User:Angeliki/Grad-thesis-essays

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki
< User:Angeliki
Revision as of 16:39, 12 February 2019 by Angeliki (talk | contribs)

Title

  • Voluminous bodies
  • The volume of female voices
  • Knowing and inhabiting with your voice
  • Amplifying a collective female voice
  • The sounds of
  • feminism
  • Amplified voices
  • Embodied streaming/amplification

Research question: How voice occupies space and reveals dark aspects that (its mediation) can be anything else than harmful for the establishment of a democratic society.

Introduction

The last years my ongoing concern lies on the presence of the female voice in public. During my previous studies I gradually realized how my gendered body had been silenced or marginalized through slight gestures from male figures or institutional powers that were obfuscating this situation. Observing, as well, female members of my family, female teachers, workers and immigrant neighbors of my early age environment I found out different types of marginalization and silencing. Examples would be women working at home or the background of a family, taking care of everything in and leaving behind their own desires, men interrupting them when articulating arguments in a political/formal dialogue, underestimating their knowledge. The mediation of their voices and the way they were becoming present, active participants and visible in public spaces and spheres became one of my main interests. My past projects reflected and responded to that concern. I worked with voice and sound. As forms of art are underestimated in the context of the western visual culture. They are forms connected to irrational attitudes and primary oral cultures. The sound of voices reveals hidden suppressed aspects and subjects of the society. Because of its temporariness, non-linearity, invisibility and borderless character long sounds text sound can exist and transit in multiple dimensions of spaces at the same time, creating bonds between them. Oral cultures of all times, that are based on vocal expression, differ from the literate cultures in that they embrace the collective sharing of knowledge. More specifically they create "personality structures that in certain ways are more communal and externalized, and less introspective than those common among literates" (Ong, 2002, pg. 67). Feminists have been including and embracing voice in their practices because there is a uniqueness in it that embodies the speakers and their personal stories while connecting the ones being present. Together with this concern I was also dealing with the separation of amateur and expert when I was approaching telecommunication networks and technologies with the intention of learning to build and use them. This separation goes together with the gender exclusion. I quickly found out that this is not my personal problem. In the example of an activist collective, called Prometheus, volunteers expressed similar concerns in the barnraising of a radio station:

"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).

In one of my projects, Sound Acts in Victoria Square I 'inserted' the recorded sounds of women’s voices into existing conversations at a public square in Athens that was male dominated. Most of the frequenters were immigrants and refugees from different periods of migration to Greece. They were coming from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Albania, Georgia, Russia and others besides Greece. The gender bias and the way they used the public space differed according to their country of origin. However it was common that many of the young women visiting the square were just passengers with shopping bags or kids around them. The men, on the other hand, were hanging out with their friends, occupying many spots of the square for hours. My intervention was like that; first, I realized and recorded actions of conversations, within two months, with women I met in the square, as well as archived and ordered the collected material. Then I planned and realized the in-situ broadcasting of the collected sound material and directed the new relations and conversations with the public for one day in June 2015. The intervention lasted for some hours and different people, mostly men, were participating in conversations that would include the women's voices or not. Their voices came from a past time of the same place, when they were physically present. At another time only their words were there and 'participated'. From my description of the project: "The broadcasted female voices were abruptly intervening into the existing conversations in the specific places, giving the impression of an non-invited 'absent' guest" (Diakrousi, 2015, pg. ). They were distant voices. I and the speaker were mediating them in the current public.
My ongoing research after that lead me to the public forums and public speeches and the technologies that facilitate them, always with a feminist perspective. This thesis is a series of 5 essays which relate to the female and collective voice and its mediation. They address the voice as a feminist tool for communicating and an object of presence and inhabiting space. Historically, some modes of addressing have been marginalized and shut out of the public domain (see the monstrosity of female voice). The separation between private and public space has played an important role in that as it reflects and it is related to the gender separation. The collective voice is marginalized under the realm of the patriarchal individualistic society. The female voice is part of it. The texts deal particularly with the voice as a medium for collective practices (see the monstrosity...). This collective vocalization affords the amplification and multiplication either with the aid of technology or embodied practices (see Multiplication vis a vis amplification) that refuses the dominant ways of establishing presence and dialogue. In the patriarchal democracy there is a fear of ugly forms of address which are connected to the female body- blood, birth, death, mourning &c- and other dark aspects and passions that are perceived as threat for the society. These are forms of vocalization that are excluded public discourse which centers on “self-control” and “reason”. Such things are creating noise and disorder and "have to be kept" silent according to the patriarchal norms. But alternative mediums and forms of communication have been developed against that (see transmitting ugly things). There are technologies for self-control and filtration. The men are taught to disport themselves in particular ways and they are taught to teach the women to be silent. In the current era we see how technologies serve to filter forms of collective voices; again this aims to reduce “noise” and thus to exclude (see Let’s talk about unspeakable things).

