Voice In Space Research Articles

The Art of Biblical Performance: Biblical Performance Criticism and the Old Testament Narratives

For centuries, the Bible’s essential identity as a book has been taken for granted as a self-evident truth by scholars and lay people alike. But should it be? Is the Bible a book? Well, it is, and it is not - it is much more than a book. For significant portions of its history, the narrative contents of the Bible were not primarily encountered in written form, but rather through embodied recitation by a performer or a group of performers, who incarnated the story before a live audience. Biblical performance criticism (BPC) is an emerging, interdisciplinary approach to interpreting the Bible that takes seriously both the Bible’s oral history and its vitality as the Word of God. It provides a process whereby scholars, pastors, and lay people alike can come to deepen their understanding of a biblical text through embodied performance.BR In this article, I argue that the cultural realities of ancient Israel combined with a reassessment of the biblical narratives from the perspective of BPC suggest that the art practiced by the biblical composers was not of an essentially literary character, but rather of a dramatic character, which came to expression in performance. The narrative texts contained in the Hebrew Bible are more akin to dramatic scripts than a purely literary form of writing. The ancient crafts of drama and performance are evident in the texts we receive. Embodied reenactments of the biblical dramas - through body and voice in space and time before a gathered audience - demonstrates the “living and active” character of the word(s) of God (Heb 4:12). The art of biblical performance is to show, rather than tell.BR Thus, I will argue that a fuller understanding of Israel’s performance tradition will lead to a greater appreciation of Israel’s dramatic and theological achievement. I will demonstrate this by applying BPC to the brief story of Moses striking the rock in the wilderness, found in Exodus 17:1-7. Embodied engagement with this drama through performance clarifies the conflict that drives the story; attends to the critical role played by dialogue, gestures, spacing, and tone of voice in shaping the theological affirmation of the story. Further, I will demonstrate how the bodies of actors responding to the stage directions embedded in the “script” reveal a surprising act of love on the part of God, which stands at the heart of the drama’s climax and resonates with the heart of Christian theology - a climax that will be missed if it is not seen.

Reflections on Expanding Girls’ Political Capital at the United Nations

Stories about girl activism circulate as exceptional narratives of individual girl power causing intergenerational partnerships and community collaborations to become invisible and apparently unnecessary to girl activist efforts. At the same time, practitioner-scholars attest that sharing authentic stories about intergenerational feminist praxis is difficult to do since it requires us to write with intentional vulnerability exposing the failures and tensions inherent to girl activism networks. In this article, I provide an autoethnographic exploration of the intergenerational processes involved with organizing Girls Speak Out for the International Day of the Girl at the United Nations. I draw inspiration from Lauren J. Silver’s methodological remix of youth-centered activism, and in doing so, reassess the impact and experience of leveraging girls’ political voices in spaces of normative power.

Operational and Experimental Tasks, Performance, and Voice in Space.

BACKGROUND: Voice analysis offers an unobtrusive approach for psychological monitoring. We demonstrate the relationship between voice parameters and cognitive performance in: 1) a task with psychological test character, and 2) performance in an operational, mission-relevant task. The central methodological aim was to verify the usefulness of voice commands and counting in providing anchor values for the step-function model of voice pitch.METHODS: During a 22-yr period, 42 cosmonauts participated in the Russian space experiment "Pilot", which was a hand-controlled docking maneuver. As reference the experiment included the cognitive task "Manometer." This task was controlled through voice commands. These voice commands were stored and are the basis for the present analysis.RESULTS: Cosmonauts differed in their working style and respective performance during the Manometer task. Clustered groups can be assumed to represent different effort. Importantly, these groups differed in the changes of voice pitch among mission phases and among task repetitions. However, there were no differences between these motivation groups and performance in the professional task.DISCUSSION: The differing effort is the effect of different motivation of cosmonauts for experimental test tasks vs. mission-relevant professional tasks. Latter ones provide a more reliable chance to assess the real actual state and skills of a cosmonaut. Voice pitch measurement seems to be reliable and useful under space conditions for monitoring this volitional effort.Johannes B, Bronnikov SV, Bubeev JA, Kotrovskaya TI, Shastlivtseva DV, Piechowski S, Hoermann H-J, Rittweger J, Jordan J. Operational and experimental tasks, performance, and voice in space. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2019; 90(7):624-631.

