Seeing to Sound: On Sound, Music and Voice
Tones of Face: On Psychophonotypographics. A lecture given at The Acoustic Text: Sound and Music in Literature, a symposium at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 1st October 2021. [pdf]
Auricles, Oracles, Otacoustica: On Overhearing. A talk given at Earpieces: Listening, Diagnosing, Writing, Cambridge, 17th December 2016. [pdf]
The Hidden Power of Noise. A discussion with Bridget Kendall, Garrett Keizer and Jana Winderen for BBC World Service The Forum, broadcast 9th April 2016.
Beyond Words: What You’re Saying With Growls, Um, Ahs and Mms. An interview with Amanda Smith for The Body Sphere, ABC Radio, Australia, broadcast Saturday 5th March 2016. [Transcript]
Acousmania. A lecture given at Sound Studies: Art, Experience, Politics, CRASSH, Cambridge, 10th July 2015. [pdf]
Nonverbal Communication. An episode of BBC Radio 4’s Word of Mouth, broadcast 1st June 2015, devoted to a discussion of the ideas in my book Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters and Other Vocalizations (London: Reaktion, 2014).
Choralities. A lecture given at Voices and Noises, Audiovisualities Lab of the Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, 27th March 2015. [pdf]
To The Ear A Great Compassion: Listening, Counting and Number A paper given at the Faculty of Music Research Colloquium, University of Oxford, 11th November 2014. [pdf]
Sadistic Listening. A paper written for the John E. Sawyer Seminar, Hearing Modernity, Harvard University, 14th April 2014. [pdf version] [video]
Rustications: Animals in the Urban Mix. A lecture given at the Australasian Association of Literature conferenceModern Soundscapes, the University of New South Wales, 10th July 2013. [pdf version]
Two-step, Nerve-tap, Tanglefoot: Tapdance Typologies in Cinema. A talk given at the Screen Media Research Seminar, CRASSH, Cambridge, 6th November 2012. [pdf version]
Accidence. In (.) Imogen Stidworthy (London: Matt’s Gallery/Maastricht: Jan van Eyck Academie, 2012), pp. 63-79. [pdf version]
Panophonia. A talk given at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, 22nd February 2012. [pdf version]
Photophonics. A lecture given at the Audiovisuality conference, University of Aarhus, 27 May 2011. It is published in Sound Effects, 3.1 (2013): 132-48. [pdf version]
Titivillitium:The Tittle-Tattle of the Teeth. A talk given at A talk given at Performed Voices: Whispering, Shadowing, Prompting, Jerusalem, 30 January 2011.[pdf version]
Art, Radio and Alibi. A talk given at Performing Art History, Courtauld Institute, London, 27 January 2011.[pdf version]
Climacteric. A text evoking a walk around Susan Phillipsz’s Surround Me, City of London, November 2010.[pdf version]
Chiasmus: A Rough History of the Guttural. A talk given at the Song, Stage and Screen conference, University of Winchester, 5 September 2010. [pdf version]
Thinking Out Loud. A talk given in the London Consortium seminar series Thinking Radio, 10 March 2010. [pdf version]
Secession. A lecture given at Sonic Acts XIII: The Poetics of Space, Amsterdam, 27 February 2010 [pdf version]
Auscultations (Listening In). A lecture given, in different versions, at the University of Iowa Sound Research Seminar 29 January 2010 and at Sonic Acts XIII: The Poetics of Space, Amsterdam, 27 February 2010 [pdf version]
Looping the Loop: Tape-Time in Burroughs and Beckett. A lecture given in the series Taping the World, University of Iowa, 28 January 2010. [pdf version]
The Chronopher. A talk given at the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, 2 April 2009. [pdf]; reprinted in The Oxford Handbook of Voice Studies, ed. Kathy Meizel and Nina Sun Eidsheim (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Writing The White Voice. A talk given at the Sound, Silence and the Arts symposium, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 28 February 2009. [pdf version]
Earslips: Of Mishearing and Mondegreens. A talk given at the conference Listening In, Feeding Back, Columbia University 14 February 2009. [pdf version] [
listen] [download mp3]
Ear Room. A talk given at the Audio Forensics Symposium, Image-Music-Text Gallery, London, 30 November, 2008. [pdf version]
Sound Stories. A discussion of ventriloquism for RTÉ Radio 1’s Sound Stories, broadcast 9 September 2008. [listen]
Resonance. A talk broadcast on Resonance FM, 14 July 2008. [pdf version] [ listen] [download mp3]
De Singultu: The Life and Times of the Sob. A talk given at the Breaking Voices symposium, London College of Fashion, 7 June 2008. [pdf version]
Whisper Music. A lecture given at theTake a Deep Breath symposium, Tate Modern, 15 February 2007. and atGiving Voice, Centre for Performance Research, Aberystwyth, 28 March 2008. [pdf version]
Sound and the Pathos of the Air. A talk given 21st April 2007 at Two Thousand + SEVEN, a symposium held at theSonic Arts Research Center, Queen’s University Belfast, in parallel to the Sonorities Festival of Contemporary Music.
