Coding Bodies

This paper discusses the role of text and the voice (both external and internal) in the interplay between the histories of audio-visuality and in the histories of the senses and the arts. More specifically it will look at the emergence of modernist discourses centred on voice, the auditory and the visual, whereby the roles of text, sound and image were being radically reformulated under the auspices of Phonography and Film. In the last 15 years, scholars such as Smirnov, Kahn, Levin, Thoben and Naumann have traced exploratory audio-visual practices from the late 19th century to the present, often engaging with tropes surrounding the role of the apparatus-as-sensory-proxy. I will take a slightly different route in this regard, discussing how the metaphor of the machine-body extended into the realm of memory, language and aurality via Dada, Sound Poetry and Phonography. This will take the form of a Lecture performance, drawing together various media and combining these with a live auscultation sound work.