VOICE-ART-ABLE by Yvon Bonenfant

In 2019 an artistic team visited people who use a range of facilities operated by the Cope Foundation, in Cork, Ireland. Our intention was to explore what these people, a range of adults with mild to moderate learning disAbilities, enjoyed doing with their voices, when freed from the constraints of having to 'sing well' or 'speak well', and then to invite these voicings inside a co-creative art process. Our ultimate goal was to create concepts and designs for a voice-art interface that would best facilitate this demographic of users to make their own vocal art, and in celebrating their vocal uniqueness.

VOICE-ART-ABLE

In most community art or educational settings, when singing or speech are used as an

intervention modality, the goal is often to bring the singer or speaker as close as possible to

producing normative speech or normative song. Critical disAbility studies, however, reorients

us toward paying attention to the unique talents and capacities that disAbility enables: vocal

difference, non-verbal sounds, and alternative vocalities can be radically celebrated as

virtuosic modality of cultural production, not just of inclusion.

This project applies the participatory principles and underpinning inter-sensory technologies

we call the voice-expanding ‘mirror’ (Bonenfant 2016, 2018a, b) to newly encountered user

groups: adults, in gender balanced, and age-range distributed groups, with mixed to

moderate learning disAbility. We use digitally-enabled strategies to capture, and then

respond to their voice production, taking advantage of vibration transducers and light

response to echo, amplify, and theatricalise the voicer’s unique qualities on wide, intersensory

spectra, eliciting improvisation. We then augment the users’ control of this mirroring.

With them, we explore ‘what else’ their voices can do and to invite them to design, play with,

and compose with the results of their vocal explorations; but the coding, parameters, options

available, and the object interface design that enables this must be explored through

reciprocal, creative vocal interaction with the users in question.

THEIR SOUNDS.

THEIR VOICES.

THEIR LOOPS.

THEIR VIRTUOSITIES.

MIXEDWILDANIMAL

SOFTMEOWWIND

BARKINGLOOP

CH-TS-LOOP

ECHOCHORUS

WEATHERSQUEAK

AS SOON AS YOU CALL IT SPEECH IT HAS TO BE 'COMPREHENSIBLE'.
AS SOON AS YOU CALL IT THEATRE IT HAS TO TELL A STORY.
AS SOON AS YOU CALL IT SINGING IT HAS TO BE 'PRETTY', OR AT LEAST 'COOL'.
AS SOON AS YOU CALL IT INSTALLATION ART IT HAS TO BE HIGH-VALUE, AND 'FRAMED'.
AS SOON AS YOU TOUCH IT IT'S CRAFT.

BARKINGLOOP 2

HAKIDA!

COUGH-O-PHONY

WOLFLOOP

PROBARKSCREAM

WEATHERLOOP

WEATHERLOOP2

HIGHENBLENDZNG

CATLOOP

CURVINGLOWWOO

SILENT NIGHT!

YES-SHEEPLOOP

HOW DO WE INVITE THE OFTEN OTHER(ED) VOICES OF PEOPLE WITH MILD TO MODERATE LEARNING DISABILITY TO LITERALLY BE HEARD?

HOW DO WE INVITE MARGINALISED VOICES TO LITERALLY BE FELT?

HOW DO WE DO SO WHILE HONOURING THESE VOICES' POTENTIAL FOR AESTHETIC SOPHISTICATION AND UNIQUE VIRTUOSITIES?

HOW DO WE CONFER VALUE ON TO THESE AESTHETIC PRODUCTIONS, AND INVITE THESE PEOPLE AND THEIR PRODUCTIONS TO CELEBRATE THEMSELVES (AND THEREBY CONFRONT/TRANSFORM CULTURAL VALUES REGARDING WHOSE BODIES AND THEIR VOCAL EXPRESSIONS MATTER?)

Tip

Tip