Strings in the Earth and Air. A lecture given at the Music and Postmodern Cultural Theory Conference, University of Melbourne, December 6th 2006.
Atmospherics: The Weather of Sound. A lecture given at Sounding Out 3, University of Sunderland, 8 September 2006.
Phonophobia: The Dumb Devil of Stammering. A talk given, as ‘Giving Out Voice’, at the Giving Voice conference, Centre for Performance Research, University of Aberystwyth, 8 April, 2006.
Damage. A talk given at the Barbican Art Gallery to accompany an exhibition of work by Christian Marclay, 6 April 2005.
The Throat of the Loon. A transcript of a conversation with Julius Nil as a guest on his Resonance FM programme,One Reason to Live, 4 May 2004. A less groomed version of the transcript appears in One Reason to Live: Conversations About Music With Julius Nil, ed. Seth Kim-Cohen (Los Angeles: Errant Bodies Press, 2006). [pdf version]
Windbags and Skinsongs. A chapter written for The Book of Skin, and given, in compressed form, as a lecture at the conference Skin: texture/textuality/word/image at the Institute of English Studies, 14 April 2004.
Steam Radio: On Theatre’s Thin Air. A paper given at the London Theatre Seminar, 27 October 2003.
Ears Have Walls: On Hearing Art. A talk given at Tate Modern in the series Challenging Ocularcentricity, 21 February 2003.
Sleights of Voice: Ventriloquism, Magic and the Harry Price Collection. A talk given to the Friends of the University of London Library, 28 November 2002.
The Help of Your Good Hands: Reports on Clapping. Some thoughts on the singular cultural phenomenon of clapping, added 30 October 2002.
Seeing Sound: The Displaying of Marsyas. A lecture given at the University of Nottingham, 16 October 2002.
Edison’s Teeth: Touching Hearing. A paper written for the conference ‘Hearing Culture’, Oaxaca, Mexico, April 24-28 2002, organised by the Wenner-Gren Foundation.
Sounding Out Film. A much expanded version of a paper given at the conference on Literature, Film and Modernity, 1880-1940 organised jointly by the Institute for English Studies, the University of Sussex and the University of Birmingham in London, January 13-15th 2000.
Remarks on Contemporary Music and Listening. Interview extracts broadcast as part of BBC Radio 3’sSettling the Score series and reprinted in Settling the Score: A Journey Through Twentieth-Century Music, ed. Michael Oliver (London: Faber and Faber, 1999).
Beside Himself: Glenn Gould and the Prospects of Performance. A talk broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 4 November 1999 as part of an evening exploring the life and work of Glenn Gould. Listen
`Voice, Technology and the Victorian Ear’. A paper given at the conference on Science and Culture 1780-1900, organised by my colleagues Roger Luckhurst and Jo McDonagh at Birkbeck College on 12 September 1997.
Noise. A series of 5 programmes which I wrote and presented on BBC Radio 3. The programmes were produced by Tim Dee and transmitted February 24-28th, 1997. Listen to Noise; Speaking Clocks and Time Machines; Siren Sounds; Transports; Megaphonics