User:Angeliki/Grad-thesis-chapters

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In this chapter I will elaborate on the right on public speech and media practice of transcribing and live streaming that facilitate it. Since the beginning of the human culture the auditory experiences were important for communication and sharing of knowledge. The sound of voice has a strong impact on the people and the spaces where is projected. It is very related to sharing and participating on present time. Speech-making workshops and public assemblies are some examples of the use of voice in public for resistance or empower of the voiceless. Today even though our communication is mediated the need for the embodied voice in public is still important. But how the media technologies influence that?

essay 1- voice in public

The freedom of speech in public is a common right among most of the democratized countries. Though social, cultural and political restrictions are clamming up groups of people. One example is strategies of the state on surveil citizens through cameras and police when organising public assemblies or public speeches. Also, social hierarchies that excludes women from the public spheres and the division between private and public sectors allow the domination of specific voices. There is an urgency for use of voice and speech as important mediums of presence and resistance. We can see that in the occupy movements and the demonstrations against measures of austerity. Today our voices are mostly mediated through different communication platforms and our presence is not always necessary but these technologies are fascilitating a public speech to be spread and being present in the public.

point A: the importance of voice and body in the public

According to Hanna Arendt the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people (public assemblies) and it is a civilized way to respond to violence. Suffragettes' speech-making workshops was a way to provide women with tools “with which to take their concerns out into the public domain” (Rose Gibbs, 2016). They focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker and doesn’t apply to the abstract and bodiless universality of western thought. Even more, the voice through speech (songs, protest) connects one another in a group and at the same time keeps the individuality of the speaker. In contrast to mainstream political spheres the feminists, like anarchists, were looking for horizontal ways of communication were no voice was dominating over others. The speeches of African American women, in the first part of 19th century, were very intense as they were tolerating a lot of violence because of their gender and nationality. The brave speech of Sojourner Truth, "Ain't I a Woman?" was one of the first speech acts of women in public of that time. She made that speech after gaining her freedom and she became well-known anti-slavery speaker. I will elaborate on that speech later.

The philosophical western thought, based on Greek philosophers, supports the division between private and public domain. In the public space everybody should be civilized and resolve conflicts through dialogue but the inside of private spaces is ruled by a domestic power where violence is permitted. For feminists the speech in public is externalizing the personal violence and suppression of women. This separation has reached to a point were men are the main operators of politics in the public space. But the division is also between politicians and citizens, natives and immigrants. Alternative ways of communication hidden in the private domains have been created in response to that. Gossip, for example, "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). It is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for them.

Saskia Sassen (2012, p.) observes that in the cities today a big mix of people coexist. The ones who lack power can make themselves present through face to face communication. According to her this condition reveals another type of politics and political actors, based on hybrid contexts of acting and outside of the formal system. The urban space hosts several political activities like squatting, demonstrations, politics of culture and identity that are visible on the street and non dependent on massive media technologies. This brings the conversation to the Speaker's Corner, "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). This practice was very crucial in Occupy Movement ¹. Anyone could be a speaker and be heard by the people surrounding her/him. In the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were not permitted in the city and the crowd could bot listen clearly to the speaker ¹. But "when the technologies above them are removed somehow, the foundational elements remain embedded and embodied in our cyborg bodies and brains" (Pages, 2011). The participants of #occupy used the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that the crowd would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. There the voice played an important role in the spreading of the speech to the farest points of the public space. "Even given that many of the participants of #occupy are in full possession of smartphones, verbal address to the crowd from a singular source is still important" (Pages, 2011). This is an intersting fact of the public space of today. Even though many new technologies exist the public space seems to exist in a more primitive face to face communication and bodily expression under the context of public assemblies.

point B: restrictions and surveillance in european countries on public assemblies.

