Vocal Artefacts: A Sonic Imagination of the Human Microphone
Citation:
Phelan, Sharon, Vocal Artefacts: A Sonic Imagination of the Human Microphone, Trinity College Dublin.School of Creative Arts, 2021Download Item:
Abstract:
This thesis (Vocal Artefacts) presents a body of artistic research and practice inspired by the
event of the human microphone at Occupy Wall Street, Zuccotti Park, in the autumn of 2011.
Vocal Artefacts conceives of the human microphone as a novel, reciprocal and embodied
mode of protest — a sonic phenomenon, reflective of the cultural, social and economic shifts
that lead to its emergence. The question that the research seeks to address is whether the
process developed at Occupy Wall Street constitutes what Jonathan Sterne calls a ‘sonic
imagination’ — an aesthetic concept towards creative and critical thinking about sound. If so,
can a sonic imagination contribute towards artistic research discourse? To this end, the
research situates the process of the human microphone in relation to the emerging field of
sound studies. A further development of the research seeks to reflexively theorise the event of
the human microphone as a site of critical creative research. The affinity between political
resistance and art as artistic research was first introduced by Peter Weiss in his novel The
Aesthetics of Resistance. Expanding on this connection, Hito Steyerl observes that the
foundations of artistic research ‘are tied to social or revolutionary movements, or to moments
of crisis and reform’. Following this paradigm, the research undertaken explores the social
technology of the human microphone as an aesthetics of resistance. These two loci — sound
studies and aesthetics of resistance — prompt further queries related to acts of collective
voicing, political forms of listening, technologies of voice, and the relational properties of
sound. Vocal Artefacts is composed of two sections: there is a written component to
contextualise the artistic research, followed by an artistic (im)material enquiry. The latter
incorporates chapters organised around the sonic figures of echo, parrhesia and prosopopoeia,
offering a re-thinking of the relationship between voice and speech by foregrounding the
voice as a sonic instrument with relational and unique properties. These sonic figures inform a
series of virtual sculptures presented as a digital portfolio. The virtual sculptures explore past
sites of radical potential while creating news sites through artistic means. Collectively, these
art works attend to the reverberations of the human microphone through an act of sonic
imagination, and attempt to reclaim art as a site of thinking and knowledge production.
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https://tcdlocalportal.tcd.ie/pls/EnterApex/f?p=800:71:0::::P71_USERNAME:PHELANSHDescription:
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Author: Phelan, Sharon
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PRTLIAdvisor:
Causey, MatthewPublisher:
Trinity College Dublin. School of Creative Arts. Discipline of DramaType of material:
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