Human Voice and Instrumental Voice: An Investigation of Voicelikeness

Paola Livorsi

This artistic research explores the relations between human and instrumental voice (in the case of string instruments), seen from an embodied and performative point of view. The question originates from from my experience of violinist and composer. Voice is a unique mark of human identity: if this is particularly true for vocal timbre, something similar is at play in the ‘instrumental voice’, as a unique expression of personal and musical identity. This research aims to uncover the importance of the vocal and instrumental relations, acknowledging their common embodied nature and shared origins. As utterances directed at the ‘other’, both human and instrumental voice are deeply relational. From 2016 to 2022, I investigated the question of voicelikeness between a musician’s voice and their own instrument through five multidisciplinary art projects: in Imaginary Spaces fragments of individual and collective voice inhabited a performative environment shared by musicians and audience; The end of no ending focused on the relationships between two female voices and their mutable surroundings; Between word and life explored the multiple relations of voice and instrument in an electroacoustic space, de-multiplied by bringing in dance and video; Sounding Bodies gathered human and mechanical bodies to explore an unconventional space, inviting the audience to follow their path; Medusa was a music theatre work putting into perspective the question of voicelikeness by evoking Italian Early Baroque music, visual art, and dance. This artistic research was carried out through an artistic process, with supporting methods such as grounded theory, ethnography, and autoethnography, creating a virtuous cycle between practice and theory, with some interesting and unexpected changes taking place in my artistic journey. The research outcomes consist of a written part combined with a collection of traces, sounds, images, and video examples presented on the Research Catalogue. The theoretical framework for this inquiry includes recent studies in paleoanthropology, human development, music psychology, and embodiment. Cavarero’s philosophy of voice, Arendt’s philosophy of the ‘in-between’, various philosophies of the ‘other’, as well as a few contributions from psychoanalysis are put in mutual dialogue with my artistic practice. Among the research outcomes are the re-evaluation of vocal layers in personal and musical identity, considering music making as a relational practice, and an exploration of the porous boundaries between the roles of composer, performer, and listener. In this perspective, the new terms to ‘in-hear’ and to ‘co-hear’ respectively denote an attention to inner sounds, and toward one another in a community of listeners. Keywords: voicelikeness, artistic research, in-between, relationality, embodiment, performative space

Medusa, Aleksanterin teatteri 2022, full video (Ville Syriäläinen, Centre de Ville oy)

TO PORTFOLIO

MEDUSA

2022

ARTISTIC PROCESS

Medusa (Aleksanterin teatteri, Helsinki, 18., 20., 21.8.2022)

Inspired to Caravaggio’s life and work, the theatre work Medusa treated themes such as the artist’s narcissism, as a creative and destructive force, and their quest for identity. The myths of Narcissus and Medusa from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Hesiod’s Shield of Heracles (8^th century BC), show how ancient these themes are. Both myths show different faces of the feminine: feminine is at work in the young man looking for his beauty in the water and listening to Echo’s voice, while in Medusa we see the horrific, shadow side of the feminine – a side often refused, to be finally faced and accepted.

The project offered a research laboratory on human and instrumental voice, with references to Caravaggio’s contemporary Carlo Gesualdo’s music, revisited in a new way. It included a prologue (Tiresias, amplified voice and cello) and three parts (Echo and Narcissus, Taverna, Medusa) for a duration of about fifty minutes.

Sara Orava’s original paintings, inspired to Caravaggio’s Narcissus, The Seven Works of Mercy, and the Death of the Virgin, have been at the basis of Medusa, not only as part of the scenography but also as an inspiration for music and gestures. The text (in Latin, Greek, Italian, Finnish) was developed together with Sara and Piia Komsi, soprano coloratura/cellist – it was a long-haul project, started in autumn 2019. The working group included three musicians and five dancers.

I was also involved in a performative way, using my voice and making electronics inspired sounds with different kinds of percussion instruments, objects, and materials – in an intermediate role between the ensemble and the stage. Some of the dancers also used their voices and/or played percussion instruments (on and off-stage).

Keywords: voices, bodies, visual arts, music theatre, performativity.

Medusa 2022

Paola Livorsi, composition and sound design

Piia Komsi, soprano coloratura, cello

Sara Orava, visual art and stage direction

Eva Alkula, koto

Angel Molinos, clarinets

Ville Syriäläinen, Paola Livorsi percussions

Milla Eloranta, Mira Ollila, Anneke Lönnroth, Aapo Siikala, Jouka Valkama,

dance and choreography

Aapo Siikala, costume design

Jouka Valkama, light design

Esther Calderón Morales, sound engineer

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