The intersubjective space–time of a Zulu choir/HIV support group in global perspective

This article draws from anthropology, conversation analysis, ethnomusicology, semiotics, and phenomenology, using the concept of intersubjectivity to model how the micro-organization of musical communication can be integral in social processes of support, identity maintenance, and activism amid structural inequality. This is based on ethnographic fieldwork in Durban, South Africa, with a Zulu gospel choir that functioned as a support group, activist organization, and performance troupe. Three distinct aspects (or levels) of intersubjectivity are discussed. The organization of these levels in music making is outlined through fine-grained discussion of how people with HIV coordinate bodies and voices in space as they make music together for each other and for international audiences. This article contributes to the further development of a musical semiotics, discussing how overlapping conceptualizations of intersubjectivity in multiple disciplines may be synthesized to analyze the performance of coordinated sonic action.

Spence, S., & David, A. (Eds.). (2004). Voices in the brain: The cognitive neuropsychiatry of auditory verbal hallucinations. By Sukhi S. Shergill

S.A. Spence - Voices in the Brain. G. Cockshutt - Choices for Voices: A Voice Hearer's Perspective on Hearing Voices. P. Bracken, I. Leudar, P. Thomas - Hearing Voices: A Phenomenological-Hermeneutic Approach. T. Wykes - Psychological Treatment for Voices in Psychosis. M.L. Seal, A. Aleman, P.K. McGuire - Compelling Imagery, Unanticipated Speech and Deceptive Memory: Neurocognitive Models of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Schizophrenia. P.W.R. Woodruff - Auditory Hallucinations: Insights and Questions from Neuroimaging. M.D. Hunter, Locating Voices in Space: A Perceptual Model for Auditory Hallucinations? A.S. David - The Cognitive Neuropsychiatry of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: An Overview. T.J. Crow - Auditory Hallucinations as Primary Disorders of Syntax: An Evolutionary Theory of the Origins of Language.

Locating voices in space: A perceptual model for auditory hallucinations?

Introduction. Auditory hallucinations are often perceived as being located in external auditory space (“outside the head”), like real auditory perceptions, but in the absence of a speaker or other external stimulus.Method. A selective literature review of the spatial phenomenology of auditory hallucinations and the cognitive neuroscience of locating real voices in external space was undertaken. An auditory-perceptual model of external auditory hallucinations was developed in healthy right-handed subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging and the presentation of speech in virtual acoustic space.Results. Karl Jaspers inextricably linked “reality” and “externality” of auditory hallucinations. Although these two properties do not always occur simultaneously in hallucinating patients, the issue of “externality” is important from both a clinical and neuroscientific perspective. In an auditory-perceptual model of auditory hallucinations, association cortex in the left planum temporale is critically involved in the perception of real voices as located in external space. Right-sided voice stimuli are associated with greater neural response in the dominant (left) auditory cortex than left-sided stimuli. Subjects are better at identifying the spatial location of voices presented on the right than on the left.Conclusion. The auditory-perceptual model described helps identify candidate brain systems likely to be involved in the pathogenesis of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and is distinct from other models, which use concepts of “internal monitoring” and “inner speech”. Its application, in the cognitive neuroscientific investigation of the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations, may shed further light on the mechanisms underlying this distressing experience.

Spatial audio for telepresence

Developments in communications technology, such as audio–visual conferencing and telepresence, have created a new set of demands for audio delivery systems. In the past, a telephone handset, with its limited transducers, was adequate for simple spoken communication; however, future multiuser communication systems and immersive machine interfaces will be greatly enhanced by using high-quality three-dimensional audio. Such three-dimensional sound systems can position individual talkers’ voices in space around the user, creating a greater feeling of immersion and improving intelligibility. This presentation discusses the design and implementation of a number of spatial audio system implementations. The applications range from a SmartSpace chair (a single-user environment using a transaural system) through to a VisionDome (a large multiuser environment using a combination of ambisonics and nonlinear panning). Theoretical design and practical implementation issues are discussed, including problems encountered and how they were overcome.

Voices in space

Voices in space