Our introduction to Voice, Noise, Sound, and Sense\ncentered around a topic that has been recurring during this course: what is\nvoice? Being my first insight to the topic of sound studies, it stuck with me\nand was something I always connected our new topics back to. Before this class voice\nwasn\u2019t something I had really thought about. I knew on the most basic level\nthat voice is what we hear when people speak. I\u2019d heard of the mystical side\nwhere voice represents our soul and is a thing that separates us of from\nanimals\u2014something I now know comes from Aristotle. Still it wasn\u2019t a thing I\u2019d\ntaken the time to consider. Then in this class we read multiple examples of\npeople with well thought out opinions about what voice is. Barthes said, \u201cThe\n\u2018grain\u2019 is the body in the voice as it sings\u201d. Aristotle called voice \u201ca sound\nwith meaning\u201d, although he later spoke in great depths about the soul. We also\nlooked at projects and writings that challenged these opinions. My first\nwriting project for this class centered around reconciling different peoples\nwork and ideas about soul. Since then I have thought even more about voice for\nthe purposes of this class. For a while I thought that people were thinking too\ndeeply, and voice is just the sound that we make when we are communicating. I\nentertained the idea that voice was an outward expression of our inner souls. My\nfinal judgement falls somewhere in the middle. Now at the end of the course I\nbelieve that voice is an expression of our inner selves meant for communication\nin any capacity whether it be with others or ourselves\u2014although voice isnot necessarily representative of soul.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the first day of class we watched a video of Alvin\nLucier\u2019s sound experiment, \u201cI am Sitting in a Room\u201d. The experiment features a\nrecording of his voice being repeatedly fed into speakers as the feedback\ndistorts what he is saying a little more each time. This continues for\nforty-five minutes, with the phrases losing intelligibility at the\neleven-minute mark. The project is interesting because it disrupted Aristotle\u2019s\nand other\u2019s long-held notions about soul in sound. If the sound degenerated\ninto something completely non-sensical and non-human, did it still contain its\noriginal soul? However, my initial response to Lucier\u2019s project was colored by\nmy unfamiliarity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI found myself wondering why Lucier chose to go on\nfor so long. The difference between the sound made 30 minutes in and 44 minutes\nin wasn\u2019t that large. He said he \u201csmoothed out\u201d his words and showed the\nresonant frequencies of the room, but I\u2019m not sure I really understand the\npurpose of the exercise\u201d (Gilleland, Jan 14th<\/sup> response).<\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, I seemed unimpressed. However, this\ndisbelief was just my first reaction and my first writing project was more\ncarefully considered. In my first essay I switched from thinking that this was\nall being made into more than it needed to be and leaned in to the idea of soul\nin voice. I used the writings of Adriana Cavarero to reconcile the difference\nbetween Lucier and Aristotle, Barthes, and others who believed that soul was\ninnate in human voice. I argued that Cavarero\u2019s term \u201cinner uniqueness\u201d was the\nsame as Barthes \u201cgrain\u201d, which I\u2019ll go into deeper detail about later. I said\nthat \u201cthe \u201cinner uniqueness\u201d [in voice] that conveys that soul doesn\u2019t\nnecessarily come through in all speech\u201d (Gilleland, Writing project #1). So, I\nbelieved that soul is in speech, but it only comes through when we are being\nhonest. My quote that \u201csoul doesn\u2019t have to exist in everything humans say\u2014\neven though they do have souls\u201d is evidence that I did believe soul can exist\nin voice, but with the caveat that voice still exists without soul in many\ncases. So, although I consider what voice can be, in this project I never\ndefine what voice is. That\u2019s because that is a very hard thing to do. I needed\nto educate myself more beyond the work of Lucier, Aristotle, Barthes, and\nCavarero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Barthes was the first informative text I read about\nvoice. He tried to communicate his meaning through music. He says that human\nvoice is special because it has a \u201cgrain\u201d. This grain is \u201cthe very precise\nspace of the encounter between a language and a voice\u201d (Barthes, 505). In my\nwriting project I