User:Angeliki/Grad-thesis

3d draft/ 9 November

Tracing the voice/ a tactical voice

Introduction

My initial motivation to start this project was the (gender,educational,cultural) exclusion, that I have felt, in communication platforms like radio because of the exclusion in the technical knowledge of them but also because of the legal restrictions. The use of the voice . "The radio activists presented the work of soldering a transmitter, tuning an antenna, and producing a news program or governing a radio station to be accessible to all. Nevertheless, they were conscious of patterned gaps in their organization and volunteer base: men were more likely than women to know how to build electronics, to be excited by tinkering, and to have the know-how to teach neophytes.This troubled the activists"(Dunbar-Hester, pg. 53-54). Another reason is my experience in a previous project I had regarding what voice/speech triggers in public spaces and the power of the invisible soundscapes to create borders and social spheres.

Background

In western cultures there is a privilege of visual culture over auditory knowledge. When knowledge is passed through the voice other elements beyond the message are shared. These are the physicality of the sound and the embodiment passed through the voice that have an impact to the spaces and the subjectivities beyond the message that they carry, as Ong says. Only the voice by itself can represent intensively a person. It carries our cultural, gender and bodily characteristics and gestures. Today our communication and sharing of knowledge depends on 'intermediators' [devices and interfaces] and this process becomes more and more disembodied. Elements of our bodies are lost in that process. Voice based technologies, like radio, telephone, Skype, are mediating the embodied voice.

Speech recognition software like Siri are trained from real audio samples from people speaking. The samples are parts of telephone conversations, broadcast conversations, microphone talks and other samples in which people offer their voice for training it.

The In our days often the speech in public takes the form of something big, like demonstrations and state announcements, being spread through a network technology, like radio and social media, or through the amplification of the sound in a public space. At the same time it can take the form of something small, like gossiping or private conversations, being spread again through platforms like radio in low frequencies (also video calls, phone calls, voice messages in a private space spread through networks), or in public/private space in small range and with the physical presence.

Topic

The disembodiment of the voice while being mediated in spaces and platforms.

Statement

The embodied voice is being appropriated/mediated by communication systems [radio, telephone, whatsapp, skype] and tools [speech analysis, speech recognition] many times for commercial and state purposes. By embodied I mean the condition of the body and not only the communicative elements of the language. Out from this process of mediation, elements of the voice and the person carrying it are lost [identity, nationality, gender, bodied gestures and processes] and this can affect decisions regarding that body/person [like verification of claims of origin of refugees through voice samples]. What is lost from the disembodiment and what can be traced by the situation/body of that person? How can we be aware of that? How can this perspective propose other ways of publicness [reuse those mediums on ways that include this embodiment]? What practices can awaken that perspective?

Structure of the text

The text can take the form of radio show, song, theatre play, script, python script, structure of phonetic rules (ref: "Speech for the stage"), structure of pocketsphinx(tool for speech recognition), audio book (uploaded in XPPL:)), a feminist manifesto. The purpose is to find other ways to talk about a topic in an academic context. It is my intention the structure of the text to talk also about the topic (ref: Amy's ref).
Documenting my project:
What forms of presentation are appropriate for this practice? I want to build a way for that. My project proposes a range of possibilities and parallel processes (live action, happening at the same time or with delay). "since the arts are grounded in the material structure of society, artists must revolutionize the means by which their work is produced and distributed. One way this can be accomplished is for authors to be involved in publishing"(O'Rourke, pg.xiii)

Body

The impact of voice and the embodiment

First topic: The human and mediated voice has a strong impact on the creation of common spaces. Sometimes that is consciously embedded in the behaviour of the people but many times the voice is controlled, isolated and used for the shake of commercial aims or the "public good". But how can we consciously use the voice as a medium for creating our own (common) soundscapes and being circulated, acting politically in all these spheres. (How the voice was used and how it is used?)

Point A: New technologies, commercial and state manipulation over voice or exclusion of it

1. Control by manipulating the human voice for commercial and state purposes: Recordings of people's speech around the world are used by the state or companies for the training of speech recognition tools and at the same time for checking the identity of a person. For example, speech recognition tools and personal assistants are fed with big data of voice recordings around the world. On several occasions companies, like Mozilla, are asking users to donate their voice or using datasets, like LibriVox, but others like Google and Apple are using the voice data from other apps that they had created. Also, Germany is developing a tactic for verifying the claims of origin of refugees when entering the country. Recordings of their speech are "fed" to speech analysis software for checking if their dialect is from the country they are claimed to be from. Is the refugee, being interviewed, aware of that? How a state uses this automated process for such a serious topic? (ref: articles of Gizmodo)
2. Restrictions and exclusions of voice: there are several restrictions regarding the broadcasting of the voice in airwaves and the amplification of it in public spaces. From the time when the radio technology became public, tight regulations restricted the electromagnetic public sphere. Specific range of low frequencies is free for the radio amateurs to broadcast and it is mostly monopolized by the state and commercial organisations. There are also rules regarding the topics that these people can talk about, restricting them in weather and technical details of the radio. In some places the amplification of the voice through a technology in public space is forbidden, like in south of Rotterdam or in United States.

