Vocoding

By Sapphira

Zara explained how she intended for her movement to present the experience of trying to replicate the natural, as herself, rather than the movement being a direct replication of the natural. This inspired us to use vocoding.

A vocoder, in the context of this piece, examines and synthesises the human voice in order to transform it. The vocoder analyses a voice - the modulator signal - and comprehends it as a series of “formants”, which are then transferred onto a carrier signal. In music, the carrier signal is typically some manner of synthesiser, which results in the robotic, pitched speech seen in the works of such artists as Daft Punk.

However, for this piece, I instead used vocals of Zara imitating lynx vocalisations for the modulator signal, and lynx vocalisations for the carrier signal (and vice-versa). This was in order to effectively fuse primal human vocalisations with the lynx vocalisations, thus blurring the distinction between human and animal. The somewhat low-resolution nature of the vocoder used helps to make the consequent sound artificial in nature as well.