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Short abstract

In this presentation, I discuss how my research on synthetic voices has evolved from research-creation projects that directly activate generative AI models to collaborative speculative workshops with creative professionals, in a shift towards reimagining vocal futures with or without AI.

Long abstract

Since 2023, my research on synthetic voices has engaged in research-creation methods that critically approach, activate, and play with generative AI technologies. From 2023-2024, I created five research-creation projects that utilize AI systems to generate voice, sound, text, and images, and pivot between sense-making and nonsense-making through the prompting of absurdity. As of 2024, I no longer directly activate generative AI tools for ethical reasons. Instead, my research-creation work has shifted towards considering speculative AI models, including a series of workshops. Led from January to June 2026, these workshops are a continuation of my 2025 research-creation project hmm-aa-t, which explores the vocality of non-words and non-voice (Dolar 2006) through recordings of culturally specific non-verbal communication and resonance. Inspired by Anita Say Chan's Predatory Data (2025), these workshops imagine alternative improbable vocal futures, in the face of AI's generation of probability, through group interviews and vocal sound creation. They bring together 25 people who have a creative, research, or professional practice that negotiates voice (e.g. singers/composers, voice actors, sound artists, and others). Voicing, listening, and layering these collective recordings of non-verbal communication act as a catalyst for speculating the human and non-human voices and vocal bodies created by them. What can we understand about synthetic voice technologies by questioning, recreating, and intervening into them ourselves, outside of these systems? In this presentation, I trace the evolution of these research-creation methods in my work to consider what collaborative speculation offers in reimagining these technologies and our vocal futures with or without AI.