AI is of little interest to me, but I found myself very interested in this lecture. Using AI systems, we can understand the voice and the joy in the imperfections of the human voice. Voice is become increasingly important in my practice so I found this contrasting perspective enlightening.

Nazari highlighted AI systems which she is not directly involved in but has been researching. Some uses of voice and AI include accent neutralising and emotion neutralising. These systems are used in call centres mainly based in India with outgoing calls to the UK and North America, I find it insane that this is what AI is used for, it just seems objectively racist and dehumanising. It also just seems quite sad. Emotion and accents are two of my favourite qualities of voice, they indicate so much about a person and give so much individuality to the voice, by removing these qualities, in a way the people are being erased.  

Speculative Design is important to Nazari’s practice, after conducting her PhD research in it. Speculative Design is designing with the future in mind, considering the environmental, technological, and socio-politic changes that might occur in the future and what design features might support these changes. I see the importance of speculative design to ensure current technology is future-proof. 

Nazari highlighted the difference between voice and speech. Voice is how each individual person sounds, it is the physical vibration of the voice box resulting in sound, whereas speech is words out loud. Distinguishing this difference is interesting, voice is personal, speech is general. 

This way of thinking about voice brought up some points that have fascinated me; we have multiple voices, voice has materiality,  there is fullness and expansiveness within the voice, and voice is cocreated. Voice being cocreated has been playing on my mind ever since I heard that. Nazari said voice is a co-creation between you, your body, the physical condition of your body, the environment, and the community. This concept was mentioned in relation to being part of a choir, the voice becomes abstracted from its typical form when in a choir, multiple voices create one collective voice with individual voices melting into one.