The subject of this essay is the usage and context of the voice in contemporary
uban society. The author describes the way in which the technology of communication
has diffused the essential qualities of the human voice . The unmediated
voice has become a rare example of the corporeal experience of communicating.
Particularly, the forms of telephone and radio transmission are interrogated
in their relationship to the voice. The author uses examples of her own
work to describe in terms of the physicality of sound and the individual
voice in the public space.
"the only major channel of communication that actively vibrates inside the body . . . sound is felt in addition to being heard. It is . . . a way in which we possess others and are possessed by others." (1)
The voice is the most immediate mode of sound transmission, directly from one body to another. When we hear someone's voice we recognize instantly (albeit subconsciously) how the sound is being produced. We read a series of physical cues, or more succinctly, we "sense" them, receiving the information into the body of the listener even before the brain. We convey from a universal palette of inflection, accent, and emotional meaning into the ear and body of the individual.
Is the immediacy of the human voice to be found within contemporary urban society? Can this corporeal experience of emitting and receiving sound be translated through the various modes of technological mediation that we are subjected to daily such as radio, telephones, or anything amplified through a microphone? Or has this process become an insignificant social convention relegated to a past era, making us, as a society, sonically desensitized?
There are at least two significant trends in contemporary culture that address the issue of vocal transmission (immediate or mediated). One is that of disassociation from the body. The "cyborg" has been implanted into the vernacular. Ethical questions in fields ranging from genetic engineering to synthetic reconstruction to cosmetic surgery revolve around the genus of the body. Gender has never been so ambiguous, and race and age are becoming less determining features of the individual. The second trend is that of the fading of geographical or physical space in the contemporary psyche. The entire planet has become readily accessible through a computer network, although sensory cues are still restricted largely to the visual. The easiest way to describe cyberspace is through its abstract quality--through transcendence of the body, for better or worse.
Sound, conversely, exists within physical space. There are very real parameters that define this space such as the distance and speed, resonance factors and so on. The hackneyed question of the tree falling in the forest, in fact, illuminates the acoustical truth that sound waves are no more than mere vibrations unless there is a receptacle such as an ear to receive them. Equally important is the element of time that continually reminds us of the physical reality of sound.
For many who have grown up in rural surroundings, there was always a guide to the shape and scope of the environment through sensitivity to sound. To hear a clap of thunder rolling across the horizon was to be reminded of the full breadth of one's surroundings. For many musicians, the experience of sound has always been primarily physical. That is, before the emotional stirring caused by Barber's Adagio for Strings, the intellectual admiration for Schoenberg's Verklärte Nachte, there was the basic impact of sound on the body. There are accounts of people's first conscious memories of the effects of slow, soothing tones or the impact of heavy, driving beats on the body. Eager parents subscribe to the practice of subjecting the foetus to early classical music lessons. The Romantic concept of absolute music, restricted solely to the intellectual where no metaphor exists, only sound, holds little ground here.
"A singer's voice sets up vibrations and resonances in the listener's body . . . . The listener's inner body is illuminated, opened up: a singer doesn't expose her throat, she exposes the listener's interior. Her voice enters me, makes me a "me," an interior, by virtue of the fact that I have been entered. The singer, through osmosis, passes through the self's porous membrane, and discredits the fiction that bodies are separate, boundaried packages. The singer destroys the division between her body and our own, for her sound enters our system." (2)
Within the world of technopop music, the voice has entered the "system" of electronically produced and controlled instruments not necessarily of its own accord. The practice of sampling the voice has become a standard compositional device. Taking a "bite" or a small quote of a person's voice and placing it in an unnatural context (ie. repeated too quickly to be humanly possible) is now a commonly accepted practice and holds almost no novelty to the listener. Clips of the passionately emoted phrases of Dr. Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou are repeated rhythmically over dance tracks. Of course it is a positive thing to increase these accessibilities, but at the same time we are becoming accustomed to the automation of the human voice.
Recently, my voice was recorded as the principle ingredient for the musical composition accompanying a virtual reality project employing a multi-million dollar budget. Curiously, nothing was budgeted for the performer's fee or even the stock material of the human voice. The "grain" of the voice seems to be too ephemeral for the corporate world, a product so difficult to contain and identify that a market value can't be established.
