Speculative Voicing
Practice-led research by Amina Abbas-Nazari
Amina is a voice designer, with a background in design, research and vocal practice.
Amina has researched the voice in conjunction with emerging technology through practice, since 2008, as documented on this website. Amina is now completing a PhD in the School of Communication at the Royal College of Art, funded by Techne (NPIF).
Her PhD research investigates the sound and sounding of voices in conversational artificially intelligent (AI) systems, such as human voice interaction with an Amazon Echo device, voiced by Alexa. Currently human and synthesised voices in conversational AI systems are understood through practices of profiling - a mode of working and understanding that further perpetuates harm to already marginalised people. Using a methodology highlighting the sonic materiality of human and synthesised voices she critiques practices of profiling while demonstrating alternative possibilities. The research is orientated from her position as a practising speculative designer and vocal performer, while tracking the motivations of a lineage of female experimental vocalists. The practice-led research stipulates that the voice taken as a material and sonic phenomenon within conversational AI systems can facilitate new forms of meaning making. By working with the voice as a design material, but treating it as though an experimental singer would, possibilities emerge to experiment with vocal potential, building dynamic relations with other matter and exploring concepts of being and identity from an ecological and social standpoint.
Contextual research can be found on the Speculative Voicing Instagram
Amina Abbas-Nazari‘s Archived Work
Get in touch:
Email: amina.abbas-nazari [at] network.rca.ac.uk
Insta: @aminaabbasnazari
LinkedIn: /in/aminaabbasnazari/
SELECTED EXHBITIONS & PERFORMANCES
Exhibitions
What You Will Watch and Hear, performed by Musarc, Lisson Gallery, London, 2023
The New Real AI Art Commission: Uncanny Machines with Johann Diedrick, 2023
Research Biennale, RCA, Online, 2021
Attune, Research and Waves, Online, 2020
Empathy Loading, Furtherfield Gallery x Curating Contemporary Art, RCA. Online, 2020
Le Marteau Sans Maître Concert, Musarc, Whitechapel Bell Foundry, 2020
Happy End, lítost, SVIT Gallery, Prague, 2018
Odrathek, musarc, London, 2018
Objects of Desire, Support Systems, Design Museum, London, 2018
Four Words: Technology. Curated by Alan Dunn with Leeds Beckett University, Channel 4 Television, 2017
Echo, The Function Room, King's Cross, London, 2014
Paradise, Milan Furniture Fair, Italy, 2012
Solo Performances:
Aonyx And Drepan, The Minders Of The Warm by Fani Parali, Southwark Park Galleries, 2020
Repositorium by Nestor Pestana, Scrolling The Arcane, Planetarium, Porto, Portugal, 2020
The Terrace of Lungs by Fani Parali, Zabludowicz Collection, London, 2019
Ecstasies by Marguerite Humeau, Kunstverein, Hamburg, 2019
Angels like Buildings by Fani Parali, Assembly Point, London, 2019
The Wingspan Measurers, by Fani Parali, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2017
Oral Rinse, with Harry Bix, Crypt Gallery, Euston, London, 2017
All Silent But For The Broadcast, RCA, London, 2014
And You Were Wonderful On Stage (group performance) by Cally Spooner, Tate Britain, London, 2014
Click here for full CV
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS & PUBLICATIONS
AI: Who’s Looking After Me?, Friday Lates: Machine Mythologies, Science Gallery, London
Beyond the Every Day: Vocal Potential in AI Mediated Communication, Sounding Out! Blog, Online
Articulating Data, Edinburgh
Peer Review, openwork, Columbia University, 2022.
Where Speech Meets Sound, as part of Hausmusik Kollektiv, edited by Claudia Molitor, Uniformbooks, 2021
Speculative Listening, Auraldiversities: Future Listening. Goldsmiths University, 2021
Looking Back and Looking Forward, Sound Practise and Research, City, University of London, 2021
Giving Voice to Synthetic Sonics, with Anja Borowicz-Richardson, RCA, 2021
Phonocentric Adventures in Design Fiction, Art/Thought/Sound: Knowing Through Sound, School of Arts, UCP, Porto, Portugal, 2021
Beyond Words, MRes, School of Communication, RCA, 2020
Human-Data Interaction workshop on Music and AI, Somerset House, London, 2019
The (Un)Sound Barrier Symposium, Royal College of Art, London, 2019
Acoustic Ecology of an AI System, SPARC (Sound Practise and Research at City, University of London) Symposium, London, 2019
Very Very Far Away Radio, Sympoiesis, DIY Space for London, 2017
Sonic Fiction-Sonic Futures, Listening After Pauline Oliveros, Centre for Audio Visual Experimentation, Leeds, 2017
Sound Cultures in the Modern Age, Queen Mary University, London, 2017
Sounding Out the Anthropocene Conference, Critical Media Lab, Basel, Switzerland, 2016
V&A Digital Futures and SPACE present: The DeLuxe Edition, V&A, London, 2016
FutureFest, Nesta, London, 2015
Across the Sonic Border, Work & Play: Economies of Music Conference, Music Department, Harvard University, America, 2015