THE GENDER SPYGLASS: body modification, an oblique crossing, and the perfect androgyny

Our project is based on the assumption that buried within form can be found either given signifiers or room to make signifiers up that can (mis)inform. Our aim is to disrupt this problematic by jamming the cues of the form so that the content may become more clear. We will accomplish this by using altered voices in a recording that narrates transition. We will attempt to disengage the text from the body that made it, to disentangle the story from any gender, to dislodge the transition from any point of origin or destination, to distance the content from the form in order to see what happens. We hope that by “ungendering” the piece it will leave room for our audience to inscribe their own experiences into the text. By removing the ability of our audience to make assumptions about the story they are hearing, we will create new perspectives through which our audience may engage with the dominant discourses on sex and gender.

In order to displace the author as the authority we will disentangle the text from the body that is its author/subject. In the introduction to Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card, says: “The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something we made together.” The piece as it will be presented will beg for participation in the minds of our audience members, in this way the audience will take part in creating the experience (the text). This idea is drawing from Sound Theory/Sound Practice, in that the text is rewritten/reinterpreted/transformed with each reading (listening). It is created through its interaction with the audience. This desire for the text to perform differently per viewer, to be a mutually constructed “story” will motivate the work of the project.

Any sort of documentation must be understood as a version of a truth, and by that we mean a version of an original. Pollock approaches the idea of “participatory” text, addressing performative writing as evocative. She says, “…a performative perspective tends to favor the generative and ludic capacities of language and language encounters—the interplay of reader and writer in joint production of meaning. It does not describe, in a narrowly reportorial sense, an objectively verifiable event or process but uses language like paint to create what is self-evidently a version of what was, what is, and/or what might be.” The first part of this quote supports the idea of letting readers etch their own experience into it, the second part is connected with the form that we are choosing to use.

We will begin with a found text that focuses on gender in both a philosophical way and also a deeply physical way. Put simply, this piece takes the form of a personal journal that chronicles an individual’s physical transition as they have surgery and start taking hormones. With a careful eye (or four) we will comb through this piece and lift out 7-15 minutes worth of pertinent content. Once we have the text finalized (by the end of week 3) we will record it and begin the second phase of the project. We will explore different ways of editing the material to create a piece where the gender-specific signifiers both present in language and assumed in bodies are manipulated. Recording is both a tool to replicate an original and alter a piece of audio beyond recognition. We are trying to create a voice with no gendered signifiers, however, the intent is not to create a robot. Is it possible to strip the voice of gender and still have a human voice? Are we trying to take gender away or male/female coding? How much can we alter a sound? How much can we alter the body?

We will employ several different techniques in order to use voice as a tool to accomplish our goals. We will experiment with playing certain gendered words backwards with the intent to jam/trip the audience. Also, the voice will be pitch shifted and we will potentially add some atmospheric noise: Foley, music or some evocative sounds. In addition, we will attend to how silence can be used to our advantage in this piece. We are also playing with the question of whether we need to run it in a linear fashion or if there should be several tracks that can be shuffled. In his introduction to Extended Play, John Corbett discusses his love of shuffle and advocates that one read his book in any order. We are drawn to this idea because it allows for a different juxtaposition of the “scenes” every time it is played, generating a new text with each play.

We want to use this class as an opportunity to explore how changing the form affects how the content is perceived. But will the distortion of the form distract from the content? By presenting a multiplicity of signifiers in some cases and by rendering other signifiers indiscernible, while keeping the ‘originals’ hidden/absent, we will create the perfect androgyny. We will produce a cohesive piece that requires our audience to move out of traditional modes of inquiry. We are attempting to draw attention to the concept of gender, but not any specific gender. Will this be so distracting that the content is lost? Does this matter if we can point to how easy it is to get stuck on gender? With this piece, if one aspect fails, another aspect succeeds. If an audience member gets stuck on the form i.e., the backwards-played gendered words and pitch shifting, it is a failure because they aren’t listening to the content i.e., the story of transition, but it is also a success because it brings to light how often we get stuck on gender and how much something not fitting quite right is unnerving/disruptive. When this is highlighted, we create a passageway into fruitful dialogue about gender rather than an antagonistic/defensive and unproductive argument. On the other hand, it will also be a success if the audience member doesn’t get stuck on the form, but manages to focus on the content of the piece.

The way the piece has been written – a series of vignettes – mirrors the actual process of digital recording. It is a series of “snapshots” used as reference points. When they are played one after another, a whole emerges. The more “snapshots” you take (the higher the sampling rate), the higher the resolution or fidelity will be. Being a sound engineer is like being a surgeon: the text will be cut apart and rebuilt to form an entirely new piece. We will produce a version of the cracks, the not-quite-one-or-the-others, the space between breaths, the liminoid. Isn’t that where all the magic is? In the chrysalis, infinitely shedding skin, regrowing cells. In the land of possibility, nothing is solid; we have no destination but the space between question and answer.