TexNET > Exhibits > Sound > Alien Voices

At the Alien Voices exhibit, a visitor sits in a phone booth and talks on the phone, either to someone else in the adjacent booth or simply to herself. By pushing different buttons, the visitor can produce and hear various electronic filterings and distortions of her voice. One mode, for example, changes spoken sounds into a whisper, another adds a line of Gregorian chant, and still another mode plays back only the musical notes of the spoken words. By allowing us to exaggerate or eliminate the nuances that are present in each of our individual speech patterns, Alien Voices demonstrates how, despite the meaning of words, the "music" of our speech can change the intent of what we say.