Archives for August 2018

https://beta.myvoice.lyrebird.ai/g/3s_ln2unek

Text-to-voice technology and vocal cloning is a phenomenon that is something that I have never seen before and never knew it was so easily accessible by basically anyone who has access to the internet. Lyrebird has led these innovations and is now one of, if not the, most progressive companies in this field. I feel this technology has both benefits and drawbacks. Text-to-voice and vocal cloning can be used to aid society in a variety of ways, such as those with difficulty speaking (such as Lyrebird’s partnership with people diagnosed with ALS), audiobooks, brand voices, and video games. However, there are also risks that come along with this technology. The first and most obvious would be the ability for others to create audio clips of another person’s voice to say things that they have never and would never say in an attempt to slander them. A very easy example of this would be political elections. Lyrebird also states that the audio clips any person submits to them are completely safe and never shared with anyone. I believe this is a feature that is necessary in all companies that may pursue vocal cloning in the future to ensure the safety of its users. Lyrebird also says that their technology is still in its early stages, which makes me eager to see just how advanced this field will become in the near future as the vocal cloning they have already produced is truly amazing.

The musical and visual accompaniment of Scotts performance of blert attaches a completely new perspective to his writing. Without the accompaniment, I found myself generating my own visuals in my head while trying to decipher his text. With the visuals and music, I thought that the performance had more of a set purpose or meaning that Scott was trying to get across. I also found that Barthes concept of grain is highlighted by the content of Scott’s performance. Especially in his solo performance, I struggled to find the meaning in some of his words, which made me pay more attention to his deliverance of them. Something I took away from reading Barthes was the mention of visual or auditory pleasure loosing the motive behind written works. He sums this up in his final thoughts in The Grain of the Voice by saying “Were we to succeed in refining a certain ‘aesthetics’ of musical pleasure, then doubtless we would attach less importance to the formidable break in tonality accomplished by modernity.” (P.509) Although he said this in reference to music, I think this same concept can be observed in Jordan Scott’s performances of blert.

The difference between written and spoken word is one that’s remarkable. Written word allows for one’s own interpretation, while spoken is the object of the speaker’s creation. This truly comes to light in Jordan Scott’s blert – when reading the poetry, it’s hard to picture the meaning of the odd combinations of words and sounds. But when you follow along the reading with the recording, it vastly changes the image of the text. More so, it creates the image – what was once a collection of mostly meaningless words is now a picture of sounds, sounds of, as Barthes put it, “the soul swelling or breaking”(506). The written text has a completely different meaning than the performed, since the stutter of the words gives it a completely different feeling and meaning. The stutter of Jordan Scott brings light to Cavarero’s theme of the “uniqueness of the voice” (521). In Scott’s poem “Two Cheeseburgers, French Fries and A Coke“, the performance and sound of the poem is what truly gives it its meaning, because without the stutter, there is no large significance in “cockeye bob, cocnut palm, cock-up, cocksucker, cock and bull, cock block, cockatoo, cock-of-the-walk, cockpit…” (45). The performance shows the tension that lives within the words and within his own hyoid bone, and shows the true voice of what the author intended, his individuality. The poetry combined with the recording shows his stutter in a positive way, in a way that celebrates the individuality of his own voice.

 

Too often, humans treat poetry (and written pieces in general) as items where meaning can only be drawn through the specific definitions of the words. In my opinion, Blert is a piece of writing where meaning can only be drawn by the combined sound of the words when spoken together, not by the specific meaning of each word. Reading through the book on my own, I struggled to find meaning just through the words themselves. I think this struggle is because I have trouble imagining what it is like to live with a stutter. The two performances completely changed my perception of the book. In the Sound Studies Reader, Cavarero emphasizes the difference between voice and speech. If you treat the book as a set of sounds that come out of Scott’s mouth (voice) instead of as a set of random words (speech), the book takes on a whole new meaning. The book sounds of Jordan Scott’s struggle with pronunciation and speech. It becomes a set of “verbal hurdles.” Furthermore, during the accompanied performance, one can approach the entire poems literally as pieces of music and forget about the meaning of the words entirely. Scott seems to have come to grips with his speech impediment through sound. During the entire solo recording, Scott stutters through some words (most notably in the first 30 seconds: “valsalvas,” “phonemes,” “burger”) much like a runner would jump over hurdles in a running race. The imagery from the words is less important than the sound that the words make. Voice trumps speech. Scott has built the book to test and celebrate his vocal chords and stutter.

