Singing the body electric: The recorded voice, the mediated body.

摘要

Singing the Body Electric: The Recorded Voice, the Mediated Body examines the human voice, the body, and the sound of its transformation through technology. The metaphor of that first moment when the voice was inscribed onto the body of the phonograph is taken as a point of departure for assessing the embodiment and modulations of the human voice in electronic music. The text visits works from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which the voice is transformed by the machine---including the sampled, mechanical, and the technologically modified voice, as well as instances of human mimicry of the machine. The discussion reaches to the contemporary digital era of the pliable and free-bit distributed voice, and addresses in this context issues of ownership and control. Through the listener's experience of the inherently disembodied voice, the text invites new ways to hear a presumed "authenticity" or a revealed artificiality in the material inscription.;The discussion focuses on electronic music works that invoke or transform real or fictitious voices. These include Ernst Toch and Paul Hindemith's early vocal play on the gramophonic plate, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schafer's musique concrete incorporations of the voice, and subsequent electronic transformations of the voice as featured in the work of Max Matthews, Luciano Berio, Alvin Lucier, Kraftwerk, Christian Marclay, Cher, Pamela Z, Janet Jackson, Radiohead, Matmos, Bjork, Gorillaz, and Imogen Heap.;Interdisciplinary in approach, music aesthetics and a sustained musical analysis are deepened and informed by the literary texts of Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, and by the philosophical approaches of Adorno, Barthes, Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, and Girard, in order to problematize and define the delicate relationship between technology, the voice, and the mediated body.;The main body of the text is woven together with two other voices---in the form of etymological interlards and radio interludes---the latter address the author-composer's own musical works.;Three compositions are included with this dissertation. The Inner Voices of Blue performed by New Millenium Ensemble and a sound documentary The Prime Cut are presented on CD; Titlipur, an interactive dance piece is presented on DVD.