Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2017

Kenneth Burke’s idea of ‘eloquence’ provides a useful theory for understanding the various possible impacts of voice in advertising and branding. Burkeian ‘eloquence’ is defined as the right choice and arrangement of linguistic details that best meet the formal requirements emerging in a particular culture and society from the underlying forms common to all people through our common physical, psychological, and linguistic nature as humans. Here, this theory is explained and distilled into a spectrum that stretches between textual/vocal products that centre on a rational symbolsystem and textual/vocal products that meet human metabiologic demands for eloquent form leading to moments of aesthetic transcendence. Applied to the practice of advertising and branding, this paradigm of performative impact implies that products at the beginning of their life cycles would be best paired with the rational pole of symbol-centric persuasive messages while established products and brands would be best paired with the opposite pole of transcendent vocal and stylistic performance, eschewing rational messages for the maintenance of brand aura through aesthetic form. Also discussed are the ethics of using for capitalistic purposes our human bent towards the ‘beauty and joy’ of transcendent language.

In this article I read Elaine Scarry’s account of torture in her The Body in Pain (1985) alongside Adriana Cavarero’s account voice and its relationship to violence in her A più voci: Per una filosofia dell’espressione vocale (For More than One Voice) (2005) and Orrorismo: Ovvero della violenza sull’inerme (Horrorism) (2011). This serves a dual purpose: first, to demonstrate that Scarry’s account of torture is implicitly committed to an Aristotelian distinction between phone and logos which mirrors Cavarero’s account of ‘The Devocalization of Logos’ (2005: 33); and second, to probe the limits of Cavarero’s notion of ‘horrorism’ by reading it against Scarry’s account of torture and some of Cavarero’s own examples from For More than One Voice (2005). Unlike Cavarero, for whom torture is a form of horrorism because it effaces the uniqueness of the prisoner, I argue that Scarry’s account of torture demonstrates the gross reverence that the torturer pays to the prisoner’s uniqueness. In this way I argue that torture places the prisoner’s uniqueness into a suspended state of dissolution.

Children who stutter (CWS) face enormous challenges: from bullying and peer rejection to embarrassment, shame and despair. Often these young people shut down and retreat into silence. The Stuttering Association for the Young (SAY), a nonprofit organization in New York City, is dedicated to improving the lives of CWS. SAY uses the performing arts, speech therapy and a sleep-away camp to create community, nurture the individual, and advocate for CWS through education and performance. This article examines SAY as a therapeutic model for Children and Adolescents Who Stutter. SAY’s three-pronged approach of empowerment, education, and support provides CWS with a much-needed community in which they find self-acceptance, communicative confidence, and the courage to achieve their goals.

This article discusses ways in which the Physio-Vocal element of the performer can be trained through Laban’s Shape Qualities and Effort Factors such as Weight, Space, Flow and Time using architecture as a major influence in both training and performance. How do we train performers in order for them to respond genuinely, and organically with (and to) the space around them? At times, a disconnection between voice and body (the Physio-Vocal) and space can be evident. The process should be instigated from the physical space using spatial and architectural language. Architecture and spatial relationships have long played an important role in actor training. Rudolf von Laban studied architecture, and developed an interest in the relationships between the body and the surrounding space. Elements such as Architecture, Spatial Relationships and Topography from Viewpoints also stem from this notion. Methods in which voice can integrate seamlessly with these Factors will be discussed, using it as a framework for voice, speech and text work. Voice and body are often practised separately; however, the language used in Laban Movement Analysis can be applied to voice work, and proves to be an effective way to consolidate the Physio-Vocal instrument. Persona Collective’s physically and vocally demanding production of Patricia Cornelius’s Savages, a dangerous, new Australian play examining the pack mentality of men, was performed at a car park as part of Tasmania’s Junction Arts Festival in 2014. For the actors to be both a part of and from the public space, a rigorous training method was developed. A combination of Laban Movement Analysis was used alongside the Space elements borrowed from Overlie’s Viewpoints in order to seamlessly merge bodies with space. A vocal texture was also developed using movement language. The result was a production that seamlessly merged architecture, body and voice.

In this conversation from 2014, composer Pauline Oliveros, one of the most important figures in American experimental music, provides insight into her relationship with the voice and when in her career it was most pivotal for her compositional development. Oliveros touches on her 1961 choral piece Sound Patterns, her Sonic Meditations, the works she performed for voice and accordion in the 1970s and 1980s, Deep Listening, and the late operas that she made with her partner, vocalist and poet Ione.

THE ART OF VOICE SYNTHESIS SYMPOSIUM, AMSTERDAM, 11–13 MAY 2016 http://www.artificialvoice.nl/

THE LATE VOICE: TIME, AGE, AND EXPERIENCE IN POPULAR MUSIC, RICHARD ELLIOTT (2015) New York and London: Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., 289 pp., ISBN: 9781628921182, h/bk, $120; e-book, $107.99

BEYOND WORDS: SOBS, HUMS, STUTTERS AND OTHER VOCALIZATIONS, STEVEN CONNOR (2014) London: Reaktion Books, 240 pp., ISBN: 9781780232584, h/bk, £25.00

SENSING SOUND: SINGING AND LISTENING AS VIBRATIONAL PRACTICE, NINA SUN EIDSHEIM (2015) Durham: Duke University Press, 270 pp., ISBN: 9780822360469, h/bk, $89.95; ISBN: 9780822360612, p/bk, $24.95

VOICES IN THE MEDIA: PERFORMING FRENCH LINGUISTIC OTHERNESS, GAËLLE PLANCHENAULT (2015) London: Bloomsbury, 210 pp., ISBN: 9781472588029, £75.00