Steven Connor about the voice - voice, as an object of hearing, lacks ‘permanence and continuity’,it ‘belongs to time’. How does this relate and change when it is recorded?

Sound as a mediator to the environment. Voice as sound in the environment

Sound is intrinsically and unignorably relational: it emanates, propagates, communicates, vibrates, and agitates; it leaves a body and enters others; it binds and unhinges, harmonizes and traumatizes; it sends the body moving, the mind dreaming, the air oscillating. It seemingly eludes definition, while having profound effect. (LaBelle, 2007)

With the telephonic principle, comes another desire, the desire to preserve, to trap sound, not only to convey it trough space. Capturing voice, preserving it and keeping it is part of my project. The recording boxes enclose voice and distribute it to the locations of the other boxes until a new recording is made and takes this place. I believe there is a charged relationship of voice to space and questions of public and private. With the decreasing use of voice calls, voice in public space remains embodied. Perhaps amongst the few examples of disembodied voices in public space are the announcements in public transport. With a small device distributed to various public spaces I try to investigate the situation in which anyone's voice could remain aloud in space without its beholder. Each voice becomes a temporary site-specific sound installation.

Chapter 3 / Communication, composition or both

communication and voice are linked but thats not always the case

this chapter will probably be changed/gone

Chapter 4 / A network of boxes ...? is a life on its own possible?

In this chapter I look into my own utopian idea to initiate a network of boxes in different spots in the world. How that worked out, what was in my way. How does living in an international environment contribute to finding hosts for the boxes.

The hosts ( following the process..maybe emails and communication between me and the hosts of the boxes)
The fact that the boxes connect different locations and one can be part of it is tempting. Perhaps this connects to having a voice as a political act / as a personal act. Giving voice to a place. This voice reaching other places.
Is it possible for the project to start living its own life? If clear and easy instructions are made...is it possible that people with a bit knowledge in electronics and a raspberry pi ( the fact that having one is a hype ) make their own leaveamessagebox and add more locations to the network.

Contextualize with my previous practise. In the context of images and further work during studies on the Piet Zwart Iinstitiute.

In order to adequately explore the various facets of this research project, and relate it to developments in my own practical work.

References

'Resonant bodies, voices, memories' (2008) edited by Anke Bangma, Deirdre M. Donoghue, Lina Issa and Katarina Zdjelar

'A Voice and Nothing More' (2006) Mladen Dolar

'Dumbstruck- A Cultural History of Ventriloquism' (2000) Steven Connor

'The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech' (1991) Avital Ronell

Scorescapes On Sound Environment and Sonic Consciousness, Yolande Harris, Phd thesis > voice in the sonic environment

"Networks without a cause" , 3.Treatise on comment culture , Geert Lovnik > voice as comment, comment as granular object

Annotations / notes

Mladen Dolar 'A Voice and Nothing More'

Mladen Dolar develops Lacan's position that the voice is one of the paramount embodiments of the psychoanalytic object a. Dolar proposes that, apart from the two commonly understood uses of the voice as a vehicle of meaning and as an aesthetic object, there is a third level of understanding: the voice as an object that can be seen as the lever of thought. What is the role and meaning of the voice in culture? Mladen Dolar writes about the voice as an object of linguistics, metaphysics, ethics and politics. In the chapter about the linguistics of the voice Dolar talks about the omnipresent voice in everyday communication. According to him reading and writing taking over social life is much less common, with the Internet withstanding. I would like to add that messaging and short emails are much more common than voice calling and are ever more present in our public space behaviour.

'Resonant bodies, voices, memories' (2008) edited by Anke Bangma, Deirdre M. Donoghue, Lina Issa and Katarina Zdjelar

“Resonant Bodies, Memories, Voices” is a compilation of text about the subjects of memory, voice and the body. But it is not about these objects in a stable position, the texts investigate cases of instability, inability, uncomfortableness concerning these human objects. It is only when one's abilities to remember, speak or control their body are disrupted, that it becomes obvious what values these simple human objects hold. What happens to us as subjects, when we find ourselves in a situation where what we commonly take for granted is gone?

Scorescapes On Sound Environment and Sonic Consciousness, Yolande Harris, Phd thesis > voice in the sonic environment

Scorescapes investigates how sound mediates our relationship to the environment. I will look into the text, having in mind the recorded voice as the mediator.

"Networks without a cause" , 3.Treatise on comment culture , Geert Lovnik > voice as comment, comment as granular object

User:Yoana Buzova/ plan

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