Transmitting Ugly Things

you are part of the stream

What ugly things and the medium

Marginalized people are vocalizing things that are unacceptable for the society, unspeakable, political incorrect, emotionally overwhelmed, disorderly. They are too personal, too emotional, too embodied. Carson in her text explains how the direct mode of address of women's voices is annoying for the patriarchal society since Ancient Greece. A woman would expose her inside facts that are supposed to be private data. Examples of these facts would be emotions that reveal pleasure or pain either from sexual encounters or the birth of a child. "By projections and leakages of all kinds- somatic, vocal, emotional, sexual- females expose or expend what should be kept in" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129) and this reveals the fear of society for death, blood, darkness, birth, the female body. This direct continuity and linkage between the inside and outside has been a threat for the human nature and society as it is not filtrated through the rational toll of human, the 'speech'. A human nature that is though defined by the dominant norms. It has been established that our inner desires and needs have to be expressed indirectly through speech and in the case of women through their men’s speech. It is very common that women stay inside home when their men come out to the streets to protest or talk about their family concerns (Kanaveli, 2012)[example]. There is a connection of sound and voice with externalizing our inside facts. One of the principal characteristics of sound is its unique relationship to ineteriority. According to Ong (2002, pg. 69) "[t]his relationship is important because of the interiority of human consciousness and of human communication itself".
One ugly form of addressing in Ancient Greece was an utterance, a high-pitched cry, called ‘ololyga’ and it was a ritual practice of women (more in 'Monstrosity...'). This is still valid in countries like Greece or Middle East and it is related to mourning. In their rituals women were also talking offensive bad things under the context of 'aischrologia'; a process in which a woman would freely discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city. A more recent one is 'hysteria', introduced by Freud, that expresses the psychic events within the woman's body directly to the outside of the body. Female is associated with the bad things of the collective memory. Gossiping is another form of address that reveals secrets that should have stayed hidden. It is an alternative way of communication existing in the private domains and has been created in response to the exclusion of speech in public. Gossip "provides subordinated classes with a mode of communication beyond an official public culture from which they are excluded" (The Gossip, 2017, p.61). But even in Ancient Greece this form was annoying; Plutarch tells a story about how a secret is spread fast by women creating chaos and ruins, in contrast to men that are keeping themselves from revealing it (Carson, 1996, pg. 130).
Other ugly things are the private and hidden events of family violence. For feminists in the early 20th century the speech in public, in a group of other women sharing the same problem, was a way to externalize the personal violence and suppression of women, without using violence in response. Protesters, respectively, talk collectively about the unfair economical and political structure of the society either by demonstrating or occupying public spaces. All these examples are not following the rationalist approach of the context they are part of. They express passion, vulnerabilities and unfulfilled desires with their voices and presence. The idea that democracy is a civilized way of taking decisions that doesn't accept any form of over-emotion or overflow of expression, is nothing more than an illusion. An illusion that threatens the existence of democracy by creating exclusion and disregarding the importance of passions and desires in politics. As Mouffe (2013) says, "[i]f there is anything that endangers democracy nowadays, it is precisely the rationalist approach, because it is blind to the nature of the political and denies the central role that passions play in the field of politics." Thus democratic processes should take into consideration any irrational fantasies and desires that the public express. Their suppression may lead to repressed pain, fanaticism and totalitarianism.

Streaming media in relation to female continuity

In the ancient medical and anatomical theory women had two mouths, the upper and the lower, connected through a neck. The lips of both of them guarded the “hollow cavity” (Carson, 1996, pg. 131) and they had to remain closed. Having two mouths that speak simultaneously is confusing and embarrassing and this creates ‘kakophony’. Females were expressing something directly when it should have been told indirectly. This direct continuity between the inside and the outside is repelling for the male nature that aspires the self-control which interrupts this continuity and dissociates the inside from the outside (Crason, 1996, pg. 131). They 'transmit' unfiltered information. At this point I would like to draw parallel lines with the streaming media that has been used as a tool of direct and urgent communication for protesters like in the case of the Occupy Movement. Similarly with the continuity I described before streaming protocols and processes are delivering unedited live messages that sometimes don't agree with the mainstream current public opinion. In Occupy Wall Street for example streaming media, like Livestream, Ustream and Youtube stream, was a way for the protesters to be heard in public fast and broadcast their own news online ("Multiplication..."). Thus, experts or official media platforms could not filter their speech and alter the message before they spread it online. The companies providing online streaming wouldn't agree with the action and message of the #occupy and thus they would publicly differentiate themselves from them. "Both Livestream and Ustream officials say they simply operate platforms and are not supporting the movements. They have made some adjustments on their platforms and provided some extra resources to accommodate Occupy movement video. Mr. Haot removed advertising from the Occupy channels after some brands complained that they did not want their ads appearing next to streaming video of protesters"(Preston, 2011). Similarly radio streaming has been a way for activists, protesters, artists, citizens to share their own news and music [example of wartime radio. Women in Afghanistan]. This unaltered and direct speech of (radio/streaming) broadcasting [(Ernst, 2016, pg. 104) more from his text] have similarities with the non controlled direct expression of the female bodies in public (like 'hysteria', 'aischrologia', 'ololyga'). There is a fear of continuity related to the message that comes out unedited from the inside of the human container and their channels. My assumption comes to introduce an 'embodied streaming' that relates the medium with the human body based on the need a message to be articulated and distributed to others. Live streaming provides the opportunity for a body to be present somewhere else almost live through the voice or a video representation. There is a small delay, the transmission delay [more on that].