This restriction of use of technology to the public for amplification of speech is not the only one that prevents people from creating public assemblies. It's somehow controversial when the citizens have to ask for the use of technology in public spaces but the states install surveillance devices in the streets and squares and gather data of them without their concent. I looked for what is happening in the countries I have lived in or surround me and I found several restrictions regarding public assemblies. In Rotterdam, in a specific area where a market of immigrants is being held, there is a ban on public assembly: "In problem areas, the Local Ordinance (Algemene Plaatselijke Verordening) allows municipalities to proclaim a ban on public assembly. Originating from the 2000 European Football Championships held in Rotterdam, it continues to be in effect on the Afrikaandermarkt. Although previously legitimated by anti-hooliganism, it is now enforced due to anti-terrorist concerns" (Free House, no date). Besides local bans on the name of 'public good', in some cases surveillance with several technologies and devices is applied. The installation of these devices in the public space conflicts with the constitution. Examples of such technologies and practices that surveil public assemblies are the operation of CCTV cameras and the collection of personal data through videotaping and photogtaphing. In the case of UK the state use "visible, overt police surveillance tactics in the context of political assemblies" (Aston, 2017, p. 1) on a way that tresspass the privacy rights of the protesters. Similarly in Greece, the "electronic surveillance of public assemblies has been a controversial topic in the Greek public arena, particularly during the parliamentary discussion of Law 3625/2007. This Law exempted all police activities involving data processing during public assemblies from their obligation to protect the fundamental principles deriving from the rights to privacy and data protection" (Anthopoulos, 2011, p. 59).

conclusion

The constitutions allow the right for free speech and public assemblies. But surveillant tactics from the state through police, data practices and media technologies affect the presence and the development of free political spheres in public spaces. There is a contradiction between the highly tech state and the low tech citizens in public. The oral communication becomes important for resistance and presence in the cities of today. Feminists are using voice as a resistance medium and in the Occupy Movement the voice of the crowd becomes the medium that spread the message to the square.

essay2- public speeches with the aid of media - its potentials and 'expansion' of public spaces

The use of communication technologies and social media in movements and public speeches has contributed to their preservasion and their distribution. According to Sassen (2012, p.) in movements like #occupy these technologies were intensively discussed concerning their unrealised potentials. There is a confusion between the logic of the technology designed by the engineers and the ones of the user. Facebook for example is used for spreading the word of very diverse collective events even if they have different aims and ideologies, but they focus in communicating rapidly something. She proposes to see this “electronic interactive domain” as a part of the larger ecologies beyond its technicality and redefine them more conceptually. “Radio and television have brought major political figures as public speakers to a larger public than was ever possible before modern electronic developments. Thus in a sense orality has come into its own more than ever before.” (Ong, p. 135). While a public speech can be "amplified" online, the use of any sound amplification equipment in the physical space (squares, streets) is not always permitted. That makes the public space a primitive space for oral communication.

Point A: live streaming as a rabid and urgent communication of public moments

In a contemporary context public speeches are happening in both physical and digital spaces with the help of several media like internet (podcasts and live streaming) and radio (community radios). In the diverse media landscape individuals or groups can easily form and communicate speeches happening in a physical space by themselves without being dependent on a newspaper, publisher or state. In the occupy movements known and unknown public speakers would spread their message to an audience by standing in a public square. This action followed the principles of the Speaker's Corner. "Speakers’ Corner symbolises the kind of forum for debate sought for today’s post-industrial, highly mediated cities, encouraging face-to-face interaction and real-life conversation, albeit arranged by people texting each other, recorded by shooting and uploading video on YouTube, reported on twitter or documented on face book" (Speakers Corner Trust, no date). What I find interesting is that those people because of their multilayered relation to technology are able to spread the words and make them viral in internet. This process is also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces. At the same time there is a temporarity in this action as platforms in internet are constantly changing or disappearing. So, the events and speeches are appearing in fragments of videos, transcriptions, conversations in forums. It is more like the users, protesters are leaving traces online. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos of the Occupy Movements the crowd is using a lot of media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers. From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of the media technology with the presence and resistance in public. "Celebrities, politicians and organizers of events (...) soon discovered that streaming services offered by Ustream and the other leading start-up provider, Livestream, could help expand their audience online. Now, the huge amount of user-generated live video produced by the Occupy Wall Street movement has delivered what could be a watershed moment for these companies, potentially helping them gain the audience needed to become viable businesses" (Preston, 2011). But other businesses found live streaming successful after that, like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and users distribute easily live videos from terrorist attacks or demonstrations.

Point B: Trascription as a witnessing object

The act of transcribing have been used as an evidence and archive of a public moment of a speaker.Today automated speech recognition tools are also used for transcribing speeches and conversations with the purpose to establish the distribution of the message of the speaker. What is the importance of this practice for the speaker and the public which refers to?

Transcribing is a way to keep record of speeches. Sometimes these records work as evidence of a live public moment of the speaker and become points of contention. In 1851, even before the invention of sound recorders, the political speech of Sojourner Truth 'Ain't I a Woman' was transcribed by Marius Robinson (U.S. National Park Service, 2017) and published in the Anti-Slavery bugle. Twelve years later Frances Gage made another version, not accurate, with distorted parts and in a slave accent. The last trascription, that was published in the New York Indepedent and became famous, was manilulated and altered the speech of Sojourner giving another impression of it to the public. This written material was an important fact and medium of her speech and the distortion of it had effected the public opinion.

