Jaume Ferrete Vazquez. Your father is speaking with my father's voice
Ecolalias I
This piece forms part of Ecolalias (Echolalias), a series of podcasts centred on the paths traced by the voice when it is placed in circulation to become the echo of a body it is inseparable from. This series is also made up of the podcasts Ahora (Now) by Amaia Urra and Brandon LaBelle’s The Voice Agent.
If there are techniques of the body then there are also techniques of the voice, and these are transmitted, and learned and executed. And if there are body techniques of the body then our voices are the product and practice of these techniques; and our voices are the practice and product of those discourses on voices that determine who can speak and how, or that enable someone’s particular vocal qualities – and their character, their gender and other social categories - to be related.
Our voices are the product and practice of these techniques and discourses, and so are synthetic voices. Synthetic voices are also “our voices”. Thus, synthetic voices work as a representation of our voices and, consequently, as an index of those techniques and discourses. Yet synthetic voices are not just representations of our voices, for they are also “our voices”.
Those that we understand to be our own voices and those we understand to be constructed voices actually seem to quote one another.
Your Father Is Speaking with My Father’s Voice sets out to discern what “our voices” are like and what they do, those that we understand to be constructed and appear to quote those voices that we see as our own, or vice versa.
It is not entirely clear who is speaking.
This podcast quotes or paraphrases texts and interventions by Marisa Belasteguigoitia, Nina Eidsheim, Maite Garbayo Maeztu, Josephine Hoegaerts, Greg Milner, Theo van Leeuwen and Amanda Weidman, in addition to sections from the BBC Radio 4 podcast Klatt’s Last Tapes and the online archive Dennis Klatt's History of Speech Synthesis.
The work of Jaume Ferrete Vazquez (Mollet del Vallés, 1980) revolves around voice politics and ideologies by way of concerts, performance, listening sessions, conversations, sound work and websites. He carries out his work in the spheres of visual arts (Secession, Vienna; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Barcelona; and the Urban Video Project, New York), music and stage (LEM Festival, Mercat de les Flors i Antic Teatre, in Barcelona; Poetas por Km2, Madrid; and Festival SOS, Murcia) and education (Creadors en Residencia, Barcelona), among others. His work has received acclaim through a number of grants, awards and residencies at institutions such as the Departamento de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya; Matadero (Madrid); Helsinki International Artists in Residency Project; Vessel Art Projects (Bari); Q-O2 (Brussels) and Casa Vecina (Mexico City), to name but a few. Since 2008 he has coordinated the sound pedagogy project Sons de Barcelona, started by the Musical Technology Group from the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
![DECtalk DTC01 Owner's Manual, 2a ed, 1984, p.2, fig 1-1, DECtalk Operating Modes DECtalk DTC01 Owner's Manual, 2a ed, 1984, p.2, fig 1-1, DECtalk Operating Modes](https://radio.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/styles/ancho_completo/public/audio/imgs/dectalk.jpg?itok=uiucy8rK)
DECtalk DTC01 Owner's Manual, 2a ed, 1984, p.2, fig 1-1, DECtalk Operating Modes
![Helen Harper practicing with Voder The Etude. Music Magazine, September 1939 Helen Harper practicing with Voder The Etude. Music Magazine, September 1939](https://radio.museoreinasofia.es/sites/default/files/styles/ancho_completo/public/audio/imgs/harper.jpg?itok=OXzt0iGA)
Helen Harper practicing with Voder The Etude. Music Magazine, September 1939
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- Date:
- 31/05/2016
- Production:
- Jaume Ferrete Vazquez
- License:
- Creative Commons by-nc-sa 4.0
Audio quotes
This podcast quotes or paraphrases texts and interventions by:
- Marisa Belasteguigoitia. Performance at the opening of Entre palabra e imagen. Galería de pensamiento de Gloria Anzaldúa. 17 de marzo, 2016
- Nina Eidsheim. Synthesizing Race: Towards an Analysis of the Performativity of Vocal Timbre [en línea]. Trans, Revista Transcultural de Música, 2009, nº 13. Available here.
- Maite Garbayo Maeztu. Cuerpos que aparecen. Performance y Feminismos en el Tardofranquismo. Consonni, 2016
- Josephine Hoegaerts. As it echoes South and North. Girls and Boys Singing Identity into the National Landscape. En: Music, Longing and Belonging: Articulations of the Self and the Other in the Musical Realm. Editado por Magdalena Waligórska. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013, pp. 202-221
- Theo van Leeuwen. Vox Humana: The Instrumental Representation of the Human Voice. En: VOICE. Vocal Aesthetics in Digital Arts and Media. Editado por Norie Neumark, Ross Gibson y Theo van Leeuwen. MIT Press, 2010, pp. 5-16
- Greg Milner. Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music. Faber & Faber, 2009
- Amanda Weidman. Anthropology and Voice [en línea]. Annual Review of Anthropology, Octubre 2014, Vol.43: 37-51. Available here.
- Klatt’s Last Tapes [en línea]. BBC Radio 4. 2013. Available here.
- Dennis Klatt's History of Speech Synthesis [en línea]. Available here.