Introduction

Abstract

The introductory chapter asserts that voice studies does not make a claim to a given definition of voice, but instead suggests the limits of any one claim. Voice studies offers tools to better detect the values underpinning any definition of voice. It deconstructs not only the performance of the voice, but also the performance of claims to voice. Thus, voice studies asks questions that necessarily connect practices of and inquiries into voice. In our definition, what distinguishes voice studies as a whole from each of the many individual and overlapping strains of scholarship and inquiry that center voice is that it seeks to understand or interact with voice knowledge beyond the potential narrow confine of a defined area of inquiry. By synthesizing the myriad ways voice is conceptualized and researched into the broadest terms, the chapter arrives at six broad modes, or domains, of voice inquiry and explains these in detail. The domains are: (1) prompts; (2) product and performance; (3) material dimension and mechanism; (4) auditory/sensory perception; (5) documentation, narrativization, and collection; and (6) context. These modes are not mutually exclusive; they often overlap, and this is only one of many ways this material could be conceptualized. Ultimately, the chapter seeks to facilitate dialogue and collaboration between voice researchers, and hence facilitate voice studies research. The chapter also offers a brief overview of the voice studies from 1990 to the present, and gives brief chapter summaries.

Ground truth tracings (GTT): On the epistemic limits of machine learning

“…At best, the messiness of voice was selectively grappled with as technical wrinkles that needed to be formalized into an ML problem. For the majority, however, folk theories of voice and listening or what Eidsheim and Meizel (2019) refer to as “vocal imaginaries” appeared to be sufficient in informing the industry-wide justification around the importance of voice as the “next frontier” of AI and ML.…”

Information from sound: exploring sounds and listening in information practices research

“…While engagements with voice and speech have been understood elsewhere as taking many forms, involving various sound characteristics, modes of listening, and affective, social, and political associations (Eidsheim and Meizel, 2019), few information-related studies involving orality discuss sonic characteristics or ways of listening. Recent research exploring the listening practices of audiobook users has highlighted various listening modes, the complexity of related interactions with information (e.g., Tattersall Wallin, 2020), and the involvement of sound-related information, such as the sonic characteristics of narrator voices, in shaping meaning-making (Lundh, 2022;Tattersall Wallin, 2022).…”

Technology, Embodiment, and Affect in Voice Sciences

“…Likewise, Nina Eidsheim (2015) asks for a ‘reawakening’ of the senses through a consideration of voice, not as sound but as the ongoing exploration of our own understandings of sound in vocalization. And with the recently published edited collections on voice studies that explicate the voice’s liminalities, relationalities, and embodiments (Eidsheim and Mazzei, forthcoming; Thomaidis and Macpherson, 2015), it appears as though we are in another interdisciplinary ‘turn’, which includes reconceptualizing voice within the context of Deaf culture (Levitt, 2013), temporal in-betweenness (Järviö, 2015), puppetry (Mrázek, 2015), displacement (Chatziprokopiou, 2015; Di Matteo, 2015), with further explorations of such voice- and body-related topics as ‘resonance’ (Sholl, 2015), ‘vibration’ (Dyson, 2009), and ‘echo’ (Vallee, 2017). In effect, ‘voice studies’ represents a non-unified field and a profusion of perspectives, including those who (a) describe the ‘affective materialities’ of voice by proposing the possibility for incorporating its timbre, tone, duration, and pitch into discourse analysis (e.g.…”