A listening session in 2 chapters.

As artificial sounds and voices are an intrinsic part of our daily lives, there is still no reproduction of the voice that doesn’t have an outlandish or uncanny feel to it. It’s a pleasure augmented by horror, an old dream accomplished. It’s like being somewhere without really being there, a person without a person, alarm and rapture that is engendered by this miracle.

Chapter 1: Disembodied Voices (45 mins)
A curious selection of disembodied voices; EVP recordings, a talking budgie, automatic telephone answers, speech synthesis and public space announcements. Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) recordings are sound fragments that come from ghost hunters scouring audio tracks for background voices. This chapter encourages us to become attuned to the voices that surround us, both literal and paranormal.

Chapter 2: Imaginary Friends (45 mins)
Most of us have experienced interactions and conversations with imaginary friends in early childhood. They are powerful signs of an imaginative mind and a way of learning to understand the world and coping with new or difficult experiences. This chapter departs form the idea of imaginary companions taking a more ambiguous approach on how recorded voice, speech and tone is used by ventriloquists, sound poets and artists.

With recordings by Alfred Wolfsohn, Emma Clarke, Disinformation, Laurie Anderson, Gregory Whitehead, Sarah Angliss, Robert Ashley, Sparkie Williams, Konstantin Raudive, Diana Deutsch, Ernst Jandl, Antye Greie, Erik Bünger, Malcolm Clarke (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) and others.