Virtual Voices reviews the current use of automated voices in our cities - considering how human presence is represented through recorded and digitally manipulated sound, and how this is used to direct our behaviour. The work questions how automation has been implemented, re-visioning the positive changes that voice technology could bring to working lives if social good were considered over profit motive.

Virtual Voices articulates this workforce: hearing it’s many mouths and many heads that speak simultaneously across great distances, hearing it’s limited representation of the population, it’s gender bias, and it’s embodiment in the machinery it speaks from - the lumps of technology now clothed in a sonic human identity. Looking to the future, the work proposes how we could shape a positive automated future - one that doesn’t result in mass unemployment or misrepresentation, but supports the anti-work movement’s call for ‘The Right To Be Lazy’. In support of this the artists commit their own voices into a hybrid synthetic persona, creating their own virtual workforce to speak on their behalf.

Virtual Voices is part of the project Listening for Instruction - a sonic survey reviewing the current position of automated sounds in our cities.