The Conscious Ear

The Conscious Ear explores the concept of the poetic voice via data sonification of the poet’s linguistic creativity. Using data sonification techniques along with word and letter frequency data, I have transformed a selection of Emily Dickinson’s poetry into a non-verbal, aural experience, based on her individual selection of repeated words and sounds, as well as the relative frequency of these sounds in the English language. I selected two relevant sounds for each poem; one sound repeats at various pitches corresponding to how often she used each word in her overall work, and the other sound repeats at pitches corresponding to the frequency of that word in the English language during Emily's time, based on Samuel Morse's letter frequency data, compiled from printing presses as he developed Morse code. Both these sounds and my voice, reading the poems, were modified using convolution data collected at the Emily Dickinson Homestead, thus are heard as if they are occurring in Emily's bedroom- how she might have heard them herself. Via this project, I hope to reveal the “voice” of Emily- which, much like the poet herself, is both boldly present yet quietly hidden in each of her poems. 

(Images: Photos of Dickinson's poems from Harvard University's Emily Dickinson Archive /Photo of Emily Dickinson from Amherst College original daguerreotype)