Terms of the embodied streaming: >channels, flow, unedited, live, source, distribution, protocols, delivery systems [more]


[Explaining the structure of streaming in relation to the structure of female continuity in the beginning of the paragraph: Streaming online depends on protocols that can stream directly or indirectly filter with TCP]

For an agonistic streaming [streaming media in relation to voice and gender and Hot media]

This uninterrupted continuity shows us that what is important is not the last message but what is happening right now at present and what practices of democracy are emerging while being in the flow. It is like the 'agonistic' model of democracy of Chantal Mouffe in which there is not an external power that filters it and no time for thinking about future utopias and realities but what is happening now. It gives space to the conflicts to happen naturally. Streaming media reflects a sense of liveness and presence. There is no time to reflect or edit the message [Clara and pauline oliveros mediation, workshop at tender]. The audience receives the message directly from the proprietor and can see clearly who is broadcasting, what is the source, how it looks like.[text of chronopoetics] The democracy of agonism accepts all the ideas, thoughts and concerns on the table. [Through a healthy conflict...]

Conclusion

The marginalized modes of address share concerns that seem uninteresting or bad for the Western formal and civilized society, that supports a democracy rooting in the Ancient Greek politics. Because of their ugliness, they are suppressed and accused as ugly forms, then filtered and censored before they been expressed in public. They share unfiltered, unedited messages that overpass the rational sphere of speech. From my perspective the medium used by these modes reflects their character. They are based on instant and urgent communication, liveness, "hit and run" approach (from Multiplication...). Today streaming media is used constantly by protesters or citizens for broadcasting news by themselves that are not censored by the government. Streaming media is characterized by the distribution of unfiltered data, the sense of liveness and the continuity (direct distribution) of the message. In this essay I wanted to highlight how the use of streaming media and the concept of streaming in general can be related to these 'ugly' forms of mediation. How these kind of media transmits 'ugly' things, according to the rational society, that marginalized people need to communicate for establishing their own voice and find space for their own desires. These ugly things may subvert, also, the formal society. I think that the acceptance of continuity and direct mediation can facilitate more democratic processes. As "the prime task of democratic politics is not to eliminate passions or to relegate them to the private sphere in order to establish a rational consensus in the public sphere. Rather, it is to 'tame' those passions by mobilizing them towards democratic designs" (Mouffe, 2013). Focusing more on the media that allow/facilitate this process to happen can open possibilities and alternatives of democratic processes. The embodied streaming suggests a resistance with our unfiltered/uncontrollable mediated present selves/bodies.

