Zeynep Bulut

Vita

Zeynep Bulut received her Ph.D. in Critical Studies/Experimental Practices in Music from the University of California at San Diego in 2011. Prior to her doctoral education, she studied sociology (B.A.), opera, and visual arts (M.A.) in Istanbul, Turkey. Zeynep investigates the physical and phenomenal emergence of the human voice, drawing on avant-garde and experimental music, and sound art. Her broader research interests include historical epistemologies of hearing, anthropology of senses and affect, deaf performance and culture, and voice and speech disorders in the history of science and medicine. She is currently working on her book, entitled Skin-Voice: Contemporary Music Between Speech and Language. In addition, she is writing two articles, one for the forthcoming volume Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance (Oxford: Oxford University Press), and another for the academic journal Musica Humana (Seoul, Korea). Her most recent publication, “Theorizing Voice in Performance: György Ligeti’s Aventures,” appeared in Perspectives of New Music. Alongside her scholarly work, Zeynep has also composed and performed voice and sound pieces for concert, video, and theatre, which have been exhibited in the United States, Europe and Turkey.

ICI Project (2011-13)

Skin-Voice: Contemporary Music Between Speech and Language

Based on a particular aesthetics in contemporary classical music, which deconstructs the linguistic order of verbal language and which amplifies the unnoticed sounds of the human body, this project suggests a new conception of the human voice: “la voix-peau,” skin-voice. Drawing on French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu's notion of "le moi-peau," skin-ego, I theorize the human voice as the first tactile envelope, as skin. By this I mean the embodied sound, which stems from the whole body as well as the vocal folds. I examine the following questions: Can we situate the sensory and affective experiences of sound at the heart of the human voice? Can we conceive the voice as an assemblage of bodily sounds, as a physical and phenomenal matrix of senses, a primary point of contact and difference between self and the external world? Is it possible to appropriate such a designation of the voice for unsettling the discursive categories of language, speech and self? In light of these questions, skin-voice can be considered a potential space – a medium of constructive tension – that reveals the multiple facets of the self between speech and language. The aim is to investigate how our voices can communicate the self without being reduced to mediums for verbal language.

PUBLICATIONS

Books:

Skin-Voice: Contemporary Music Between Speech and Language, in progress.

Articles and chapters in edited books and academic journals:

“Singing and a song: The intimate difference of the voice in Susan Philipsz’s Lowlands” in Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance, edited by Millie Taylor and Dominic Symonds, Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

“That Uncertain Sound: Reasonance in Veit Erlmann’s Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality,” review article in Musica Humana, Seoul, Korea, forthcoming.

“Theorizing Voice in Performance: György Ligeti’s Aventures” in Perspectives of New Music. Volume 48, No 1, Winter 2010, 44-65.

“Revisiting the phenomenon of sound as ‘empty container’: The Acoustic Imagination in Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata” in the Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Auditory Display, New-Digital Arts Forum, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009, 1-7.

“The Problem of Archiving Sound Works” in UCLA’s Pacific Review of Ethnomusicology. Volume 11, Winter 2006, 1-16.

CONFERENCE, WORKSHOP, PANEL AND PAPER PRESENTATIONS

“What Einstein Sings: A Voice And A Series of Sounds That Speak,” Einstein on the Beach: Opera after Drama, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 5-6 January, 2013.

“Silence and Speech in Phonophonie and Lecture on Nothing,” Deaf World/Hearing World, The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in conjunction with Project Biocultures at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Berlin, Germany, 10-11 December, 2012.

“Walking Hearing Sounding: Founding the Voice as Skin in Song Books, Electrical Walks, and Sound Walks,” Hearing, Summer Workshop on Seeing and Imagining: Music and the Visual Arts, The Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, University of Edinburgh in collaboration with Queen’s University, UK, 28-31 August, 2012.

“Language or Skin: The Touch of the Voice in Contemporary Music and Life,” Music and the Body Conference, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 9-11 March, 2012.

“Amplified and Live: Sound in Sound Art,” conceived and conducted the workshop, Sandberg Institute-Fine Arts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 9 February, 2012.

“Sonorities of the Human Body in Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie: Voice as a Corporeal Assemblage,” Song, Stage, Screen Conference on Voice, University of Winchester, UK, 3-5 September, 2010.

“Sing as the following objects pass through your throat: Sensory Modalities of the Everyday Voice,” Sensory Communication Symposium: Expressive Culture and Youth Media, University of California, San Diego, USA, 14-15 April, 2010.

“Maps of Musical Knowledge: Placing John Cage’s Song Books in Personal Acoustics,” British Forum for Ethnomusicology, University of Oxford, UK, 8-11 April, 2010.

“Far-Fetched Bodies’ Voices: The ‘heart’ of melodrama in Mauricio Kagel’s Phonophonie,” Society of Musicology/Royal Music Academy Joint Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland, 9-12 July, 2009.

