The human voice
The human voices importance to radiophonic art plays a big role. The main features of the human voice in radio art are that it carries the meaning and emotional dissonance to emphasis the meaning of a script. The voice is an art form beyond written words, it can carry the rhythm of a piece or provide the art with some identity and context.
An example of an artist that uses the human voice as an art form or medium is Laurie Anderson (1947) she is seen as the queen of voice-as-art, she likes to layer spoken word over different effects and vocoders to blur the line of human and machine. her work in “United States Live” (1984) pushes this idea of playing with layers and repetition to evoke an sense of sonic theatre.
Music as a bed
Using music as a bed is a common technique used in radio phonic art to sit underneath the voice as a sonic layer to create atmosphere or as an emotional guide. Music can change the shape of the listeners emotional state, it emphasises us the listen to the voice making it an important tool for story telling.
Music can also provide the listener with context where there are no visuals, it helps the listener orient themselves into time, place and mood. An example of an artist who uses sound as a bed is Chris Watson (1953), who was one the worlds most acclaimed recording artists. His focus is on wildlife, he uses ambient and natural sounds to bed his artwork into. “Glastonbury Ocean Landscape” (2019) shows his attention to using nature sounds that he collects on his field recorder. His distinctive taste of nature bring forth a surreal landscape for the listener.
Eds Thoughts
-Bing Crosby was the only person that has an Egfar tape recorder lifted from German army, he used tape recorders to present his radio show across America abolishing time zones. he could show anyone
-The giutair could also abolish time zones because of its PORTABLILTY, you can take it anywhere on your back and record it, showing anyone anywhere, its weightlessness.
-Collapse of space, can show other people your music anywhere at anytime. ITS WEIGHTLESS
-Radio emphases liveness, with radio your dealing with duration, our programme will slot into this on going programme
-When does an event become an object? Podcasts appears as a recording, radio is more of an event that’s constantly changing that you tap into rather than seeking out something
-The flapping of the cloth as the sounds of the fire. What does the sound effect do, what can it tell us?
-An overstated sound effect shows accomatic space (non visual) we must over state as we have no gestural content. We are all blind!
-The accusmatic space is not completely a blank void is not nothing. There is an archtecual environment with sound as we percieve sound as highs and lows. We have an environment
-We engineer this experience we live in, rely on our instinct as sound designs and artists
Reflections
Reflecting on my own personal work, I realise the intimacy that the human voice carries. How do I want my listener to feel when they listen to my piece? There are ways that we can drawer the listener in, to make them feel part of the journey. Delivery of the voice is something that I want to look at, rerecording vocals in different expressions to change the way my work feels.
Voice is the embodied sound within radio, it grounds the piece in the human aspect of my work. It doesn’t matter who is saying but it will always make the artwork more human.
Looking into music as a bed, the sounds we decide to use for a piece with carry the undercurrent of emotion next to the voice. It can guide the listener in a more subtle way so we can connect the different elements together.
References
BBC (2024). Episode One: The Real World. [online] BBC Radio 1. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0025tzx [Accessed 8 Apr. 2025].
Collins, P. (2019). Chris Watson. [online] Chris Watson. Available at: https://chriswatson.net [Accessed 8 Apr. 2025].
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