Touching Voice (2019)
vocal performance with contact microphones, transducer speakers
10 minutes

Touching voice is a vocal performance in which the audience shares in the shifting corporal resonances occurring in the performer’s body. Contact microphones and transducer speakers mediate touch between the bodies of the performer and the audience, allowing the listeners to feel through their own skin, the vibrations of the singing body. The receptive capacity of the audience is augmented to create the possibility of an auditory-haptic experience, which is both individual and collective.
Sebes uses voice as a method of listening to the inner shape of her body and its resonances. She moves voice around the body‘s inner cavities, and then consciously spreads this sound from the inside out. The audience members are on a tangential journey, controlling the tempo, placement, position and touch-quality of the prosthetic speaker against their skin. Both performer and audience are offered the empathic experience of touching the other through the self. The work facilitates a tactile experience of vocal sound, and explores the interconnectedness of sensory and perceptual modes.

Image credits: Taiga Trigo