Miller's work is very unusual. It plays with the expectations of "text" and "book" to create a fascinating account of DJ Spooky's remix capabilities sampled with Miller's autobiography. The layout of the text is unconventional, playing with layered images and text. On every other set of facing pages, is a pull quote fused with an image. Despite this making me sound a bit too much like a soccer mom, this word collage style is one I am familiar with though scrapbooking. This kind of layered text and illustrated quotes often appears on scrappers pages.
Sound as mix and remix is important to Miller. He sees himself as drawing on the past and on voices that he hears around him to create a new message. The medium is, of course, part of the message, but the message is the message. It is, as he says, (and I paraphrase) hard to play the same piece twice for the same audience. Thus, the remix.
To make myself sound a bit less like a dweeb, I'll confess to geek. I was feeling the William Gibson before I saw the quote on page100: "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed."
Even as Miller speaks of mix and sound, Comstock & Hocks discuss voice.
Also, like a fingerprint, each voice carries its own inflection, its own texture and grain. In writing, voice acts as a metaphor for how a persona created in the text "sounds," with elements of diction, tone, and style informing this written voice (Comstock & Hocks).
Back in the 70s, when Rich Little was on the variety show circuit, people were fascinated with the way that he could imitate voices or do impressions. Someone took "voiceprints" (and no, I do not know how that works) of Little and the celebrities that he was imitating. The "prints" were not at all similar, even though they sounded similar to an average listener. Of course, when I saw Little on The Muppet Show (season 2), I didn't think that he sounded much like anyone other than Rich Little. So it seems that voice is less quantifiable.
What makes me sound like me? My daughter sounds like me-- even close friends and relatives cannot always tell us apart on the phone. She has the ability, as I think I have talked about before, to speak without an regional accent. She chooses, though, usually, to adopt the "educated southern" that many people I know have. She and I are both influenced by Ozarks dialect (which is Appalachian dialect, transmitted west to the Ozarks). Our written "voices" are different, though. Voice is a complicated idea. And it is more complicated in terms of writing. I don't sound in writing at all like I do in person. Of course, we don't "sound" like anything in writing. Because there is no speech, no accent. No dialect unless I put it there on purpose (which, depending on my audience, I do occasionally).
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