Roland Barthes – Animate / Inanimate (Writings on Banraku)

Roland Barthes.

Animate / Inanimate.

1983.

Essay.

Continuing with my interest in the parallels between virtual idols and Bunraku theatre, I came across this essay from Roland Barthes in which he sets out some major points of difference between theatre in the Western tradition (stemming from Greek tragedy), and Bunraku theatre which operates within a Shinto & Buddhist tradition.

He characterises Western theatre as a practice which combines distinct elements such as the gaze, the voice and gesture towards synthesising totality, a self which is unified and stable. “A unity of movement and voice” (p. 59). By contrast, he observes that Bunraku takes these distinct components of theatre and explodes them further outwards in an act of abstraction, taking them closer to an ideal through scraps of “fragility, discretion, sumptuousness, unheard-of nuance, the abandonment of all triviality” (P. 60).

Reading this essay, it becomes clear why Bunraku was so appealing to a post-structuralist such as Barthes. The way in which it disrupts the understanding of the individual as a single, stable, whole and continuous self. Instead offering a model where the self is merely an effect of perception, arising from a volatile patchwork of raw inputs.

Barthes. R. (1983). Animate / Inanimate. In: Empire of Signs. Los Angeles, USA: Hill & Wang. pp. 58 – 60.

Categories: Avatars / Processed Voice

Chikamatsu Monzaemon- Sonezaki Shinju

Chikamatsu Monzaemon.

Sonezaki Shinju.

Written 1703.

Bunraku Puppet Theatre, Japan.

Recently I’ve been looking at the ways in which Banraku theatre in Japan anticipated the more recent emergence of vocaloid culture.

Many key aspects of the the two forms are strikingly similar, such as the use of multiple, visible puppeteers to control each Banraku character. Also the way in which the puppet’s voice comes from a singer, who sits on the other side of the room alongside the the Shamisen player, completely removed from the body in which it should apparently originate. In this way we can see that both virtual idols such as Hatsune Miku and Bunraku puppets share in a theatrical tradition which places its artifice on the surface for all to see and hear. In both instances, performances are presented as the flimsiest of surface illusions and powerfully fuse together the theatrical and the real, allowing both to co-exist simultaneously without conflict.

Besides the most obvious reasons why these examples are relevant to my current investigation of Virtuality, this historical link is particularly interesting as it underlines some of the raw mechanics of artifice at work within these forms, components of which will be useful to me when developing my own work.

Video: unesco.org

Categories: Avatars / Processed Voice

Kizuna AI – AIAIAI

Kizuna Ai.

AIAIAI.

2019.

Music Video / AI Pop Project.

As by far the most recognisable icon in the world of virtual pop idols, Hatsune Miku has been in the public sphere, more or less unchanged (16 years old, 42kg, 158cm tall) since 2007. As far as fame is concerned, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that even idols who refuse to age can still become old hat. With public interest on the decline, would virtual idols be little more than a passing novelty? A concept artificial intelligence project named Kizuna AI suggests not.

While the “Artificial Intelligence” of this work is clearly little more than a marketing strategy, the virtuality of Kizuna AI in significant as she exists only within online space (as a YouTuber and Pop-idol), and nowhere else. A kind of hyper-simulacra. This forms an important break with the work of Hatsune Miku, who’s songs have been bogged down in existential crisis. – “I am (NOT) Real” (Aura Qualic, 2015). Kizuna Ai by contrast is aware that she is a virtual character and proudly proclaims to consist of independent artificial intelligence.

Aura Qualic. (2015). I am (NOT) Real [Hatsune Miku]. YouTube. Retrieved 02/04/2019. https://youtu.be/Tylsg9voc14

Kizuna Ai. (2019). AIAIAI. YouTube. Retrieved 02/04/2019. https://youtu.be/S8dmq5YIUoc

Categories: Avatars / Post-Human / Processed Voice

William Gibson – Neuromancer / idoru

William Gibson

Neuromancer / idoru

1984 / 1997 (respectively)

Fiction / Science Fiction.

There’s an immediacy to writing which I would argue often leads to works of fiction surfacing as impulsive premonitions. Thrashed out on a typewriter and published in 1984, Neuromancer is a strikingly lucid depiction of what has since come to pass, a digitally networked global society where capital, identity and even violence flow freely across the web. Similarly, idoru was published in 1997, fourteen years before AKB48 revealed that their newest member, Eguchi Aimi was actually a fictitious creation, triggering a crisis amongst the group’s most dedicated fans.

These works have been significant in defining how we think about digital virtuality, but beyond that it’s also interesting to note how they are examples of virtuality in both form as well as content. This leads us to the proposition that virtuality is deeply rooted within our history of language and representation. A point which Baudrillard made so well within his work, Simulations – “Digitality is with us, it is that which haunts all the messages, all the signs of our societies” (1982 – p.115).

Baudrillard, J. (1983). ‘Simulations’. Los Angeles, USA: Semiotext[e].

Gibson. W. (1997). iduro. London, UK: Penguin.

