Voice audio methods

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of voice audio in qualitative research, as data in its own right rather than only as a precursor to transcription. Building on critiques of voice in qualitative research, I argue that audio can enable researchers to work with the more-than-representational excesses of voice. Developing this line of thinking, I draw on Levi Bryant’s machinic ontology to set out a post-humanist conception of voice as arising within ecologies of media machines. As an example of what machinic voice audio can do, I describe an experimental audio work that I produced as part of research on a ruinous landscape. The final section of the paper makes more general observations about the malleability and fallibility of the machinic voice.

Child focused research: Disconnected and disembodied voices

“…Moreover, the concept of ‘children’s voice’ is apt to homogenise and run the risk of assuming that when referring to children – that this relates to many if not all children where they share the same views and experiences (Bakhtin 1963). These debates are also infused with critical discussions concerning anthropocentric voiced experiences which often overlook non-human and particularly materialistic encounters (Cooper, 2017; Gallagher, 2020) which shape experiences as well as unvoiced experiences and silence (Mazzei, 2007). In my own work (Cooper et al, 2019) I have made calls to go beyond talk and consider what isn’t said as much as what is and join discussions on the importance silence as an aspect of voice.…”

“…Discussions also ensue concerning the conceptualisation of voice as predominately verbal, thus discounting different conceptualisations which acknowledge the embodied materiality of voice (Gallagher, 2020). Listening to the views of children includes rich multi-modal experiences (Clark and Moss, 2001) that are embodied, and situated within multi-layered social dynamics (Cooper and Preece, 2023), laced with family histories and shaped by relational activities in which humans and other-than-humans are agentic (Latour, 2005; Mazzei and Jackson, 2017).…”

More-than-human methodologies in qualitative research: Listening to the Leafblower

“…For example, as Chadwick (2020) noted, ‘new materialist reconfigurings [of voice] enable a productive reconceptualization of voice as a transindividual process that is not located in individual bodies but is fundamentally relational’ (p. 1). Attuning to the resonances of more-than-human sounds troubles our conceptualizations of voice, challenging what and who can ‘speak’ in audio captures of ecologies, environments, and encounters (Gallagher, 2019). Posthuman listening practices immanently entangle us with the production of place, an entanglement that invokes responsibilities to materialities and bodies beyond our immediate relations—the outwardlookingness described by Massey (2005).…”

“…In acoustic studies, sound has been explored as the physical vibration of frequencies, the modulations of pitch and tone (Hocks and Comstock, 2017). Phenomenological studies of sound have oriented to how humans make sense of the world through the experience and emotions evoked by listening (Nancy, 2002;Vallee, 2020;Voegelin, 2010;Wargo, 2020) and other interpretive studies have explored through human experience and emotion what sound does (Ash, 2013;Baker et al, 2020;Gallagher, 2019;Gershon, 2013Gershon, , 2015. Sound has also been explored as a more-than-human materiality through posthuman perspectives, particularly in the field of geography (e.g.…”

The future of ‘video’ in video-based qualitative research is not ‘dumb’ flat pixels! Exploring volumetric performance capture and immersive performative replay

“…3 Additionally, some studies have topicalised camerawork and the use of video as a set of practices in the workplace or in leisure pursuits (Broth et al, 2014). There are well-known problems (and solutions) when using video cameras/audio recorders to collect data in natural settings, but the sociotechnical dimension of the camera/microphone as an apparatus or agency of observation is often neglected (Barad, 1998: 94;Gallagher, 2020). From the earliest days, some ethnomethodologists, such as Harold Garfinkel and David Sudnow, were aware that 'you will have a hard time reproducing the actual spatial relations that members see because the camera does not operate like the eye does' (Hill and Crittenden, 1968: 54).…”