While I was listening to Scott read the texts of Blert, I followed along with him. The main point of interest that I noticed is how when I read the copy of Blert; I understood what Scott was trying to tell us. When I listened to Scott’s performance of the book, I became confused because his stutter made the text seem flawed. Listening to Scott made me think of a child trying to learn how to speak. It seemed strange to think of a child when reading all of the sophisticated words that Scott wrote for his books. Throughout the video, it seemed like everything Scott tried to say was said by someone who is trying so hard to get their words out. It makes the whole reading different when you know it was written by someone who can’t read their own text fluently. To Barthes, this non-fluent speaking would not bother him because he cares about “the encounter between a language and a voice.” (p 505) This to him is known as “the grain,” or as he calls it “the grain of the voice when [a voice] is in a dual posture… of language and of music.”(p 505) So, according to Barthes, Scott’s “grain” can be seen as the reason as to why reading and listening to Blert fascinates people.

There is an interesting contradiction that arises after both listening to and reading Scott’s work. The written text uses eloquent language that is perfect in its ability to pinpoint the exact meaning of what he is trying to say. However, the performance of his text is very imperfect. His consistent stutter brings something child-like to the high-level vocabulary that he uses. In his performance, he seems to be forcing the words out of his mouth. There is not the ease that typically comes with a performance accompanied by music. To a few of our theorists, this imperfection of presentation is even more interesting than just the written words. Barthes is interested in the sound that the air of one’s voice makes against the friction of the body. He calls this phenomenon the “grain of music” He writes “The ‘grain’ is the body in the voice as it sings, the hand as it writes, the limb as it performs. If I perceive the ‘grain’ in a piece of music and accord this ‘grain’ a theoretical value (the emergence of the text in the work), I inevitably set up a new scheme of evaluation which will certainly be individual…” (p. 509) The ‘grain’ of Scott’s music is what makes the intersection between his performance and written words so interesting.

The way ‘voice’ plays into Jordan Scott’s performances of Blert, both solo and accompanied, is quite different than in most other spoken performances. Scott, like other poets, use their voice as an instrument through which they make art, that is, without a doubt, what he is doing here, however, there is an obstruction, he has a speech impediment that breaks up his performance, and in an art where timing is so critical, one might assume that a stutter would be detrimental. However, that doesn’t really seem to be the case, in the accompanied performance his stutter along with the music and the sound of the waves work together to manifest his performance into something you are no longer listening to, but into something you are now living with him. Meanwhile, in the unaccompanied performance, the entire thing seems less artistic, and less of a performance, the stutter seems more like a imperfection that one should try to ignore. It’s like how Aristotle placed so much value on human voice, because it was intentional and meaningful, looking at Scott’s performance through that lens takes away a lot from his performance, because a stutter is both unintentional and meaningless, but that is clearly not how Scott uses it, he uses it as a means to perform an art.

Lucier uses his voice for an unconventional purpose in his “Sitting in a Room” video. Aristotle describes sound as one object striking another and thus creating the phenomena. When Aristotle speaks of sound he talks about it also moving air in a continuous manner as well as our ears being unified with the air. However, Aristotle also emphasizes that voice is an incredibly evolved and special gift that only some species, including humans, are capable of. To apply this to Lucier’s video we can understand that the voice holds the incredible power of conveying feelings and meaning without actually using speech. Lucier clearly demonstrates this point as well by showing us that we can still feel the same energy and mood coming from the voice without hearing his actual words. Lucier and Aristotle may agree on the uniqueness but Lucier also used sound to clash with an object to make a different sound. It is an interesting concept that Aristotle didn’t bring up, but it changes my perception of sounds physical and metaphorical properties.

Throughout my life and the majority of the population’s lives, sound plays a large part of daily life. In particular it reminds me to do things in my daily routine such as wake up when I hear the harsh ringing of my phone’s alarm, close the fridge when i’m done using it because I hear the machine start to work harder, or turn off the sink or shower water if it’s not already fully turned off. The slow “drip drip” sound of the water droplets falling one at a time into the sink is at first hardly noticeable background noise but eventually grows in strength until I can’t simply ignore it and become stressed from the never-ending sound of water splashing granite. Similarly if i’m in one of my parents’ cars while they go to get gas the persistent car beeping plays the role of the water droplets by forcing me to open the door to avoid the uncomfortability caused by a particular sound that is typically background noise suddenly becoming a noticeable part of our lives.

