Technology, Embodiment, and Affect in Voice Sciences

Abstract

This article is interested in ‘voice imaging’ as a technical field through which people experience new relations between organic and inorganic forms of life. Grounded in a study of voice imaging in historical and contemporary scientific research, the article applies and expands on Bernard Stiegler’s ‘General Organology’, with an eye to understanding the voice as a dynamic capacity for volition. By exploring the scientific research into voice imaging, the article argues that the voice, as a cultural image, is an imaginary organ that transgresses the boundaries of technological, biological, physical, psychological, social and cultural frameworks.

Voice audio methods

“…(Kanngieser, 2012, p.337) This paper builds on critical work rethinking voice in terms of its materiality, affects and more--than--representational potentials (e.g. Komulainen, 2007;MacLure, 2009MacLure, , 2013MacLure, Holmes, Jones, & MacRae, 2010;Mazzei, 2013;Mazzei & Jackson, 2016;Vallee, 2017aVallee, , 2017b. I argue that if we want to take these critiques of voice seriously in the practice of qualitative research, one way to do so is to work with ecologies of voice machines.…”

Breathing Song and Smoke: Ritual Intentionality and the Sustenance of an Interaffective Realm

“…In contrast to breath, the voice has been theorized in a variety of disciplines like acoustics, musicology, education, psychology, and of most interest here, philosophy (Dolar, 2006; Waldenfels, 1999), sociology and anthropology (Blackman, 2016; Crossley, 2015; Vallee, 2017), as well as ethnomusicology and sound studies (Brabec de Mori, 2013; Cummins, 2018; Eidsheim, 2015). Vallee asks us to visualize the voice as ‘an imagined organ’, assembled from its many foundational processes (muscular movements affecting the lung, larynx, tongue and lips, combined with thought and social implications).…”