Before jumping to this journal on feedback collectives and group user test. I want to take a moment to reflect on two conversations that I spent with Eric Parren on my thesis development. I truly appreciate and enjoy talking to him as a mentor in the area of artist and sound expert. The most recent one we spent together on mid April. Our discussion emphasis on the practical size of my project, possibility, execution and form. During a zoom call with him on this topic of voice, as well as when I shared experiment #2 with Andrew and Ellen a day before. The opportunities of zoom performance emerges as one of the options, as Eric refers to a “voice doctor”, with costumes and everything that in service of the audiences. The level of instruction, automation and manipulation will contribute to the impression of the work. Which is such a fun experiment to do however I wonder if an experience like this will be induced for self reflection and transformation to happen? I don’t have an answer to this however I do think the “process” we spoke on the previous journal is an important user journey to offer. There are many other options that we spoked about that are beneficial to be built on a foundation of p5 to driver and automation to the work. Which they are 1) web experience (most likely mixed down spatial audio to binaural audio/3D audio), 2) physical sound experience (spatial audio, literally four+ speakers around you with spatial experience) or 3) some kind of hybrid of web-physical-sound experience.

I went back to one of the earlier conversation, Eric suggested me with an idea of hearing a gradual transformation immediately after reviewing my topic and my #2 experiment. At this point, looking back to this advice, it certainly echos many feedback I got with interviews and feedback givers. With more discussion of his experience of liking his local effects in radio studio setup. I sort of explained it in hearing us in a voice makeup. There is sth has to do with a narcissistic effect of identifying oneself in an enhanced body (distant body) like one sees in photo shootings. Perhaps recognizing ourselves in the altered voice, we heard something about ourselves. We heard the reminiscence to our voice just as the voice we heard when we speak, a kind of filter that our brain does to ourselves.

In the first conversation. we continue more with the discussion and I found we are leaning toward a concept he brought up when we first met, a Janet Cardiff’s Fouty Part Mortet installation powered by voice. An oral speech therapy or SHOWERING, lol. Where he also pointed out a simple diagram using p5, web audio multichannel function and audio interface plus speakers to amplify voiced sound in space. We touch upon repetition in music listing and sound experience and he brought up Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting In A Room. It is a wonderful piece of sound perception transformation where I am finding similarity to my updated experiment #1. On the other hand, it is important part of the user journey to know what audience will say in the first place and what are they gonna listen to in the experience. In Alvin Lucier’s work, a sentence is very powerful already where it mixes with the resonance of space and evolves to become a pure sonic experience. To my topic. is there going to be a prompt to offer or it is highly open to play with? If I were to offer a sentence that is meaningful, what will it be? How can I make it strong experientially and metaphorically or even physically? 

For Eric, a sound installation and experience by its own is sufficient cuz it’s such an innate and intuitive curiosity of hearing our own voice. He mentioned that even without other visual support, a screen to look at or higher metaphorical meaning to the piece. There is a strong tension around hearing our voice and it is not long ago we were be able to do so. However we still have something that is stopping us from listening to it. Hence he highly recommend me to go for pure sound experience in order to go closer to my topic.

At the end of this conversation, he showed me Diana Deutsch’s Musical Illusions and Phantom Words. It’s so interesting to hear that a melody is been perceive with a recording of voice. With the repetition, it is becoming more and more obvious to perceive that effect and fact. Hence changes our perception of voice sound. On the contrary, Adam Neely’s How to turn viral videos into jazz fusion shows the other way around to force cadence to happen in a speech which is also fun to look at. To end this article, I have been reading Speech, Sound, Technology and hoping to get more knowledge around my topic. Today, our voice has emerges with tech so much more than we think, how we heard about our voice is equally important to how we say it. The abstract and keywords for the article as below:

Johannes Mulder and Theo van Leeuwen investigate how the microphone, the amplifier, and the loudspeaker have changed the semiotic potential of the sound of the voice. Based on a social semiotic understanding, the authors discuss the voice from three perspectives: physical, focusing on how bodily experience from speaking and singing informs the understanding of the sound of the voice (covering implications such as pitch, loudness, and alterations of various kinds); social, based on the way human social and cultural experiences, such as accents and different vocal styles, inform the understanding of sound; and, finally, the technologically enhanced voice, showing that, even though the appreciation of this voice rests on prior understanding of biological and social voices, this voice introduces extraexperiential dimensions that slowly assimilate into the culture as a form of disembodied, nonhuman voice.