The Monstrosity of the Female Voice

What modes: the annoying noise

In Ancient Greece there was a mystification around the high-pitched voice that was connected with the evil. The human nature, as defined by the patriarchy, differs from the other animals' nature on the ability on articulating the sound and creating the ‘logos’ (speech). In the primitive stage of consciousness "the brain was ‘bicameral’, with the right hemisphere producing uncontrollable ‘voices’ attributed to the gods which the left hemisphere processed into speech" (Ong, 2002, pg. 30). It was since the figure of Odysseus has been appeared that these voices didn't matter any more and the self-conscious mind got established. Through 'logos' humans can develop dialogue and democratic processes of communication and decision making. All the other forms of expression are wild and not rational, including sign language [example?] and the 'hysterical' exposures of women [more detail on describing why the noise is annoying]. Aristotle and his contemporaries believed that the vocal sound is based on the physiognomy, the genitals, of a person and that is why men speak in a low pitch. The high-pitched utterance of women, called 'ololyga', which was a ritual practice dedicated to important events of the life, like the birth of a child or the death of a person, was considered as a 'pollution' to the civic space. They were annoying sounds. If they were expressed in public they would create chaos and craziness. In mythology, when Odysseus awakens in the island of Phaiakia, he is "surrounded by the shrieking of women (...) and goes one to wonder what sort of savages or super-natural beings can be making such a racket". These women were Nausica and her girlfriends that are described by Homer as "wild girls who roam the mountains in attendance upon Artemis" (Carson, 1996, pg. 125). Similarly Alkaios, an archaic poet that had been expelled from the city, where public assemblies were taken place, was disgust by the presence of women’s voices talking 'nonsense'. In the ancient world women were excluded in the margin, the dark and formless space were speech and thus politics were absent. This disorderly loud female noise was related to a non civilized wild space and a political incorrect sound. It seems like these 'uncontrollable voices' of the primitive human got related to some modes of addressing that were reminders for the past condition of the human brain, judging it as bad influence.
Today women in public life worry if their voice is too light or high to deserve respect. Thus radio producers and politicians, like Margaret Thatcher, are trained to learn how to speak in public, deepen their voice and being taken seriously as a male speaker would do. Carson (1996, pg. 120) observes that the female voice in public is related to madness, witchery, bestiality, disorder, death and chaos. An thus has to stay hidden from sight.
These are some words used to describe how the female voice sounds like since ancient times according to the text of Carson: >high-pitched, loud shouting, having too much smile in it, decapitated hen, heartchilling groan, garg, horrendous, howling dogs, being tortured in hell, deadly, incredible babbling, fearsome hullabaloo, she shrieks obscenities, haunting garrulity, monstrous, prodigious noise level, otherwordly echo, making such a racket, a loud roaring noise, disorderly and uncontrolled outflow of sound, shrieking, wailing, sobbing, shrill lament, loud laughter, screams of pain or of pleasure, eruptions of raw emotion, groan, barbarous excesses, female outpourings, bad sound, craziness, non-rational, weeping, emotional display, oral disorder, disturbing, abnormal, "hysteria", "Not public property", exposing her inside facts, private data, permits direct continuity between inside and outside, female ejaculation, "saying ugly things", objectionable, pollution, remarkable

Mechanisms of marginalization

The mechanisms of marginalization of these specific modes of addressing are based on control and filtering. One example is the repetitive action of self-control that comes from the ancient tactic of controlling the emotional exposure of one's self. Carson (1996, pg. 126) says that patriarchal thinking on emotional and ethical matters is related to ‘sophrosyne’, self- control of the body. A man is feminized when he leaves his emotions come out of his mouth and so he has to control himself and his body. "Females blurt out a direct translation of what should be formulated indirectly" (Carson, 1996, pg. 129). It was believed that the masculine deep voice, by default, indicates self- control. So the doctors of archaic periods would suggest exercises of oration to men to cure the damage of the daily use of loud and high-pitched voice. This means that they would practice public speech so to learn how to filter their insides when they come outside. In addition to that the low-pitched voice would be the right one to use in public assemblies so to be taken seriously.
The female version of this term was perceived more as a way for men to silence women when they get loud or scream of pain or pleasure. Because they weren't able to control themselves by nature that was related to all the other animals and the primitive human stage. Silencing of women, the female ‘sophrosyne’, had been an object of legislative arrangements in the ancient world. Women didn’t have the license to express their ‘noise’ in specific places and events and there was a also a restriction over the duration, the content and the choreography of their rituals in funerals so that they wouldn’t create chaos and craziness. So, women’s public utterance restricted in cultural institutions expressing nothing more than a self- fulfilled prophecy. But there was a form of curing the women and city from this. These unpleasant tendencies of them had to stay hidden from the men’s view because were annoying, non-human and disorderly. But in Dionysian festivals the task of one selected woman would be to discharge the unspeakable things on behalf of the city, that was called ‘aischrologia’ leading to ‘katharsis’, which means the 'clearance' of the soul. She was free to express all these weird noises but only then and for the shake of the society. ‘Aischrologia’ (pg.132-133) seems similar to the therapeutic practice of hypnosis by Freud, who was aspiring this ancient idea, on hysterical women. Their emotions, the unspeakable things, were polluting their inside and ‘talking cure’ or otherwise ‘katharsis’ would help them. 'Talking cure' of Freud was about channeling these negative emotions through politically appropriated containers, through 'speech'. [The silencing of women has to do also with the interruption of their voice when they express an argument in a dialogue and men are participating in it (Interview Cristina?).]