liken grain to \u201cinner uniqueness\u201d or \u201csoul\u201d. Barthes tries to\nconvey in writing \u201cthe impossible account of an individual thrill\u201d (Barthes,\n505) he experiences listening to music. It is the grain in a particular\nartist\u2019s harpsichord playing that he can hear intuitively and makes her music\nbetter than anything computer generated. This first text gave me the vocabulary\nto begin to discuss voice, but I find my final opinions align more closely with\none of our last authors, Mladen Dolar. Dolar\u2019s writings view the voice as a\n\u201cvehicle\u201d (Dolar, 541) for meaning. Dolar asserts that \u201cthe voice is the\nimpeding element that we have to be rid of in order to initiate a new science\nof language\u201d (Dolar, 542). The examples he used that made his meaning clear to\nme were how accent and intonation and characteristics that make us \u201caware of\nthe voice\u201d (544). Particularly accent can serve as an \u201cobstacle\u201d to gaining the\nmeaning behind a voice. Think about how a thick accent can make it difficult to\nunderstand someone. This instance serves as a clear example of how the voice is\na vehicle that we must deconstruct and look past to obtain meaning. Even if the\nmeaning is difficult or impossible to obtain, the voice is still there. Dolar\u2019s\nlogic classifies anything expressed that attempts to convey meaning as voice. A\nthird author that we read whose work circled around voice was Paul D. Miller\naka DJ Spooky that subliminal kid. In his book, Rhythm Science<\/em>, Miller talks about remixing and how technology\nblurs the lines of what voice is at all. A very provoking line in the book is\n\u201cthe voice you speak with may not be your own.\u201d In the digital age, it\u2019s easy\nto take other people\u2019s words and repurpose them for yourself. They then become\nyours, even if you didn\u2019t say them, using them makes them your voice. This\nsupports Dolar\u2019s conclusion that anything with a message is voice, regardless\nof if the message is received or if it comes from one person\u2019s physical body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Truthfully, as Dolar also notes, the vocabulary to\ndescribe voice is inadequate. This whole exercise is a futile attempt to put in\nwords something very internal. In our class we read so many different opinions\non voice and we were inconclusive about which is correct. However, I can speak\nfor myself and my final opinion. I think that if we are tolook at voice in a scientific way the idea of soul should be\ndiscarded. The word is too hokey for many to take seriously and ultimately\ncannot be proven. My final judgement is that voice is any form of communication\nthat has meaning, regardless of whether its intelligible or original. This\nmeans that voice can be in speech, writing, music playlists, animal\ncalls\u2014literally anything meant to communicate. Thinking about voice is\nimportant because its closely tied to our definition of humanity. I\u2019m not\nsuggesting that animals are human, but I am suggested that they be treated as\nhumanely as possible. Our conclusions about voice affect the way we treat all\nbeings. Our conclusions about sound affect the way we build our societies. To\nkeep evolving we should keep thinking about sound, voice, and how they affect\nus every day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Works\nCited: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Barthes,\nRoland. 1977. The Grain of Voice. In Image-Music-Text<\/em>.\nTranslated by S. Heath. London: Fontana Press. Pp. 179-89<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dolar,\nMladen. 2006. The Linguistics of Voice. In A\nVoice and Nothing More<\/em>. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pp. 13-32<\/p>\n\n\n\n Miller\naka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, Paul D. Rhythm Science. MIT Press, 2004. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our introduction to Voice, Noise, Sound, and Sense centered around a topic that has been recurring during this course: what is voice? Being my first insight to the topic of sound studies, it stuck with me and was something I always connected our new topics back to. Before this class voice wasn\u2019t something I had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-writing-project-4-remix-revise-reflect","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2018"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2019,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2018\/revisions\/2019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wri-101k-s19.andrewrippeon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}