Voices: Special Issue of Performance Research

I was sole editor for this single topic, special issue of Performance Research. It was the result of my ongoing research into the sonic and acoustic aspects of performance, and of performance documentation. Together with editing the issue, soliciting and selecting the essays, I also wrote an introductory essay, ‘in Viva Voce’, that described the theoretical framework and focus of the issue. The research process for this project followed my earlier special issues ‘On Silence’ and ‘On Editing’, each of which looked at sonic and aural aspects of performance. ‘Voices’ interrogated a number of related areas - the relationship of the voice to recording technologies, acoustic space and aural environments; the history of aurality; the exchange between the aural and visual in performance; practices of writing sound and the ways in which new sound technologies address and help to reconceptualise older recording technologies. Voices particularly looked at the legacy of modernism in relation to ideas about aurality and technology, including an essay on Pound’s radio operas and at textual and graphic voices in the correspondence between Cage, Beuys and Joyce; at voice in the context of the postdramatic theatre, in relation to the work of Christoph Marthaler and at the contemporary film and sound work of Chantal Akerman and Janet Cardiff