Transcritpion has been being a witnessing object of interrogating the position of a political leader. Private conversation or speeches of political leaders have been leaked out to the public in the past revealing secrets of politicians to the citizens. Hacking tactics have been used as a response to that proposing ways of eavesdropping back to the powerful. Such transcriptions have leaked out to the public without the consent of them. WikiLeaks is an online database of official materials involving war, spying and corruption. In 2016 somebody released Hillary Clinton's closed-door paid speech transcripts through WikiLeaks. The transcripts became a big subject of contention and strarting a conversation between politicians during elections time. Another example comes from 70s when a dialogue of President Richard Nixon with his cancellors revealing a conspirancy leaked out to the public. Their telephones were bugged. The transcripts of their conversation are called the Watergate tapes and are "the most famous and extensive transcripts of real-speech ever published" (Pinker, 1995, p. 222). In this case the transcript was not only an evidense of the bad intentions of a political leader but also an document that shows how a speech is written down verbatim, making Nixon look like an everyday person.

In the first example a black woman who was a slave followed the antislavery and women rights movements made a speech that in that time its distribution was dependent on big names. Today the speech of the weak is more easily distributed by the public because of the variety of mediums. In a youtube video of Angela Davis giving a speech about general strike in Occupy Wall Street the auto subtitles of youtube assist the viewer to watch the speech in a more complete form. The transcription is happening from an automated engine and has the format of subtitles, which means that includes the time frames of the video. That gives another/ digital dimension to a speech held in a physical space. At the same time a version of human transcription is made and is added as a note in the youtube page. It was pasted in Pastebin a platform that provide fast documentation for plain text. The text can exist independently from the video open to everyone, having the possibility of being used in the future for any reason. This collaboration of the different formats and mediums of spreading the speech is making the message more powerful for a bottom-up approach.

Conclusion

Public speeches of today are mediated with open technologies that can support bottom up practices. Companies like facebook take advantage of that need and they develop these tools further. In further essays I will elaborate on this condition and symbiotic relationship. The tools apply to the urgency and need for rapid communication of this public moment. A need for parallel presence in multiple public domains that will tresspass the mainstream mediums. Transcribing can also be a practice of resistance like live-streaming. It prioritize listening to each other while recording down the actual words. It depends on the actions of repeating and copying as a machine would do.

Conclusion of chapter

The constitutions allow the right for free speech and public assemblies. But surveillant tactics from the state through police, data practices and media technologies affect the presence and the development of free political spheres in public spaces. There is a contradiction between the highly tech state and the low tech citizens in public. The oral communication becomes important for resistance and presence in the cities of today. Feminists are using voice as a resistance medium and in the Occupy Movement the voice of the crowd becomes the medium that spread the message to the square. Public speeches of today are mediated with open technologies that can support bottom up practices. Companies like facebook take advantage of that need and they develop these tools further. In further essays I will elaborate on this condition and symbiotic relationship. The tools apply to the urgency and need for rapid communication of this public moment. A need for parallel presence in multiple public domains that will tresspass the mainstream mediums. Transcribing can also be a practice of resistance like live-streaming. It prioritize listening to each other while recording down the actual words.

In conclusion the voice is a powerful tool of externalizing social struggles in public and depends on the presence of others. This face to face communication in public spaces is still valid today that the communication technology is spread in every part of our life. The high technology used by the states to control the bodies in public confronts the daily technology used by the users/citizens. In further discussion that will happen in my project I will explore and nake public the potentials of this electronic domain in relation to our presence in public spaces.

Notes

<a name="myfootnote1">1</a>: It is an international movement since 2011 for social and economic justice and new forms of democracy with meetings in public spaces

<a name="myfootnote2">2</a>: "In NYC, a sound permit is required in order to use these devices in public, and the police may, or may not grant the permit" (NewYorkRawVideos, 2011, note)

Bibliography

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Coomes, P. (2015) ‘The home of free speech’, 15 May. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-32703071 (Accessed: 4 December 2018).

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Sassen, S. (2012) ‘The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition’, in Panos Kouros and Elpida Karaba (eds) Archive Public. Performing Archives in Public Art, Topical Interpositions. Cube Art Editions, pp. 185–199. Available at: https://archivepublic.wordpress.com/texts/saskia-sassen/ (Accessed: 26 September 2018).

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