Sounding Poetry between Voice and Data

This postdoc project investigates sounding poetry in digital culture and the new forms of subjectivity that it manifests. The term “sounding poetry” refers to a range of poetry performances that extend from spoken poetry to sound poetry and musicalized poetry recitation Such practices have become part of digital culture as the result of two converging processes: the assimilation and reshaping of the established forms of poetry performance by digital media, and the production of new, “digitally oral” poetry forms that are endemic to participatory culture online. Analyzing these practices, the project traces the entangled relationships between three kinds of subjects: the lyric subject of the poem, the embodied subject of the vocal performance, and the digital subject of technology.

Whether affirmed or contested, lyric subjectivity has long been one of the central notions of lyric theory. This is particularly true of sounding poetry, as the human voice has traditionally been understood as the carrier of individuality and subjectivity. Thus, in poetry performance, the poet’s voice embodies the speaking subject of the poem, endowing it with reality and authenticity. Digital media, however, complicate this relationship bringing with them a third kind of subject – the digital subject of social media profiles, video game avatars, or artificial intelligence. This digital subject both serves as a technological extension of human subjectivity and, at the same time, reduces it to a stream of disembodied and malleable data.

What happens when the corporeality of the voice collides with the immateriality of data? And what kind of lyric subject does their collision produce? On the one hand, digital manipulations or imitations of the human voice problematize the authenticity effect. On the other hand, digital subjects express themselves through autobiographical performances, reinscribing subjectivity into experimental poetry practices, some of which directly renounce it. Finally, sounding poetry enables various digital entities – whether artificial, aggregated from data, or networked – to make their strongest claim to embodiment and subjectivity.

This postdoc project examines the subjectivities that manifest themselves in the transformations of vocal performance and audioliterary creativity in digital sounding poetry. It classifies these subjectivities into three broadly defined categories. The project’s first part addresses the cyborgian subject of poetry practices that employ processed or synthesized voices as well as digitally conditioned techniques of the voice. The second part analyzes poetry performances in the context of digital sonic media and participatory sound art, tracing the fragmentation of their lyric and vocal subjects, and their reconstitution as multifaceted assemblages of the human and the technological. Finally, the third part explores “digitally oral” poetry practices in participatory culture as expressions of collective online subjectivities.