Links to: [[Patient Analyses]]. ### The Latent Space of Voice By (re)conceptualizing as well as technologically (re)combining different aspects of vocal externalization (e.g.: collective chatter, mumbling, dialogue, externalized streams of consciousness, harmonization, dissonance, imitation, etc.), we will explore the latent space of voicing and listening, with a focus on the interlacing of human-machine voices. We'll try to shuffle our perception of vocal expression beyond conventional notions of speech and singing. By playing with acoustics, different instruments, recording devices and sound editors, we'll ruminate over voice textures, seeking to create renditions of human-machine voices that strike a balance between familiarity and uncanniness, perhaps challenging established auditory frameworks. This workshop will involve extensive vocal experimentation and cogniperceptual analysis to unravel our initial apprehensions associated with vocal representation. It is of the essence that you want to make sounds, and are willing to (really) listen to others make sounds. By exploring the latent space of listening when it comes to voices, we can delve into the underlying patterns and textures that constitute established ideas about the vocal experience. The workshop is an attempt to sync up and inter-wire all of us, as human synthesizers, together.  This workshop is part of Patient Analyses, an ongoing project by Z.f./S. de Jager, which seeks ‘collective acousmatic intentionality,’ aiming at a fundamental effect: demanding of a listener that they feel themselves perceiving a recording at the same time as it is happening, thus not as a recording of something past, with the crucial request that this is also experienced at the same time as other listeners listen, have listened or will listen. This is a demanding consciousness-raising somaticousmatic exercise and is thus a patient analysis, where a patient analyzes an effect. It is also a public announcement (P.A.) which results in patient analyses. It is, in essence, a search for how a/the voice fluctuates depending on context. This is the main material and rhythm of the composition: vocal waves rising and falling. The voice, from first cry to last breath, is one pattern; interwoven with a myriad of other patterns which suffer/enjoy the same fate, as overlapping harmonic and/or dissonant paths. If we get a chance we will explore phonology and phonetics as approaches to the study of speech(ing) and voice(ing). “Phonology uses the methods of social science to study speech sounds as cognitive or psychological entities, which are abstract symbols that are discrete and categorical. Phonetics uses the methods of natural science to study speech sounds as physical entities, which are concrete and thus exist in actual space and time that are gradient and continuous.” Elizabeth Zsiga, The Phonology/Phonetics Interface, p. 1, 2020. *Excercises*: ##### Shepard’s tone Shepard tone choir. (Arrangement below by Evan Perry-Giblin). Try: vocal fry, modal, falsetto. ![[Images/evan perry-giblin.png|500]] ##### Bucal polycomputing Squeezing more into one place, and observer-dependence: “Form and function are tightly entwined in nature, and in some cases, in robotics as well. Thus, efforts to re-shape living systems for biomedical or bioengineering purposes require prediction and control of their function at multiple scales. This is challenging for many reasons, one of which is that living systems perform multiple functions in the same place at the same time. We refer to this as “polycomputing”—the ability of the same substrate to simultaneously compute different things, and make those computational results available to different observers. This ability is an important way in which living things are a kind of computer, but not the familiar, linear, deterministic kind; rather, living things are computers in the broad sense of their computational materials, as reported in the rapidly growing physical computing literature.” ([Bongard and Levin](https://www.mdpi.com/2313-7673/8/1/110), 2023). The mouth **laughs**, eats, the mouth speaks, the mouth yawns, laughs and shivers. Spits. The mouth is also the only place where you can see the skeleton, see it, hear it. The bones make sounds, the bones chatter. When cold, when in sorrow. The calcium comes close, closes, closet. Ch ch ch ch, tsss, here it click. ##### [[Schein]] Cálice, 1973 Chico Buarque & Gilberto Gil. Saying what you mean, meaning what you say. Phantom words, phantasmagoria. Appearance versus reflection. ##### [[Authority]] and voice ![[Images/raunig voice.png|400]] ![[raunig voice 2.png|400]] ![[raunig voice 3.png|400]] ![[Images/raunig ghost voice.png|400]] Raunig, G. *Dissemblage*, pp. 8-9 & 17. ##### [[Entropicalia]], [[Entropomorfismo]] Where does the voice start? Sarraute: “It was a term that was in the air, it came from the sciences, from biology, botany. I thought it fit the interior movement that I wanted to show. ... I didn't pose myself {the question of genre}, really. I knew it seemed impossible to me to write in the traditional forms. They seemed to have no access to what we experienced. If we en- closed that in characters, personalities, a plot, we were overlooking everything that our senses were perceiving, which is what interested me. One had to take hold of the instant, by enlarging it, developing it. That's what I tried to do in _Tropisms._” Sarraute, The Art of Fiction No. 115, Interviewed by Shusha Guppy & Jason Weiss, Paris Review, Issue 114, Spring 1990. *Phrase*: Tristes tigres, trigos trópicos, topos tógropos; antrófagos, tropicales y entrópicos. ##### Latency Latency in engineering: “ [G.114](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.114 "G.114") recommendation regarding mouth-to-ear delay indicates that most users are "very satisfied" as long as latency does not exceed 200 ms.” ______ **Tone**: a periodic sound that elicits a pitch sensation. “Pure tones produce a clear, unambiguous pitch, and we are very sensitive to changes in their frequency. For instance, well-trained listeners can distinguish between two tones with frequencies of 1000 and 1002 Hz—a difference of only 0.2% (Moore, 1973).” (Andrew Oxenham, p. 9, Psychology of Music collection, ed. Deutsch). “A semitone, the smallest step in the Western scale system, is a difference of about 6% ...” (ibid.) And people can learn “expert” musical hearing in relatively short periods. **Timbre**: “Timbre is a misleadingly simple and exceedingly vague word encompassing a very complex set of auditory attributes, as well as a plethora of intricate psychological and musical issues. It covers many parameters of perception that are not accounted for by pitch, loudness, spatial position, duration, or even by various environmental characteristics such as room reverberation. ... We now understand timbre to have two broad characteristics that contribute to the perception of music: (1) it is a multitudinous set of perceptual attributes, some of which are continuously varying (e.g., attack sharpness, brightness, nasality, rich- ness), others of which are discrete or categorical (e.g., the “blatt” at the beginning of a sforzando trombone sound or the pinched offset of a harpsichord sound), and (2) it is one of the primary perceptual vehicles for the recognition, identification, and tracking over time of a sound source (singer’s voice, clarinet, set of carillon bells) and thus is involved in the absolute categorization of a sounding object (Hajda, Kendall, Carterette & Harshberger, 1997; Handel, 1995; McAdams, 1993; Risset, 2004).” (Stephen McAdams, p. 35). **Loudness**: ![[Images/Sundberg 1.png]] ![[Images/Sundberg 2.png]] Loudness, pitch, and timbre: what other ways? ![[vocal ranges.png]] ### People Cage Callas Matogrosso Scott Walker Diana Deutsch Cornelius Cardew ### Excercises Clapping (Reich, etc.) Note (In C, etc.) Movement (Yoga feet, etc.) What’s your most comfortable sound? And vowel and consonant and something that is not either one of those Native language sounds Words most used, repeat Sounds around you, repeat Sudden melody, repeat