Shut out of the public: Separation of public and private space

Ancient Greek thinkers had set the gender binary and its reflection in the space. According to Kevin Fox Gotham (Ελιάνα Καναβέλη, 2012), territorial restrictions, identities and meanings are negotiable, as they are defined through social interaction and controversy. Thus the space is the material of the human action and the outcome of the social interactions. The philosophical western thought, based on the ancient social structures, 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. 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, experts and amateurs in rhetorics. The representations of gender and space are not immutable but they consolidate dominant realities because of their repetition. The outside space has been historically connected to the male gendered subjects. Public spaces has been turned in gender constructions that privatize men and female subjects are expressing their needs and desires through them. The social life of the latter is restricted by the housewifization and the private sphere of the house.
The dominant notion that men are the main operators of public sphere together with the idea that women are vulnerable and weak lead to the normalization of fear of women in the outside space. Their presence in inappropriate and dangerous spaces is their responsibility. The idea that women are excluded from the public space because of the male violence doesn't mean that men are excluding women. There are complicated power relations that create that exclusion. Freedom of speech relates to the political participation and in theory everyone can have it but in practice unwritten rules and power relations define what is going to be said and from whom. The factor of fear intervenes in that. These rules construct the public sphere and restrict female subjects in expressing harmless speeches. The voices and speeches of women in public are directed to “non-listening ears” and they remain silent. [example of syrian wartime radio]

The Roots of the Collective Voice

The voice is a medium for collective practice. According to Ong (2002, pg. 67), "[o]ral communication unites people in groups. Writing and reading [of literate cultures] are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself". Orality that is thought and verbal expression not based on writing and reading skills has still a presence in the contemporary western cultures. It has been transformed in a new orality that "has striking resemblances to the old in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a communal sense, its concentration on the present moment (...) But it is essentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality" (Ong. pg.13). However, the rational individualistic democracy stands against this collective vocalization that includes the sounds of all the other species and marginalized genders. But mainly it is a reminder of the primitive human mode of addressing that creates alienation and feelings of fear of looking back in our nature.

Conclusion

The association of the female voice with bestiality and disorder justifies the tactic of patriarchal culture to ‘put a door’ on the female mouth since the ancient times. Different mechanisms have been developed to exclude specific forms of addressing from the public that are based on complicated power relations. Collective and female vocalizations are perceived as threat for the society and are undergoing filtration and 'normalization'.


Multiplication Vis a Vis Amplification

The mediation of voice through multiplication

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. Since the beginning of human societies there was a need for gatherings and sharing of knowledge through verbal communication. Today the agonistic dynamics of the primitive oral thought, that have affected the development of western literate culture, have been "institutionalized by the ‘art’ of rhetoric, and by the related dialectic of Socrates and Plato, which furnished agonistic oral verbalization with a scientific base" (Ong, 2002, pg. 45). That is were speech acts are coming from. The presence of the bodies in a speech act provides a layer of trust and safety. [text of butler on public forums]. These bodies with their voices create and inhabit the space they are part of. That way they materialize their needs. 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, state or other institutional power. In the Occupy Movement 1 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 symbolizes 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). It is "the home of free speech, where anyone can get on their soapbox and make their voice heard" (Coomes, 2015). Anyone becomes a speaker in a public street or square and can be heard by passengers by. Part of the occupy events would be public speeches often by philosophers, writers, academics, resistant figures on the spot of the occupied space. The audience would may be very big and thus an amplifier was needed for the voice of the speaker to be heard to everyone. However, in the case of the Occupy Wall Street, amplified sound devices, like microphone and megaphone, were only allowed outside in the public spaces when a special permission from the municipality was given 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 became the 'human microphone', as they call it. This means that all together would repeat the words of the speaker for the benefit of those located in the rear. "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). The public space seems to exist in a more 'primitive' and embodied expression for the ones that lack platforms of representation. Saskia Sassen (2012, pg. ) 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. Kanaveli (2012) says that something that is visible and can be heard is reality and can create and give power. Site specificity is also very characteristic in these cases.
From my point of view, the Occupy Movement revealed a lot about the relation of the media technology with the presence and resistance, as an amplified process, in public. What I find interesting is that those people because of their multilayered relation to technology, like social media, are able to spread the words and make them viral in Internet. As it can be seen from the Youtube videos of the #occupy the crowd is using a lot of different media technologies, like their smartphones, to record or stream the words of the public speakers in Livestream platforms. This process was also a way to archive and make public bottom-up initiatives in public spaces in diverse networks. At the same time there is a temporariness 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 as many traces online as possible, fragments of resistance. The multilayered communication of the events is like an urgent and fast multiplication of them in different forms and spaces [more]. The use of all these media doesn't require any special skill and the presence of an expert is not required. So mainstream media journalists are not needed for the news to spread to a wider public. This also means that the message is not edited or altered by a big company. "With cellphones, iPads and video cameras affixed to laptops, Occupy participants showed that almost anyone could broadcast live news online. In addition, they could help build an audience for their video by inviting people to talk about what they were seeing" (Preston, 2011)