Gibson. W. (1984). Neuromancer. London, UK: Harper Collins.

Categories: Making-Worlds / Avatars / Processed Voice / Post-Human

Holly Herndon – Godmother (with Jlin)

Holly Herndon.

Godmother & Jlin (Feat. Spawn).

2019.

mp3 Single.

Holly Herndon is a master at distilling complex, metaphysical and moral problems into materials, sound in particular. Continuing her interest in virtuality, big data, privacy and intimacy, Godmother uses an artificial intelligence developed by herself and partner Mat Dryhurst, which then interprets photographs of Herndon’s godmother, Jlin and attempts to re-create her voice from these images. While Herndon’s work has a strong philosophical backdrop, this doesn’t enter the work as representation, instead it becomes the work directly. The idea isn’t required to explain the work, but itself is the work. This semester I’ve been particularly interested in considering how in my own practice, content and form can work together, how concepts can be embodied materially.

Herndon. H. & Lin, J. (2019) Godmother [mp3 Single]. NewYork, USA: RVNGintl Records.

Categories: Processed Voice / Post-human / Avatars

Jake Moore – Fourmant

Jake Moore.

Fourmant.

2018.

Generative audio instillation.

Walking in to the space which houses Fourmant, the listener is confronted with three veiled speakers, each playing back digitally processed vocal tones. The wall text sheds some light, informing us that these vocalisations are generative and entirely artificial, rather than recorded. What becomes apparent while listening over time, is that while the artifice is forefront, we cannot help but perceive a body from the presence of voices alone. This supports the argument put forth by Steven Connor, who somewhat counterintuitively proposed that – “every disembodied voice is always also what I called a ‘voice-body’, the body implied by or intuited from the voice” (Connor 2012, p. 1). Rather than the voice correctly residing within a body, the body as a construct (at least in part) resides within the voice.

This goes some way to helping understand how both puppets and digital idols are able to manifest themselves as distinct bodies who wield agency and often demonstrate a remarkably stability. While previously I had been thinking of virtuality primarily through the lens of language, Moore’s work served as a reminder that our more immediate sensory experience of the world must also be taken into consideration.

Conner, S. (2012). ‘Panophonia’. [Speech, transcript]. Paris: Pompidou Centre, 22 February. accessed 27 July 2018, http://www.stevenconnor.com/panophonia/

Moore. J. (2018). Fourmant. [artwork]. In: RMIT, Honours Graduate Exhibition. Melbourne, Australia.

Categories: Processed Voice / Post-Human

Edgar Allan Poe – The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar

Edgar Allan Poe. 

The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar.

1845.

Fiction.

In 1877 when Thomas Edison first publicly presented his latest invention, the phonograph, a sudden and irreversible split occurred. The human voice which had until then remained captive within the body, welded to flesh and bone, at that moment escaped into the world never to be returned. Despite just how profound rupture this was, it’s worth considering the many textual examples prior to this where authors wrote of voices detached from their rightful owners and in the case of the story from Edgar Allan Poe, detached from the realm of the living altogether!

Poe. E. A. (1845).The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar.Re-published in: Poe, E. A.– Forty Two Tales (1979). London, UK: Octopus Books. pp. 275 – 285

Categories: Processed Voice / Post-Human

Mari Matsutoya – Sumatto

Mari Matsutoya.

Sumatto.

2017.

Sound Instillation.

In Sumatto (translation: smut), Mari Matsutoya has created a work where female text-to-speech voice generators recite erotica to one another, for one another only. In her own words to “reclaim the female japanese voice, often governed by a reflection of male desire“. Taken in the context of Matsutoya’s previous work, there’s a strong interest in the ways in which identity and virtuality intersect. The work reminds us that while voices may now be conjured out of thin air, the politics of those voices aren’t necessarily any less potent.

Matsutoya. M. (2018). Sumatto. [Sound-sculpture instillation]. SFX. Seoul, South Korea. Retrieved 22/03/2019 – https://marimatsutoya.com/sumatto

Image: marimatsutoya.com

Categories: Processed Voice / Avatars / Making Worlds

Joseph Faber – The Euphonia

Joseph Faber.

The Euphonia.

1843 (Approximately).

Mechanical signing device.

No less than thirty four years before Thomas Edison amazed audiences with demonstrations of his talking machine – the phonograph, Joseph Faber was exhibiting his own artificial vocaliser. Rather than recording sound though, the Euphonia generated it mechanically with air pumped from bellows, through an artificial throat and mouth cavity, all controlled by a keyboard style interface.

What is significant about his creation, is that it leapfrogs the recording and dis-embodying of the human voice, and begins immediately synthesising something entirely artificial. A voice which is not merely a copy or imitation, but an phenomenon in it’s own right. A voice which is Hyperreal.

Retrieved 14/03/2019 from: https://soundstudiesblog.com/2018/11/12/mr-and-mrs-talking-machine-the-euphonia-the-phonograph-and-the-gendering-of-nineteenth-century-mechanical-speech/

Categories: Processed Voice / Post-Human