Point B: The voice impacts subjectivities and spaces.

1. What is the impact of the voice in public spaces and platforms? How it affects the formation of subjectivities and spaces. (https://www.documenta14.de/en/public-radio/). The need for embodied presence (ref:"Orality and literacy"). Speech acts. Voice not only as words.
2. How voices of the "weaker" becomes present in (counter-) communication platforms and spaces with the aim to occupy and give presence s=and activate a dynamic public sphere. Examples, regarding the electromagnetic spectrum, of radio communities, pirate radio amateurs, radio artists. Also, examples about the public space like the microphonic demonstrations and occupy movements. It is very common that the radio technology and other streaming audio tools are used for occupying both physical and electromagnetic/cyber space.

1. Alternative ways of communicating like gossiping (ref: text of Amy, "practices of everyday life") used by women in private spaces as a way to create their own commons.
2. Orality and literacy (technology and oral cultures) and the impact of reading and narrating.

The tools that relate the embodied and the distant voice [telepresence]

Second topic: Radio/antennas are part of an invisible infrastructure that surrounds us based on voice and sound. The knowledge on its existence and technology can give an insight on how to understand our surroundings and create commons.

Point A: Spreading the technology of radio and antennas: an approach of reclaiming the airwaves

1. Restrictions and rules over airwaves more generally--including spatial perspectives of radio.
2. Radio stations and radio art: ways to appropriate physical space and electromagnetic spectrum (ref:"Take it to the air"). Re-claiming a military/state/commercial/functional directed tool.
3. The technology of radio/frequency/antennas. The knowledge of the technology of it (exclusion-inclusion). Documentation of making antennas

Point B: Listening, scanning throughout frequencies (and other sources) and understanding my surroundings.

1. Scanning through weird sounds, broadcasters, official frequencies. Documentation of scanning (sounds and text). Mapping the frequencies through 'live' speech recognition.

Point C: Radio as a voice communication platform.

1. Radio amateurs, artists, pirate radios. Documentation of interviews with pirates. Using it from a different perspective. Radio amateurs-> gendered space. Communication platform of transeiving (Receiving and transmitting as one act/structural coupling. ref:"radio in the chiasme, Tetsuo Kogawa"). The voice being spread as a frequency.

1. Public speech and the electromagnetic spectrum

2. parallel presence

Leave a trace: politics of presence/ make it real/embodied- walking practices/re-situating-establishing

Third topic: The voice is invisible, but can exist in multiple spaces at the same time. It can be physical or digital/"parallelial". The parallel presence
Can we realise the impact of our voice by appropriating those mediums in a way that follows up the "situation"/position (cultural, political) of a person? How embedded is the voice into those spheres? How it can become present and what (spatial, social,political) qualities creates?

Point A: The spatial perspectives of sound and voice/the physical dimensions of it./Radio and voice in space: Being present in the space and radio at the same time. Multiple voices (presence and absence).

1. Combination of voice and radio (two previous): Public space and pirate radios.
2. The parallel presence of it. Presence means also absence, means also receiving and listening. Akio Suzuki

Point B: Walking (ref:"Walking and mapping"), mapping, tracing, tracking, listening, murmuring(the thickening of space through the invisible, audible). The private soundscapes created by it.

1. Streaming
2. Being here now and elsewhere. "Heidegger, in Being and Time and elsewhere,", "To the extent that it always relates us to the absent other, the telephone"(Telephone Book, Ronell)

1. What is the impact of the embodied voice in public spaces and voice_based systems and platforms?
2. How the voice occupies the public space/ The occupation of public spaces through the voice.
3. Voice_based communication platforms as radical tools of redefining the public space.
4. The embodied voice and the speech passing through networks and spaces can become elements of claiming/appropriating our presence in the public
5. what qualities gives to the space?
6. The multiple identity/personas and parallel presence of the voice

Conclusion

The transition of the voice