User:Angeliki/Grad-proposal drafts

15 October

Draft explanation: Here I will write as many scenarios as possible popping out of my mind. And then I will choose what fits to me the best. I will imagine it as crazy as I can and then I will slow down.

Project title:
The presence of voice or other related sounds in diverse spheres (physical, airwaves, online)

I want to scan through platforms of speech and collect audio and text material related to speech/voice. Examples of platforms and spaces could be radio (all possible frequencies), youtube videos and other, outside space, blogs, social media, gossiping in public, in NL and GR. The collection will be audio samples and text being produced by the speech recognition of the audio. After that I will collocate them together on a way that produces new meanings and interpretations over the vocal presence of a body (either institutional or individual). This process will be visible/public and will happen in a live action in which I will invite people to interact with, either by listening or scanning or participating in an instance/stimulation of a speech platform/sphere or an instance of oral/vocal communication sphere. More specifically I would like to involve people in the process and the sphere (listening and scanning) that will be created. This sphere that people will participate could be a collective reading/conversation online, in radio and physical space. The purpose is the voice to be amplified in such a way that raises questions over the presence in public spaces (virtual,digital,online or physical).

How I want to make it:
Collection of material: listening, walking, scanning

-I want to make a radio/sound scanner carrying it with me as I walk in the city and transcribe everything I listen to (gossiping etc./like small antenna of Christina Kubisch listening to mobile phones of passengers/radio signals/noise). As a small sculpture of the moment of conversations in public spaces.

-Making antennas and listening to what is broadcasted in different frequencies. Directing the antenna with my body with the purpose to find the source.

-Developing scan tools and trying them out.

Experimenting with software and concepts
During my process I will realize small interventions and experiments that will support my project. Ideas for that:

-Ask to broadcast in an FM frequency where people can get connected and broadcast instructions that other people will follow somewhere else (O' Rourke pg. 125). In the same frequency people would be invited to speak or send recorded audio resembling phonemes. In the same frequency also the collected sounds could be broadcast.

-The text circulated in the digital sphere (social media, news etc) read/broadcasted (espeak?people participated to create phonemes?) live to participants while walking in the city. Choosing spots that have an importance (historical, political, surveillance spots etc) in relevance to my documentation and research.

-In reverse: sounds/voices/speeches of the electromagnetic-online realm being transcribed to a text that is shared to the public.(ex: Here While We Walk)/ the text becomes part of the walking

-Points of local networks, temporary spaces/platforms traced on the map, activating conversations, reading rooms?.

-Taking my research text into the archival material (texts, transcriptions, voices, speeches) and manipulate it with the tools that I will create

-Lines and antennas: to set up an antenna requires material, sometimes from the location. Physical location of antennas, range, traces, routes of people in attempt to direct an antenna

-Scanning my physical surroundings, speech recognition to everything. The representation of the street through is radioactive fields

-What about a platform for people to add voices, antennas, coordinates/ like a map (django?)

The steps I want to follow till December:

-Conduct more interviews and transcribe them

-prototyping scan frequencies

-prototyping with radio/antennas and webcast/broadcast and embroidered antennas (I can walk with them)

-documenting events, public spaces (where the electromagnetic, online sphere and speeches appear, surveillance spots, How the spaces are mediated and use tracking devices or software for communication)

-searching archives like city archive, Kootwijk history, radio communities

-search for technologies that are already made for surveillance and are related to speech recognition in the city

-interview people related to pirate radio (Reni Hofmüller)

-find references that are not so academic

-prototyping with mapping and lines (scripts of walking/coordinates to lines)

-prototyping with speech recognition

-Set-up a platform to document prototyping, writing, experiments in public. People can contribute to that. Comminication friction. leave a trace. Establish temporary platforms

-Collect bibliography

-Setting up questions

-Reading- Making abstracts

The reason I am doing that:
My initial motivation to do this project is (gender,educational,cultural) exclusion, that I have felt, in communication platforms like radio because of the exclusion in the technical knowledge of them. 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. My purpose is to redefine those mediums (like radio) by appropriate them in a way that follows up the "situation"/position (cultural, political) of a person. But also to subvert the use of speech recognition software and radio as a tool for control and war, misuse the errors of the tool for the purpose of using the voice as a medium for presence. There is also a public sphere (inactive in terms of political and social aspects) called radio amateurs. How the voice can circulate through it? It is a gendered space. With the purpose to learn for it and approach it (revealing legal,gender,cultural obstacles) I would like to write down all their words (able only for technical conversations and weather) and put them together with other material.
Generally, I want to dive into the in between space of media and physical landscapes. Regarding the expanses of public spheres in diverse spaces interesting networks are created that can stay active by circulating the knowledge produced by the people being involved. Knowledge is circulated also through the speech and the voice of people in internet, electromagnetic spheres, communication platforms in general and physical spaces. The small conversations/murmurings/gossiping spread around those communication platforms are making a public space, that differs from the public access in spaces as Saskia Sassen mentions and the big political, religion, institutional speeches dominating the public spaces. Seeing the documentation of these voices/sounds/speeches as an archive of collective memory, this material could be placed together on a way that proposes alternative of perceiving ourselves individually and collectively into those landscapes. It can also propose other ways of "publicness". As Ong observed in Orality and Literacy, the condition for a democratic social dialogue in oral cultures was the presence of people in the space and their oral speech and thus after many discussions and performative behaviours they would reach to a decision together or they would just share their individual identities and stories. At the same time peoples voices are used for the creation of phonemes that would help the "machine" to understand, recognize and imitate human voices, conversations. How political decisions affect those spheres?
The voice is carrying the culture, gender and other elements of a person and can represent her/him in another space than the actual location of that person. I am interested in the voice as presence in the public space through the absence of the body and for its power to be an initiator for public assemblies, where people interact and exchange through speech acts.

Who could help me:
XPUB gang, Reni Hofmüller ,Roel, Matt, Joanna,...

Previously:
I interrogated the language structure by bringing together people from different backgrounds and contexts to read, listen and write texts in a playful way that reveals layers and structures of the language. At the same time I keep being interested in how the tool becomes the output and reverse. I worked with collective writing, reading, speech recognition, collective annotation, collective reading and interacted with digital communities to construct the software. My way of working looks like an alien creature but weirdly make sense; I combine different unrelated (technically and conceptually) software with the purpose to follow the concept behind.

Larger context:
locative media, urban tactical media, hacktivism, radio amateurs, text as a social space, architecture and media, radio public sphere, tracking, speech recognition, speech More specific:

radio art, electromagnetic public sphere, platforms of communication and how to contest them, broadcasting and webcasting

mapping tools, walking practices

voice as a tool, speech recognition, transcriptions, voice in communication platforms

in relation to the above: interventions of text

Other keywords:
occupy movements, vernacular, misreading, tracing, platforms, phonemes, phonetics,temporality, local networks, databases and GPS/sql

OLD NOTES:
An attempt to:
Walking, parallel actions. Setting up local networks of writing and reading and working with programming. Reading rooms. Deconstruct research methodologies by collaborating together in the physical space while being in the cyber. Bringing conflictuous contexts together. How the language is an error, how projects with the language become a tool for communication and interrogation as a group, collective. Collaborating and communicating/antennas hardware. Hack the available medium into each instance/context I will be involved. Writing abstracts mostly and use them as a first raw material to experiment with. Working with software that seems related even if it looks irrelevant, like antennas software, speech recognition, local networks, python/nltk?, pirate libraries. While writing and prototyping I intend to interact with public spheres. I would like to try interact with contexts outside of my known area, like the art-initiatives in Philippines (already interacting) and Greece/Romania or local groups here and communities online.