The digitized voices of telephone information systems such as directory assistance and multi-levelled menu systems seem to produce an alienating effect on most callers. We tend to feel helpless in these structures, resentful of being tricked into thinking we have some flexibility or control by that cheap replica of a human on the other end. And yet we are forced to comply, submissively obeying the commands in order to get the simple task done. The most recent automated systems include a space or "window" for the caller's voice to be inserted with specific responses. "For what city do you require information?" The interview proceeds under the illusion of a life-like conversation between caller and information service. In reality, the operators are being spared a few levels of initial questioning and rerouting in the name of expediency. Instead of providing a convenience for the caller, a technological facade has been created not unlike the antiquated computer card system in which spaces are created for specific pieces of data, and anything slightly deviant will not fit into the holes and the whole system will fail to proceed.
Since the telephone is based on a technological structure charged with the task of mediating rather than producing messages, it is interesting to note that the operator's voice is nearly exclusively female. What is still dubbed as the "women's work" in the passive stance of transferring information is a remnant of a popular conception tagged by AT&T's slogan "The Voice with a Smile" from the 1930s through the 1950s. (3) Without delving too heavily into the issue of gender and voice, one is reminded of Simon Frith who was among the first to remark on the distinction between boys' and girls' music cultural experience. (4) Boys have typically been interested in hi-fi music and in instruments while girls have been more drawn toward singing. These stereotypes are far from reliable since the widespread popularity of all-girl bands and the emergence of the riot grrl movement of the eighties. The representation of women in the field of electroacoustics is steadily growing. And finally, within the telemarketing industry, there is also a current trend of hyper-attention to the issue of male-female representation. The Voice with a Smile now appears in both genders.
This once was a human voice, and now is not. What is it that has been taken away...the soul? Surely the voice encompasses more than just the sound formed in the larynx. Doesn't everything have a voice? Isn't it simply the channel through which everything speaks? Do computers have voices? Then have these disjuncted and fabricated vocal messages become the voice of a computer, in that they speak of the computer's logic, the company's policy and nothing else. These are voices that can say only what they have been programmed to. They are voices without the capacity to really hear anything other than the programmer's repertoire. Essentially I am suggesting that the human voice is an intelligent and responsive interface through which the body and mind communicate to other bodies and minds, unlike the modes of automated communication that are dangerously imitative of the real experience.
The telephone, at the same time, maintains a privileged relationship with voice. It is an important medium for transmitting exclusively audio information. By virtue of this it is an instrument associated with intimacy, with direct communication. It is often used to transmit an emotional or psychological message---not a good medium for hard facts and precise details. It is the channel from one mind to another, and generally free of the distractions of either party's personal backdrop. This is what makes the voice a more powerful instrument as the sole transmitter of this information. The kind of information that is being conveyed must also be slightly different when directed at a focused ear without eyes. Knowing that the receptors of ear and mind are tuned differently, are reading cues differently, a whole other language is set in motion. Maybe this is why we find the automated operator's voice so disturbingly unnatural.
We have come to accept a specialized style of vocal shorthand through answering machines. Many of us are often secretly relieved to be engaged in a game of telephone tag because it can be so efficient and easy to respond to each other in a series of quick messages. Some kind of pressure is off when there is no real voice to have to respond to. The system of etiquette is already in place which dictates that it is exceptionally bad form to leave distressing or highly personal news on someone's machine instead of waiting to speak in person.
We have learned to rely heavily on the phone in this era of telecommunications, and have been taught (possibly by the phone company) to adapt it into our social morays. In the age of AIDS, people are increasingly reluctant to delve into physical contact and have become more reliant on other means. Perhaps this is what has led to the tremendous success of the telephone-based social scene. "Tele-personals" ads are perceived as a much more efficient and relatively safe way to find a mate than in nightclubs. What seems to be becoming an outmoded pleasure principle of raw physical attraction is now considered by many to be foolhardy. The voice represents the last vestige of the body as a physical characteristic or reference to an individual's personality. People call out into the dark void of telephone party lines, looking for another interested, attractive voice to respond to. They rely heavily on their ability to communicate verbally to attract the other, listening for their sonic cues to detect interest, sensing in the darkness what lies behind the voice.
