Workshop con Marit MacArthur: Doing Digital Voice Studies: New Tools and Methods

Doing Digital Voice Studies: New Tools and Methods

septiembre 12-14 2022

Sede: Sala B, Coordinación de Investigación, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UNAM

Horarios: 17:00 a 19:30

Nota: Este taller se imparte en inglés.

Se requiere de previa inscripción (contacto: poeticasonora@gmail.com)

Forma parte de las actividades organizadas en el marco del Proyecto “Las representaciones de la voz y sus materialidades: archivos, impresos y sonido” (PAPIIT IG400221; responsables: Mariana Masera Cerutti y Susana González Aktories).

TALLER HÍBRIDO

Sound and voice studies within DH present special opportunities and challenges. Audio and video archives provide tremendous resources for studying the aural and oral aspects of text-in-performance, the evolution of performance styles, and media history and formats. However, such research benefits from some basic knowledge of audio signal processing and the neuroscience of speech perception, as well as tools that work equally well on studio-produced audio books, podcasts, film, etc., and on low-quality, noisy recordings, e.g., live poetry readings and oral histories. This workshop is designed for individuals interested in performance who have an audio or video corpus in mind, and who have not yet found practical tools and methods to deeply explore and analyze that corpus. Participants are encouraged to have at least 10 minutes of recordings on hand to analyze, in any digital format.

The workshop will 1) provide basic background in audio signal processing, speech perception, and theories of voice studies (including questions of human bias around perceived identity and auditory stereotyping), 2) train participants on three open-source, state-of-the-art, user-friendly tools, and 3) guide participants through preliminary analysis of their corpus, to generate insights for further research and publication. The three tools are: Gentle, a forced aligner that can track timing patterns and generate and work with rough transcripts; Drift, a pitch-tracker that illuminates intonation and patterns of expression; and Voxit, a toolbox that allows for the large-scale analysis of timing, pitch, intensity and other measures of interest in performance. No background in sound or voice studies is required, and the workshop will alternate between lecture, discussion and application of the tools. This course will draw on work from the NEH Digital Humanities Advancement grant project, “Tools for Listening to Text-in-Performance”.

SCHEDULE OVERVIEW

Pre-Workshop Preparation

Gentle-Drift y Voxit: curso propedéutico vía Zoom

September 1^st, 2022

Led by Aurelio Meza

Please try out Gentle and Drift (and install them if you have a Mac) and Voxit (Mac or PC). Follow instructions and tutorials:

The downloadable version of Drift can be found under the “About” here:

https://drift4.spokenweb.ca/

Directions for downloading Voxit are here:

https://github.com/MillerLab-UCDavis/Voxit

DAY 1

Introductions

What is your corpus? What are your questions about it?

The Science of Speech Perception: Expectation, Bias and the Nonverbal

Theories of Sound and Voice Studies

Performative Speech: What Do We Listen for? What Can We Detect?

Media Formats, Sound Quality and Audio Signal Processing

Introducing Gentle and Drift

Applying Gentle and Drift to Your Corpus

DAY 2

Introducing Voxit

Applying Voxit to Your Corpus

One-on-one assistance with Drift, Gentle and Voxit

DAY 3

One-on-one assistance

Conclusions: Lightning Presentations and Discussion

READING LIST

MacArthur, Marit, Rambsy II, Howard, Wu, Xiaoliu, Ding, Qin, and Miller, Lee M. “101 Black Women Poets in Mainly White and Mainly Black Rooms.” August 27, 2022, Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/101-black-women-poets-in-mainly-white-and-mainly-black-rooms/

MacArthur, Marit and Miller, Lee M. “Slow Listening: Digital Tools for Voice Studies,” forthcoming in Digital Humanities Quarterly, 2022.

“John Ashbery’s Reading Voice.” Oct. 29, 2019. The Paris Review Online.

MacArthur, Marit. Rev. of The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, by Nina Sun Eidsheim. The Yale Review 106.4 (Oct. 2018).

MacArthur, Marit and Miller, Lee M. “After Scansion: Visualizing, Deforming and Listening to Poetic Prosody.” Stanford ARCADE Colloquy Series: Alternative Histories of Prosody, Dec. 13, 2018. [Essay and podcast]

MacArthur, Marit, Zellou, Georgia and Miller, Lee M. “Beyond Poet Voice: Sampling the Performance Styles of 100 American Poets.” Journal of Cultural Analytics, March 2018.

“Monotony, the Churches of Poetry Reading, and Sound Studies.” PMLA 131.1 (Jan. 2016): 38-63.

Semblanza de la académica

Marit MacArthur is a lecturer in the University Writing Program and affiliate faculty in the Performance Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Research Fellowship and an ACLS Digital Innovations Fellowship, and co-directed a NEH Digital Humanities Advancement grant project, “Tools for Listening to Texts-in-Performance.” Currently she is a co-investigator on “The SpokenWeb: Conceiving and creating a nationally networked archive of literary recordings for research and teaching,” a seven-year Can$2.5 million SHHRC partnership grant project that involves 13 institutions in the U.S. and Canada. Her work on performative speech has appeared or is forthcoming in PMLA, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Journal of Cultural Analytics, Stanford University’s ARCADE Colloquy, Digital Humanities Quarterly, The Paris Review Online, and Sounding Out!

Marit MacArthur es profesora en el progama University Writing y profesora asociada al grupo graduado Performance Studies en la Universidad de California, Davis. Es becaria del programa Fullbright Research, así como de ACLS Digital Innovations. Co-dirigió el proyecto de NEH Digital Humanities Advancement llamado “Tools for Listening to Texts-in-Performance”. Actualmente es co-investigadora de “The SpokenWeb: Conceiving and creating a nationally networked archive of literary recordings for research and teaching” (SpokenWeb: concebir y crear un archivo de grabaciones literarias conectado nacionalmente para la investigación y la docencia”), el cual cuenta con una apoyo por parte de SHHRH. En este proyecto se involucran trece instituciones en Estados Unidos y Canadá. Su trabajo sobre discurso performativo (performative speech) ha aparecido y sigue siendo publicado en revistas y reseñas como PMLA, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Journal of Cultural Analytics, Stanford University’s ARCADE Colloquy, Digital Humanities Quarterly, The Paris Review Online y Sounding Out!