Emotive utterance as moving image: representation, interpretation and perception

The Visual Voice is an ongoing collaborative research project between Frank Millward and John Rubin. The work seeks to represent emotive vocal utterances as abstracted 3D moving images and seeks to understand how we interpret complex emotive interactive exchanges between human and machine, sound and image, vocal quality and perceived emotive intent. The research has spawned many performance works. The most recent From Anger To Sadness is an exploration of wordless, emotive utterances - seen as nasendoscopy, spectrographic and abstracted moving images - and how these images influence our perception of them. Is there a relationship between emotive utterance, vocal quality and perceived emotive intent? Using examples found in From Anger To Sadness this paper examines how these issues have been addressed in a performance context and seeks to theorise and understand how we interpret complex emotive interactive exchange.