Artistic Vision

The artistic motivation for the Visual Voice was to expand on the expressive capabilities of the human voice through its tight bond with the face and gesture. Through the new visual-voice instrument that we created, we enabled singers to manipulate a synthetic voice with hand gestures, creating a novel media space that allowed us to explore new themes playing with inner and outer voice using the complex interplay between singers’ actions, voice and expression. Through this project we expanded the performers’ abilities to express themselves with their own voices and with the synthetic voice. We also enabled the audience to experience thoughtful and insightful performances involving synthetic and extended vocal techniques in profound ways. The works created included a one-person duet for DiVA and real voice, a one-person duet that also included sampled and processing control, a three-person sextet, an ensemble of four performers using iPhones for interfaces, and a two-person duet for synthetic voices controlled by tablet and flexible surface interfaces.