Radio is a voice unto itself...sound is transmitted from a small, private space (the sound studio) through the air waves, via super-audio waves actually, into a small box called a receiver, not unlike the human ear. Since the medium is exclusive to sound, visual cues are left to the imagination of the listener and the voice is all important. The radio drama or hörspiel has a distinct quality that often conveys what the visuals of the theatre can never reproduce. The format of the radio show can be easily interpreted through the dj host's style and intonation of speech. A louder, clearer voice implies a daily informational show while a softer, more breathy voice speaks of emotional, personal issues. We tend to think of radio as having a live quality, that voices are passing through the airwaves and are gone again (although in reality most shows are recorded and catalogued). But this direct transmission that makes things seem more fleeting and spontaneous is curiously like normal un-mediated vocal production, ie. speech .
Radio employs a technology that has been far surpassed by other more efficient, powerful media. Yet many of its users remain faithful to it, even faced with the availability of user-friendly supertools. Pirate radio has long been associated with political subversion and community based information. In 1993, Margaretta Darcy created a feminist station undermining Ireland's anti-abortion laws, breaking strictly enforced broadcast regulations. (5) It has been an effective device of revolution and its more contemporary counterpart, community radio is committed to the democratization of communication, the "gaining a voice" of underrepresented groups.
The physicality of radio is very conducive to the corporeal experience of sound because of the reality of only being able to transmit a certain distance. It's reminiscent in that way of an unamplified voice. In terms of subverting the contemporary notion of cyberspace and virtuality, radio is entrenched in the real and physical. It is a relatively low technology that adheres to fairly rudimentary principles of nature. The constraints of low-watt transmission: ie. distance, obstacles, and weather variability are all things that make one aware of the inherent physicality of the medium.
There are radiophiles who chase after the natural transmissions of the planet that have existed long before we had developed the technology to hear them. With special very low frequency radio receivers, they seek out the atmospheric radio noises created with electromagnetic energy often caused by lightning. These are a range of clicks, pops, and eerie whistles that "natural radio" listeners record and exchange with other enthusiasts.
My own installation pieces called sonic choreographies with low-watt radio transmission address issues of territory and physical space. In 1995, The Counting Game was commissioned to be performed for the inauguration of the Vancouver Public Library. The composition and choreography referred specifically to that architectural structure, and the placement of each singer was a function of the acoustical aspects of the site. The music was composed onto 24 tracks of a digital editing system and then mixed into a soundtrack which was broadcast to the portable radios of 100 choral singers. They sang the choral part to the piece (in four parts) for which the transmitted soundtrack was their musical accompaniment. They moved throughout this large public space in many configurations, producing harmonies, echoes, and other sonic effects that could be heard differently from each spectator's vantage point. Radio, in this case, served as the indispensable unifying factor, linking singers and listeners across physical distances that would normally make performance unfeasible. Because there was no stage, and hence no conventional performer/audience rapport the listeners did, in fact, wander through the crowds of singers, experiencing unlimited versions of stereophony. There was a tremendous enthusiasm from the performers about the liberating experience of vocalizing in a public (but in reality, highly prohibitive) space. The spectators were also undeniably touched by this bold display of the individual voice within the public forum.
Having spent most of my life as a singer, I have been and seen others deeply attached to the phenomenon of sound produced in the body. The other facets of my work have now allowed me to objectify that relationship somewhat. I have accepted students who have come to me with no prior knowledge or interest in singing whatsoever, but simply expressed that they felt a profound and desperate need to learn to vocalize. Working with individuals on freeing the voice can result in both emotionally trying incidents and liberating epiphanies. It has been illuminating to see the great extent to which body tension manifests itself in vocal restraint.
I think of the voice as an effective delineator of territory and that we can create and assert our own personal space with sound. An important part of what I've been trying to determine as "voice" with students is, within that emitting, a kind of simultaneous capacity for hearing as well. Establishing listening skills is essential so that the voice is a whole entity with both a yin and yang. As we are learning to project ourselves we must be sensitive to the personal space or "sonic territory" of others.
To say that technology alienates us from the voice is far too simplistic. Certain forms can actually help to keep us in touch with what is essential in the voice. How do we maintain that critical element of the human voice through its mediation by technology? How do we ensure that the human voice remains a channel through which the individual speaks? This is as much the responsibility of the listener as the transmitter.
Référence: http://farben.latrobe.edu.au/mikropol/volume2/kennedy-k/kennedy.html