The Material Poetics of Digital Voice: a Creative-Critical Inquiry
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THE MATERIAL POETICS OF DIGITAL VOICE: A CREATIVE-CRITICAL INQUIRY by Erin R. Anderson Bachelor of Arts, University of Washington, 2004 Master of Arts, Clark University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences This dissertation was presented by Erin R. Anderson It was defended on May 15, 2014 and approved by Stephen Carr, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of English Neepa Majumdar, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of English Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre Arts Dissertation Chair: Don Bialostosky, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of English ii Copyright © by Erin R. Anderson 2014 iii THE MATERIAL POETICS OF DIGITAL VOICE: A CREATIVE-CRITICAL INQUIRY Erin R. Anderson, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 This dissertation theorizes the aesthetic and ethical potential of digital voice as a material for composing and (re)inventing texts in multimedia platforms. Traditionally, the field of composition and rhetoric has imagined voice as either a silent textual metaphor or an embodied instrument of live oratory. However, as we turn to embrace digital writing, voice reemerges in a new form, no longer reducible to language nor tied to the time and place of the live speaking body. Building on recent discussions of orality and aurality, I argue that we must also attend to a related but distinct concept of vocality—as a newly accessible compositional material, which raises complex questions about the relationship between language, bodies, and technologies in digital composing contexts. Providing a survey of the ways that voice has been employed in composition and rhetoric over the past half-century, I argue that the inventive potential of voice is constrained by linguistic and representational values that we continue to ascribe to recorded voices in the age of digital reproducibility. Next, I draw on interdisciplinary theories of voice from philosophy, physiology, film, and digital aesthetics in order to rearticulate voice’s relationship to language, bodies, and technologies, and to propose a more flexible, material theory of digital vocality. Finally, I put iv this theory to work through a pair of critically informed media projects, which experiment with voice’s affective, performative, malleable potential across media platforms. In a video series, Coerced Confessions, I employ a technique of reverse remix to digitally “coerce” reenactments of real-life confessions from the bodies of unwitting actors, reflecting on the materiality of language and the boundaries of performance and agency in digital editing. In an experiment in posthumous poetics, I take up recorded voices of deceased individuals from oral history archives and reimagine them as “actors” or “performers” in a fictional audio drama, considering possibilities for collaboration with archival voices of the dead. Ultimately, by taking seriously the possibility that we might write not only with words, but with voices, my dissertation contributes a more expansive sense of the methods, materials, and ethics available to contemporary composition practice. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE .................................................................................................................................... IX 1.0 WRITING VOICE AND ETHICS: AN INTRODUCTION IN STORIES .................... 1 1.1 PROJECT ORIGINS .................................................................................................. 6 1.2 ON CREATIVE-CRITICAL METHODS .............................................................. 10 1.3 PROJECT OVERVIEW ........................................................................................... 15 1.4 CONVERSATIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS ...................................................... 20 2.0 FROM METAPHOR TO MATERIAL (AND BACK AGAIN?) .................................. 27 2.1 ON ‘VOICE’ AS METAPHOR(ING) ..................................................................... 31 2.1.1 Identity ............................................................................................................ 33 2.1.2 Embodiment .................................................................................................... 36 2.1.3 Emotion ........................................................................................................... 37 2.1.4 Performance .................................................................................................... 40 2.1.5 Dialogue ........................................................................................................... 42 2.2 MATERIAL RELATIONS ....................................................................................... 44 2.3 SOUNDING VOICE IN COMPOSITION .............................................................. 48 2.3.1 Voice as Method ............................................................................................. 50 2.3.2 Voice as Mode ................................................................................................. 55 2.3.3 Voice as Material ............................................................................................ 62 vi 2.4 TOWARD A COMPOSITION-IN-THE-MAKING .............................................. 68 3.0 A RESONANT MATERIAL VOCALITY FOR DIGITAL COMPOSITION ............ 73 3.1 VOICE AND LANGUAGE ...................................................................................... 75 3.2 VOICE(S) AND BODY/IES ..................................................................................... 81 3.3 VOICE AND TECHNOLOGY ................................................................................ 88 3.4 OPENING VOICE TO DIGITAL COMPOSING ................................................. 95 3.4.1 Opening #1: Bridging Body-Language ......................................................... 96 3.4.2 Opening #2: Performing and Disrupting Identity ....................................... 97 3.4.3 Opening #3: A Material “Ethics of Effects” .............................................. 100 4.0 COERCED CONFESSIONS: PERFORMANCE, EDITING, MANIPULATION .... 104 4.1 CONVERSATION .................................................................................................. 115 5.0 OUR TIME IS UP: ARCHIVES, CO-LABOR, AND IMAGINATION ..................... 135 5.1 CONVERSATION .................................................................................................. 148 6.0 MAKING. VOICE. MATTER. A REFLECTION ON MATERIAL ETHICS ......... 190 6.1 THE ETHICS OF VOICE: A POINT OF ENTRY ............................................. 192 6.2 COMPOSING ETHICS: THE CASE OF DIGITAL AESTHETICS ................ 200 6.3 ETHICAL EFFECTS AND OPENINGS .............................................................. 206 6.3.1 Disruption and Distance in Coerced Confessions ...................................... 207 6.3.2 Intimacy and Intensity in Our Time is Up .................................................. 213 6.4 ON “LIVING WELL TOGETHER” ..................................................................... 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 225 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Susan (Erin Anderson, 2011); 6 min. 25 sec. video with sound (channel 1 of 2) ....... 108 Figure 2. Susan (Erin Anderson, 2011); 6 min. 25 sec. video with sound (channel 2 of 2) ....... 108 Figure 3. Bill (Erin Anderson, 2013); 5 min. 30 sec. video with sound (channel 1 of 2) ........... 110 Figure 4. Bill (Erin Anderson, 2013); 5 min. 30 sec. video with sound (channel 2 of 2) ........... 110 Figure 5. Chris (Erin Anderson, 2013); 4 min. 15 sec. video with sound (channel 1 of 2) ........ 111 Figure 6. Chris (Erin Anderson, 2013); 4 min. 15 sec. video with sound (channel 2 of 2) ........ 112 Figure 7. Our Time is Up (2014); 45 min. 45 sec. archival audio collage and performance ...... 136 viii PREFACE To my committee, Steve Carr, Neepa Majumdar, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, and, in particular, my infallibly generous chair, Don Bialostosky: Thank you for believing in the potential of this experiment, for giving me the creative latitude to pursue it, and for encouraging me along the way. Thank you also to Jamie “Skye” Bianco for pushing me to make media, to Jess Enoch for helping me develop as a writer, and to Aaron Henderson for teaching me everything I know about the art of video—and for lending me the equipment to make the work! I am also deeply grateful to all of those individuals who have lent their time, talents, and voices to the media projects that are so central to this dissertation and so close to my heart. To actors Jamie “Skye” Bianco, Ken Bolden, and Harry J. Hawkins IV: Thank you for taking a chance on the Coerced Confessions project and for bringing so much life to the unlikeliest of characters. And to the memory of Juanita Bowman and my grandfather, Josiah Patton: I wish you knew how much I’ve treasured the time I spent with your voices. I’ll never forget the incredible warmth, stubbornness, and sense of humor you’ve brought to my life and my work. To my brilliant friends and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, especially Trisha Campbell, Kerry Banazek, Steph Ceraso, and Pamela VanHaitsma: Your companionship on this journey has made all the difference. Finally,