Readings, Listenings, Viewings
Laurie Anderson, “O Superman.”
Holly Herndon, “AI Baby.”
Alvin Lucier, “I Am Sitting in a Room.”
Radiohead, “Fitter Happier.”
Reflections
Joseph Auner, “Sing It for Me: Posthuman Ventriloquism in Recent Popular Music.”
Dominic Pettman, “The Cybernetic Voice.”
Questions
The last two weeks, we have considered voices from contestable sources, animals and instruments; this week we strike out into the very contemporary territory of digital voice processing and voice synthesis. Electronic voices will put our definitional questions to one final test. If, as Maestro Dudamel suggested, all music aspires to the condition of voice—why alter that voice? How far can it be changed, and in what ways, and still be ours? Can a machine have a voice? (Putting pressure both on ideas of expression, and of individuality.) How might the potential of digital processing allow us to experiment with aspects of voice that seem natural, including gender? Majel’s TC-Helicon VoiceLive Touch has a gender knob. We’ll try twisting it.
Exercises
Two this week. 1) Prepare to talk briefly, i.e. 2-3 minutes, about your final-project-in-process. We’ll spend the second half of class sharing them with one another, to get some preliminary feedback, generate and develop ideas, possibly do some casting, etc. 2) Send us, by 9 AM Tuesday, an artificial voice you’re interested in. It need not be one you have made yourself, nor is any commentary required. We just want an anthology to work with when 1:30 rolls around, some voices we have never heard.