Voice audio methods

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of voice audio in qualitative research, as data in its own right rather than only as a precursor to transcription. Building on critiques of voice in qualitative research, I argue that audio can enable researchers to work with the more-than-representational excesses of voice. Developing this line of thinking, I draw on Levi Bryant’s machinic ontology to set out a post-humanist conception of voice as arising within ecologies of media machines. As an example of what machinic voice audio can do, I describe an experimental audio work that I produced as part of research on a ruinous landscape. The final section of the paper makes more general observations about the malleability and fallibility of the machinic voice.