alt text Multiplication could be seen as a way of parallel and multiple presences in diverse private and public places. Internet, “[r]adio and television have brought major political figures as public speakers to a larger public than was ever possible before modern electronic developments” (Ong, pg. 135). There are two ways of multiplication in the above examples. The one is through a unified collective voice and the other one through spreading the words as a spider net. The 'human microphone' resembles the first examples of collective voices in public, which is the 'ololyga', the female collective utterance (see 'Monstrosity...'). Even though may not be a direct expression of resistance, it was an alternative temporary and informal [not specialized] mode of address that was suppressed and used only for specific occasions that were acceptable by the society at that time. The second case reminds me of the very ancient practice of gossiping [example of gossip-based algorithms/ Gossip protocol/ peer-to-peer communication]. It has a negative connotation especially when connected with women [text of Federici]. However sometimes this is more an attempt to claim and exchange knowledge when there is no platform for them that practice it. The Internet and social media have the same baton effect and even though this is misused by mainstream political voices, it also serves the voiceless [examples and images].

The mediation of voice through amplification

In some occasions the amplification of the voice, as a mode of prohibition and presence, becomes possible both literally and metaphorically [definition of amplification]. This means that somebody can amplify their voice with the use of microphone so to strengthen the signal on the spot, and at the same time to make themselves loud and present so to be heard over the dominant ones. Foe example microphonic demonstrations in Greece, that are antifascist events, occupy a public square for a couple of hours using speakers, microphone or megaphone broadcasting music and speech.[Relatively nazi soundscapes with the megaphone and the van/the history back]

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) or in other words to amplify their voices in public. Speech was a civilized way to respond to violence happening inside homes. Feminists focused on the voice because there is a uniqueness in it, that embodies the speaker when entering a dialogue. It is an approach that rejects the abstract and bodiless universal identity of one's person, that has been developed by the western thought. By such identity I mean that one person is represented as a universal entity that shares the same characteristics and problems with all the people. So this person is represented by somebody else, like a politician or another member of the family, in a conversation concerning her/his body. But according to the feminist perspective, each one is unique and carries personal and situated problems and principles, so they are the only one that can represent themselves. Arendt () observes that the speech becomes possible with the existence of a group of people. Even more, the voice through speech- that can take the form of songs passing from one to the other or the collective voice of protesting- links one another 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 (Gibbs, 2016). Listening and wait everyone to speak, even the most shy ones, is a basic element of this kind of practices.

In the examples of radio art and pirate radio activism the temporariness and site-specificity of these actions- of prohibition, sharing of knowledge and communicating through voice- were tangled with the materiality and specificity of the medium. [In an interview I had with Reni Hofmüller it was a hit and run action...the radio station was a fragile hardware. Text of Dunbar]
Since 1920 the radio was criticized as a wasteland of commercials and state propaganda. It was Bertolt Brecht that perceived it as transceiver to experiment with and questioning its use and Walter Benjamin [more on Benjamin text] who noticed that it will be a failure as long as the separation between practitioners and public dominates it. From early on, tight regulations restricted the electromagnetic public sphere so that artists didn’t engage deeply with its elements and it was constantly seen as “an unrealized and undertheorized social and aesthetic space” (Kanouse, pg. 87). Only pirate radio practiotioners, with their low-tech practice and self-broadcasting, could interrogate the public, critical and political aspects of radio, as Brecht and Benjamin would imagine. Kanouse sees the use of prohibited technologies and the confrontation with these restrictions as a political act. An act that can propose an “anti-authoritarian radical democracy” (Kanouse, pg. 89) through the formation of small groups that learn to broadcast and produce alternate media cultures. An unlicensed broadcast can challenge what public art wants to; the creation of a public sphere willing to interrogate the “democratical” public space which is part of.
She brings the example of a project, called Talking Homes by John Brumit, that was realized under the residency of Neighborhood Public Radio (little NPR) arts collective of Detroit. The inhabitants broadcast personal stories through transmitters located in their houses and other buildings, revealing the struggle and the daily routine of these people living in degraded neighborhoods. The interviewers were trained by the artist to use their transmitters. It seemed that the exposition of the private sphere, reflected in the localization of the media and the gossiping produced, to the public re-framed clearer the struggle for the neighborhood than the big radio programs. The engagement of the public, which was not the privileged audience of art spaces, was deep even if the broadcast may have been illegal. The people felt safe and trusted the unfamiliar technology to them only because it was a certified technology (by FCC [define]) and didn’t bother for the more technical context about radios and frequencies. The project aspired the spirit of NPR that was characterized by the smallness, site-specificity and listener’s participation. Even though these small transmitters have not many listeners because of their small range, NRC sees that as a way to link people and thus negates the separation of practitioner and public mentioned before. The little NPR, in contrast to National Public Radio (big NPR), embraces amateurism on the base of “polymorphous” [ref to Kanouse]. In other words it embraces the instability, diversity, discomforts and the contradictions that produces.
The second project that she talks about is The Public Broadcast Cart made by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, that is a portable home-made radio broadcasting the voice of the one driving the cart in several places. The voice of the participant becomes public on site through speakers and extends to radio frequencies and the Internet. The legality of the radio cart doesn’t concern the present public and the unusual object attracts even more their attention. Based on the open source and pirate radio spirit, this offering of access to the technology refuses the specialization and the prohibition of the airwaves. The parallel expanses of the voice and the uncensored speech in three different public spaces occupies at the same time the physical, on-line and electromagnetic realm. The DIY electronic media empowers the individual and collective voice.