“Revisiting the phenomenon of sound as ‘empty container’: The Acoustic Imagination in Kurt Schwitters’ Ursonata,” International Conference on Auditory Display, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 2009.

“A Theatre of Corporeality: Hearing Mine in Pauline Oliveros’s Sound Patterns,” Theatre Noise Conference, Center for Speech and Drama, University of London, UK, April 2009.

Chaired the session, “Atonality and Meaning,” A Conference on Roger Scruton’s Aesthetics, Durham University, Durham, UK, July 2008.

“The Track of Sound and Image: On the movement of…and they had heard the mermaid,” Music and The Moving Image Conference, NYU, New York, USA, May 2007.

“Reading sarah’s Panorama: A Study on the “Third Voice.” ArchitecturelMusiclAcoustics, International Cross-Disciplinary Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. 2006 June.

“The Problem of Archiving Sound Works,” Ethnomusicology at Work and in Action, University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A. 2005 April.

“A Flower: A study on the performing experience suggested by the  ‘interpenetration of sound and voice’” Cage Conference, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada, 2005 January.

“Giacinto Scelsi and John Cage: The Other Avant-Garde” Panel, organized by Istanbul Technical University’s Dr. Erol Üçer Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM), Istanbul, Turkey, 2004 December.

“The Role Of The Voice In a Composer/Performer-Created Language: Giacinto Scelsi And Michiko Hirayama,” Approaches to Analysis and Music Theories in Ethnomusicology  EthNoise! University of Chicago 3rd Annual Conference, Chicago, U.S.A. 2004 May.

EXHIBITS AND CONCERTS

The Ecomusicology Listening Room, multimedia exhibition chaired by Mark Pedelty (University of Minnesota), participated in designing the exhibition. Co-sponsored by the SEM Sound Studies Interest Group and the AMS Popular Music Study, the exhibition was held in the American Musicological Society’s Annual Meeting, New Orleans, 1-4 November, 2012.

Clean Happy Valentines, live performance exhibited during the Supermarket Music Event at Ralph’s Grocery Store, La Jolla CA, in collaboration with the visual artists and musicians from UCSD, February 2010.

The Auctioning of Shoreline by Alison Knowles, participated in the performance with Alison Knowles, Charles Curtis, Carolyn Chen and Clinton McCallum, Conrad Prebys Music Center Entrance Stairs, University of California, San Diego, October 2009.

“Patricia Bardi’s Rocca Project: Vocal Dance/Voice Movement Integration Workshop,” participated in the workshop, Italy, 14-19 July, 2009.

sounds like my feet, and blood vessel music, voice pieces for seven performers, composed by Zeynep Bulut, performed as a part of the “Boundary Music for Bodies” Event, Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Black Box Theatre, University of California, San Diego, May 2009.

for solo voice, composed by Carolyn Chen, performed by Zeynep Bulut as a part of the “Breathing Music in the Dark” Event, Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Black Box Theatre, University of California, San Diego, May 2009.

washing machine, Electroacoustic music piece, composed by Zeynep Bulut, exhibited at the International Women’s Electroacoustic Listening Room Project part of the 7th Annual New Music Festival “Inclusive Voices: Healing the Divide”, California State University at Fullerton, March 2008.

for sanitary reasons, solo piece for double bass and cleaning supplies, composed by Zeynep Bulut, performed by Han Han Cho, at Cho’s DMA Recital, Mandeville Recital Hall, University of California, San Diego, November 2007.

speaking the real voices, multimedia performance, four voice pieces composed and performed by Zeynep Bulut, William Brent, Joachim Gossmann, Chris Tonelli, and Linda Sundstrom, sponsored by the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, and the Center for Research in Computing in the Arts, May 2007.

i can’t hear you behind the glass, audio-visual installation project by Zeynep Bulut and Veronika Bauer, exhibited at the Lui Valezquez Gallery, Tijuana, Baja, CA, May 2007.

…and they had heard the mermaid, video project by Selim Birsel, music composed and performed by Zeynep Bulut, exhibited as a part of the Timeline: Artists Film and Video Collection at Konstfack, University College Of Art and Design in Stockholm, August 2006.

incomplete, site specific sound installation project by Zeynep Bulut, Veronika Bauer, and Grace Leslie, exhibited at Mandeville Recital Hall’s Women Dressing Room, University of California, San Diego, November 2005.

Ford Mach I, theatre project, by Istanbul Bilsak Theatre Company, sound design and original theme music composed by Zeynep Bulut, exhibited at the 14th Istanbul International Theatre Festival, June 2004.

three some-s, sound video project by Zeynep Bulut, realized with Fabrica Musica and Fabrica Video, at Benetton’s Research and Communication Center, Treviso, Italy, November 2002.