Three Voices:Sounding Out the Century

Voices are everywhere. They are trained and shaped, improved, adapted, post-produced and generated to suit a particular media environment. Political movements have a voice; multinational corporations and their marketing campaigns need a voice. Any social group seeking recognition needs to find its voice. Beyond these metaphorical uses of the word voice, what are the voices we encounter on a daily basis? How are they situated within our sound environments and listening cultures along with the infrastructure of twenty-first-century media and technology? In this article, I propose a distinction between three voices: Technological voices, relational voices, and public voices.<br/>Who are these vocal and sonic personae that speak to you? Technological voices and mediated voices are present in your life and mine. There is a person and their vocal cords, their resonating body, speaking next to you.