In Western music cultures today, vocal art practices involve effectively four voice categories: the singing, the speaking, the disembodied or acousmatic voice and, finally, the extended voice either expanded through the application of so-called extended vocal techniques or technological means.
Emphasising research in and through the arts, Monsters I Love is an artistic research project that aims to find strategies for exploring the potential of the voice by elaborating on both the vocal and the oral sphere. The multivocal voice is an aesthetic concept that fosters an inclusive approach to vocal performance practices rather than excluding one or the other from the scope of the paradigms as mentioned above. At the same time, the performer is to be stimulated by the paradoxical affordance of ‘not repeating the past’. The notion of multivocality indicates various kinds of virtuosity, all of which are informed by an artistic knowledge that is multi-faceted regarding its methods, be it experimental or experiential, technical or technological, improvisational or compositional. The multivocal practice is borne by an interdisciplinary approach. Integrating and merging with forms of expression from other disciplines including sound art, bodily practices and video, the multivocal practitioner strives to expand the field of the vocal arts and to go beyond its format conventions. By accentuating the development and the exploration of custom live electronics, specifically the strophonion, an æsthetics of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘in-between’ evolves. For the composer-performer, the main concern is how to implement the attempts within the actual artistic practice and comply with the emerging requirements.
Taking into account underlying philosophical, socio-cultural and pedagogical implications, the project includes the formulation and performance of The Manifesto for the Multivocal Voice aiming to depict a ‘discursive solo performance act’ and to provide insights into principles and premises, but also to instigate the discourse on the politics of today’s performance voice.
Overall, the entirety of all elements and ramifications of Monsters I Love is driven by the question of how to create coherent and compelling vocal performance art at the present time.
