Recall Their Voices
Tine Melzer
2007

(english version)

‘The only advantage that the written word has over the spoken word is permanence.’ Frege

One of the advantages of the spoken word over the written word is the voice.

You have been here before. You have been in this space, you have been speaking here. I try to remember your voice. I put my ear against the wall and hope to hear an echo. Only my memory could recover it. Yet we know that it is much easier to recognize a voice than to recall it. If a dialogue has taken place here, the walls must know. There must be a history of all the words that have been spoken.

It is the voice which captures and reveals the identity and the intentions of the speaker. Why do we listen to voices so carefully, that we can recognize people’s voices as clearly as their faces? A person’s voice is unique. Voices matter. And they are a sign of human nature. A voice is the ability to speak or sing.

generic definition of the human voice :
‘The human voice consists of sound made by a person using the vocal folds for talking, singing, laughing, screaming or crying.
The tone of voice may suggest that a sentence is a question, even if grammatically it is not, and can display emotions such as anger, surprise, happiness. In a request, the tone can reveal much about how much one wants something, and whether it is asking a favor or more like an order. The tone of saying, for example, “I am sorry” can change the phrase’s meaning dramatically: it may vary from a sincere request for forgiveness to implying something like, “I have the right to do this even if you do not like it”.’

During decades this space has been visited by many people. Throughout the past years many conversations took place here. The people left and so did their voices. The spoken words are gone at once. Where are these words? Have they left the room? Does a space absorb the voices of the people’s speeches? Does the space recall their voices?

In this space there were commands, promises, anecdotes and lies.

The voices of the first architect, the first inhabitants, the next owners, the neighbors and their children, the people working there, the construction workers shouting. There were calls for hammers and drills, ladders and light bulbs. There were laughters and discussion and lectures by excited and nervous voices. There were timbres and whispers, rhymes and lies, amplified voices that echoed and words left unheard. There were people visiting, meeting, talking, arguing, crying, laughing, whispering, mumbling. And silence in between. Voices echo in the presence. Voices are left in the past. Voices do not leave traces in the building.
The tone of a voice. The pitch of a voice. The volume of a voice. The tension of a voice. Read aloud: my own voice.

There is no index so sure as the voice. Tancred

2007 Published in Time Out, W139, Amsterdam, NL, edited by Kasper Andreasen