cars together playing the same frequency. Similar to multiplication https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=28&v=GC8MIa98f-E, https://www.a-n.co.uk/events/temporary-local-broadcast/, http://www.tadeosendon.com/temporary-local-broadcast/

The technologies, amplification devices, that relate the embodied and the distant voice enhance the presence of the person carrying it. They give the ability to be here now and at the same time elsewhere [Heidegger, in Being and Time and elsewhere]. The mediating role of all kinds of media, that detach the voice from its physical proprietor, enables "its circulation in places and contexts in which physical bodies may not have access" (Panopoulos, no date) and enables others to listen to that speaker even if they are not sharing the same space. The medium still creates bonds between them and channel for sharing knowledge, it always relates us to the absent other through the sense of listening.[Telephone Book, Ronell]

In Syria, while in wartime, a group of people that wanted to broadcast their own news for the safety of the citizens and the avoidance of more killings set up a radio station that was against the current state. The programs would include war and urgent announcements, tutorials for medical care, music and others. The station, that was called Radio Fresh 1, stopped to exist in 2016 because of a sudden intervention from an extremist Islamist group, Nusra. While it was on the air the male initiators invited women, that are mainly hidden in their houses, to produce their own programs. Some group of women decided to go and first learned vocal techniques. They then broadcasted their own music and speech but after a while Nusra was threatening them for closing the station if women don't leave. "Nusra considered their voices shameful, a form of nakedness" (667: Wartime Radio, 2019) similar to the political nakedness that Carson referred to in her text. The voice of a woman is like her naked body, private data that she should be ashamed to expose. But isn't that also related to the political nakedness that the female voice has? This kind of male extremist groups aspire that women cannot articulate any political speech. After these threats these women were helped to technically transform their voices from female to male.

Conclusion

The mediation of all these marginalized forms of voicing (see "Monstrosity..." ) is happening in conditions that escape the traditional ways of the main public platform, which is male and expert dominated. The collective or individual concern of the ones that lack power is spread through different ways of mediation of their voice that overpass the mainstream and dominant modes. In my essay I separated the examples of amplification and multiplication but in conclusion these two terms are easily mixed together. All of them have in common the localization, the small scale, the refuse of prohibition and specialization, the participation and presence of people and temporariness. In this essay I will present examples of such practices. But they also have in common the spirit of oral cultures that are based on presence and vocal expression though they exist in a contemporary western context that differs from them. As Ong (2002, pg.13) says, “[a]t the same time, with telephone, radio, television and various kinds of sound tape, electronic technology has brought us into the age of 'secondary orality'”

Index

Absent Voice

Agonism Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agon, "struggle") is a political theory that emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict, but seeks to show how people might accept and channel this positively. For this reason, agonists are especially concerned with debates about democracy. The tradition is also referred to as agonistic pluralism.

Amplification to increase the strength or amount of. Especially : to make louder. A figure of speech that adds importance to increase its rhetorical effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplification Democracy

Female Voice high-pitched, loud shouting, having too much smile in it, decapitated hen, heartchilling groan, garg, horrendous, howling dogs, being tortured in hell, deadly, ...........craziness, non-rational, weeping, emotional display, oral disorder, disturbing, abnormal, "hysteria", "Not public property", exposing her inside facts, private data, permits direct continuity between inside and outside, female ejaculation, "saying ugly things", objectionable, pollution, remarkable (from Carson)

Individual empowerment

Invididual/Collective

Mediated Voice

Embodied To incarnate, to incorporate

Mediate Occupy a middle position

Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy and writing are unfamiliar to most of the population

Past/Present Voice

Public Space is the space that hosts collective decision making activities, democratic processes and freedom of speech. Though many contemporary public spaces are controlled spaces that exclude many modes of address. Big corporations and states are defining the public space and it is more a space of consuming and public access instead of a free space for expression. This space refers to either physical or digital (Sassen...). There is a big separation between private and public spaces that has been established since the ancient philosophy.

