lecture by Eduardo Abrantes

As sentient beings we are constantly immersed in a sonorous field. This field of sound is bound together with the objects, presences, events that occur to us, in us, that define identity and territory, through embodiment and beyond – somewhere between the intimate familiar other, and the strange foreign self. The uses of the voice are innumerable: you call, you are called, you express, resonate, find yourself affected, react, and even that all pervading inner voice, sometimes too loud to handle, rises, and so it goes…

From the philosophical perspective, the voice, when not completely converted into speech by speech, has been hard to deal with. On the other hand, it has found itself at home in the contemporary interdisciplinary strategies of the Humanities. From sound studies to urban design, from the performing to the visual/plastic arts, from politics to neuroscience – its numerous revolving critical takes can leave one quite out of breath.
In his recent work, Abrantes investigates a crossover between “Extended Mind Theory” (Clark & Chalmers, 1998) and “sound envelopes” or “sonorous skin ego” (Didier Anzieu, 1990), as a model for the notion of individuality in a surrounding world, where exchange is the rule. In the lecture “Wandering with Voices – a phenomenological inquiry on the vocal experience of everydayness”, Abrantes focuses on the potential of the actual voice in space and place, as a root of identity, consciousness and presence.

appearance at Tuned City
Social Acoustemologies: Listening / 09.07.11