Moving Voices

Eva Hallama (2023): “Moving Voices. Audio Letters as Substitutes for the Missing”
Sounding Modernism. An interdisciplinary conference
King’s College London
June 22-23, 2023

The presentation highlighted the sonic experiences that the technologies of the voice letter evoked since the turn of the 20^th century, especially during periods of migration. From the perspective of cultural history the presentation expored how voice letters have been a modern way for staying in touch over long distances and how these objects created sonic memories of the absent world as they carried their acoustic tracks over distances and time. While speaking and listening to a familiar voice enables real closeness and intimacy in moments of being apart, the imagination of a conversation (with a person) always interacts with the act of speaking into a technical machine. It seems that the technological device interferes with the cultural practice of communicating as much as it makes it possible.

Using the example of selected audio letters from the SONIME research project aspects of the cultural technique and practice of communicating via audio letters were analysed.