Public Speech is the ability to talk in public about individual or collective concerns

Speech is the rational human way of expressing personal stories, opinions. It is what differs human from animals according to the patriarchal principles on human nature (Carson...)

Streaming Media A real-time process. Delivery systems inherently streaming (e.g. radio, television, streaming apps/hot media) or inherently non-streaming (e.g. books, video cassettes, audio CDs/cold media). Live streaming is the delivery of Internet content in real-time, as events happen, much as live television broadcasts its contents over the airwaves via a television signal. Live internet streaming requires a form of source media (e.g. a video camera, an audio interface, screen capture software), an encoder to digitize the content, a media publisher, and a content delivery network to distribute and deliver the content. Live streaming does not need to be recorded at the origination point, although it frequently is. There are challenges with streaming content on the Internet. If the user does not have enough bandwidth in their Internet connection, they may experience stops, lags or slow buffering in the content and some users may not be able to stream certain content due to not having compatible computer or software systems.

Streaming refers to the process of delivering, it is a steady current of a fluid, a technique for transferring data so that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream.

Transmitting is the act of passing, communicating, sending, to spread from one to another

Voice is the vocal sound that comes from the inside of the body and articulates speech


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)

<a name="myfootnote3">3</a>: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/667/wartime-radio

Bibliography

  • ‘Φύλο, φόβος και δημόσιος λόγος - Βαβυλωνία | Πολιτικό Περιοδικό’ (2012) Βαβυλωνία, 25 February. Available at: https://www.babylonia.gr/2012/02/25/filo-fovos-ke-dimosios-logos/ (Accessed: 26 November 2018).
  • Benjamin, W. (2008) The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 01 edition. Translated by J. A. Underwood. London: Penguin.
  • Berry, D. (2011) ‘Real-Time Streams’, in The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age. 2011 edition. Basingstoke New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 142–171.
  • Carson, A. (1996) ‘The Gender of Sound’, in Glass, Irony and God. First Edition edition. New York: New Directions, pp. 119–142.
  • Chantal Mouffe (2013) ‘Politics and passions: the stakes of democracy (2002)’, in Martin, J. (ed.) Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony, Radical Democracy, and the Political. 1 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, p. chapter11.
  • Diakrousi, A. (2015) Empowerment of Gender Voice. Sound Acts in Victoria Square. Design Thesis. Tutor: Panos Kouros. University of Patras, Department of Architecture. Available at: https://issuu.com/angelikidiakrousi/docs/victoriasoundacts (Accessed: 8 February 2019).
  • Dunbar-Hester, C. (2014) ‘The tools of gender production’, in Bijker, W. E., Carlson, W. B., and Pinch, T. (eds) Low Power to the People: Pirates, Protest, and Politics in FM Radio Activism. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp. 53–68.
  • Ernst, W. (2016) ‘Experiencing Time as Sound’, in Chronopoetics. London ; New York: Rli, pp. 99–121 (102-111).
  • Federici, S. B. (2014) Caliban and the witch. 2., rev. ed. New York, NY: Autonomedia.
  • Kogawa, T. (2008) ‘Radio in the Chiasme’, in Elisabeth Zimmermann et al. (eds) Re-Inventing Radio. Aspects of radio as art. Frankfurt am Main: Revolver, pp. 407–409.
  • Lilja, M. (2017) ‘Dangerous bodies, matter and emotions: public assemblies and embodied resistance’, Journal of Political Power, 10(3), pp. 342–352. doi: 10.1080/2158379X.2017.1382176.
  • Ong, W. J. (2002) Orality and Literacy. 2 edition. London: Routledge.
  • Preston, J. (2011) ‘Occupy Movement Shows Potential of Live Online Video’, The New York Times, 11 December. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/business/media/occupy-movement-shows-potential-of-live-online-video.html (Accessed: 6 December 2018).
  • Schafer, R. Murray (1993). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Rochester: Destiny Books
  • Rose Gibbs (2016) Speech Matters: Violence and the Feminist Voice, Institute of Contemporary Arts. Available at: https://archive.ica.art/bulletin/speech-matters-violence-and-feminist-voice (Accessed: 3 December 2018).
  • Tetsuo, K. (no date) ‘Minima Memoranda: a note on streaming media’. Available at: http://anarchy.translocal.jp/non-japanese/minima_memoranda.html (Accessed: 12 October 2018).
  • 667: Wartime Radio (2019) This American Life. Available at: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/667/transcript (Accessed: 5 February 2019).


Revisions

23-1-2019
5-2-2019

Retrieved from "https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mw-mediadesign/index.php?title=User:Angeliki/Grad-thesis-essays&oldid=141027"