Readings, Listenings, Viewings
John Luther Adams, Wind Garden and Wind in High Places.
Nina Katchadourian, “Natural Car Alarms,” “Talking Popcorn,” “Talking Popcorn’s Last Words.”
Radiolab, “Septendecennial Sing-along” and “Hello.”
R. Murray Shafer, “Listen.”
Some animals: Blu, Peaches, Max, Sparkie Williams, Alex, and a Fawn Breasted Bowerbird that lives by a construction site in Papua New Guinea.
Reflections
Bruno Latour, “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik,” in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (pp. 14-41).
Dominic Pettman, “The Creaturely Voice” and “The Ecological Voice,” in Sonic Intimacy (pp. 51-78).
R. Murray Schafer, from The Soundscape (pp. 88-91).
Questions
Throughout the semester, we have been thinking about the human voice; sometimes, the voice as distinctively, even definitively human. What happens to our understanding of it if we explore the boundaries between our voices and the voices of other species, even of other things? How far does the metaphor stretch—the voice of the wolf, of the wild, of the earth—and indeed, is it merely a metaphor? Among the readings, Shafer and Pettman are on point with our vocal preoccupations. Latour is not talking directly about voice, but he has an important modern philosophical project to enfranchise things—to give them a voice in politics. So, our concerns with what animals and things sound like will continue our questions last week about voice, representation, individuality, ability and disability.
Exercise
Undertake a vocal collaboration with an animal or a thing. The collaboration can involve a living animal or an actual thing, in real time, or a recording. Plants count, for our purposes—indeed anything counts that is not a human being, so long as you can get it to speak (or perhaps we should say, give voice). One way or another, the collaboration should test the question of whether, in fact, animals or things have voices; and/or whether voice, or some aspect of voice, is a way of distinguishing us (us?) from them (them?). As usual, your submission can take the form of text, audio, video, or some combination, and as usual, it should be accompanied by 200-300 words of comment on what you have done and its relation to the week’s reading.