When listening to the Lucier recording, one thing jumps out at me and that is the fact that depending on how deep you are invested into the recording itself, your view on the work is affected and so is what you take away and that is something I experimented with myself. When I was heavily invested with listening to every word that Lucier said I could notice over time how the voices were overlapping to form something new rather than what the words themselves actually mean. However when I played the recording as background noise It was easy to forget what exactly you are listening to and what purpose it has. Based on my deeper listening I assume that Lucier was attempting to bring forth the idea that anything can become more than what it first seems and that repetition/acceptance is effective in taking away negative attention from something such as Lucier’s stutter. Over the 40 plus minute recording we observe a monotone statement with a stutter transform into a work of art resembling music with nothing but layered voices.

 

“The Grain of Voice” by Roland Barthes touches on the idea that voice in itself is meant to take on a symbolic figure rather than being interpreted for its literal property. In other words, as Barthes describes it, “Above all, [the] voice bears along directly the symbolic, over the intelligible…” This concept relates perfectly to Lucier’s performance in that the content of the words being spoken were in many ways irrelevant to the phonic experience being conveyed. As the track continues to loop, Lucier’s words become incomprehensible and all we are left with is a meshed composition of noises. This suggests that the actual verbiage in the performance was unimportant, or at the very least secondary to the noises that comprised the words. Further, and in the context of Barthes theory, Lucier would be more concerned with how his audience construes the sounds that come from performance over their understanding of the the tangible words. Ultimately, as I believe Barthes would argue, the noises being transmitted at the tail-end of Lucier’s performance are essentially the intended message being condensed into its purest symbolic form.

When listening to Lucier’s piece several times, initially the setting of the piece is quite bland and ominous. Reviewing the works of several other prominent figures possessing influential opinions on the depths of language has introduced my mind to the different levels of interpretations. Barthes’s work speaks to the idea that words found within the bounds of musical content no longer can be truly expressed due to the subjectivity of the audience. Throughout Lucier’s piece he allows for many interpretations of language in it’s purest form. Lucier signifies the importance of language, and defines how the depths of the sounds are attached to words arising from the soul. Aristotle and Plato both possess similar beliefs when speaking in the context of how the use of the voice is a tactic related to the deeper thoughts and emotions within the soul. Sounds are meant to show emotion not only through their volumes, and tonal shifts but through their articulate and linguistic styles of presentation. Lucier’s piece expresses the inner thoughts of sounds and its interconnectedness to our inner being.

We are able to contextualize Lucier’s written text and performance in the context of Aristotle based off the fact that Aristotle believed that voice was the soul hitting the air. In Lucier’s performance as time went on the sound became less and less distinguishable. This can be explained through Aristotle’s theory that I mentioned above. As Lucier initially speaks into the mic his soul hits the air, but as the loop begins it’s no longer his voice and his soul ceases to hit the air. Which is why the sound is indistinguishable as the video goes on. This also ties into the beliefs of Barthe’s as he stated that sound is too complex to be purely communticated. That’s also another reason why the sound in Lucier’s performance becomes more and more indistinguishable. The way humans make sound is a complex system. In fact it is so complex that even if you are able to capture sound and record it a machine like a speaker cannot purely communicate that sound. That is why as the loop gets deeper the sound is hard to make into words.

“Multiple Voices” by Cavarero and “Aristotle on Voice” both touch on the idea of voice and what one should take away from it. From the story of the king and the palace we learn that, “words… do not count for their semantic valence but only for their phonic substance” (Cavarero, 520). To me, this means that one should just listen and not always try to interpret. In other words, ignore the semantic and concentrate on the vocal. Looking back at Lucier’s written text and performance from this perspective might give us the idea to simply listen. In a way, the performance forces us to do this because as the recording goes on, the words go away. Though it is still the recording of Lucier’s voice playing, all we begin to hear is just a sound. This connects to Aristotle’s idea that “the sound we hear is always the sounding of something else, not the origin itself”. Lucier said it himself when he spoke about playing the recording so many times that the semblance of his speech is destroyed, but something else can come out of it. Maybe we can’t hear the words of Lucier as the recording goes on, but it is still his voice. From Aristotle’s perspective, Lucier’s voice has soul. They suggest that we should pay more attention to the soul of the voice, than the actual words, as it could lead us to find the “hidden and most genuine part of the person” (Cavarero, 522).