Blog 02

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.

“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).

Lucier, Aristotle and Sterne all sought to understand, as Stefan G. Helmreich put it, “embodyment, the senses and how we understand those things scientifically, humanistically, culturally, philosophically” in the respective mediums we watched, listened and read. What was very interesting was how each respective medium understood the senses, more specifically sound. Aristotle was one of the first human beings to think of asking the question of why exactly sound happens and what exactly happens when we hear a sound. His understanding of sound was more philosophical than Sterne, who explained that the Sound Studies reader was written with “sound students” in mind. This scientific approach is even still different from Lucier’s understanding. Although he stated that he was, in fact, conducting a scientific experiment of sorts, his experiment focused on the overall experience, hence why it is a sound clip for us to listen to rather than a book for us to read like the Sound Studies Reader is.

 

Elements of both Aristotle and Sterne’s works are present in Lucier’s “I am Sitting in a Room”. I can imagine the sound waves of the playback recordings bouncing off of the assumedly smooth walls of the room Lucier is in and I can also agree with Sterne on the fact that the lack of a visual representation of Lucier’s experiment further immersed me in the audio experience. What Lucier’s audio seems to do is tie all three of these pieces together by taking the written assumptions and contextualizing them. Lucier gives both Aristotle and Sterne an outlet with which to test their theories or the average Joe an opportunity to grasp just what they were talking about, even if he didn’t originally intend to.

One of the major themes that is present throughout the texts that we’ve studied is that of inperfection. Indeed, when Lucier’s recordings are repeated, there is a slight change each time. In the original recording, the rendition of the original sound was not a perfect copy, but only mostly indicative. As such, each subsequent recording was a mostly accurate copy of the previous, eventually compounding onto each other into a composition that was ultimately completely different. That much was also clear when Aristotle emphasizes the inability of machines to have a voice. The output of the machine, in relation to the voice, is a mere sound that is meant to replicate it. Therefore, since the machine is seen as without a soul, it cannot make a truly accurate rendition of the sound of the voice, which does have a soul. The same spirit is true in Barthes’ argument, as he claims that one of the largest problems befalling musical description is related to imparting adjectives, which he sees as the most meager form of language. Though not outright mentioning the same topic as Aristotle, he too implies that beautiful sounds are simply too complex to be purely communicated, whether by human language in the case of music or by machines in the case of words.