Page - 65 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

Voicing the Technological Body | 65www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 49–69 interesting to investigate further discursive strategies to establish which electronic devices were actually used in recording, for instance with regard to the instructions for generating the “infamous ‘Cher effect’” with Auto-tune in the software manual by manufacturer Antares.54 This effect was popularised by Cher’s “Believe”. One may wonder whether Dickin- son, who, following Taylor’s report, calls it a vocoder effect, remains right in arguing that Cher helped challenge the masculine connotations of the vocoder technology. I think her main argument is still relevant inasmuch as many later singers, females as well as males, successfully used similar effects in popular songs. What is important here is that several technologies, including the vocoder, the talk box, and Auto-tune, can be deemed to generate blatantly hybridised (wo-)man-machine-voices. Although they function differently, their effects of hybridity sound relatively similar, and there- fore they can easily be confused. I conclude this section with a recent example of female use of the vocoder, name- ly with Lady Gaga’s track “Aura” on her album Artpop.55 It is certainly interesting to consider Lady Gaga’s work with regard to discussions of feminism in current popular culture; her music is more than interesting enough to justify a closer look. “Aura” is of particular interest in the context of this article not only because it includes parts with a hybrid voice, but also because it includes direct interplay between an instrument and the hybridised voice as well as lyrics that reflect questions of identity. In the intro- duction of the track we hear a pattern of strummed chords on an acoustic guitar and Gaga’s technologically alienated voice. At some point the guitar plays an ornamental melodic line, first falling then ascending, that is repeated several times in multiple lay- ers by Gaga’s voice, which, at the end, rhythmically repeats the same tone, whereby that rhythm and articulation are obviously machine-made in the way that they imitate the sound of the (even electronically modified) guitar line. The eponymous repeated “aura”, too, is clearly intelligible but at the same time electronically distorted. The lyrics portray from a first-person perspective a self-confident woman who addresses some “lover”. Interestingly, Gaga’s voice sounds most clear and “natural” (which, in contrast to the verses, also is a product of her singing style) when she asks her lover, “Do you wanna see me naked? ... Do you wanna see the girl behind the curtain, be- hind the aura?” Her “aura”, her (self-)image, is in a not-too-blunt way connected to the more electronic sounds of the accompaniment and to hybrid vocal parts similar to the “Believe” or Auto-tune style. Even at the end, the word “aura” is heard in a technological sound again, and finally, with the typical science-fiction movie effect of a “robot voice”, the word “artpop” is heard, quoting the title of the album. Although 54 Antares Audio Technologies, Auto-Tune 5: Pitch Correcting Plug-in, Owner’s Manual (2006), 17, online on Antares’s website, accessed 28 January 2016. Since version 7 the unmistakably pejorative attribute “infamous” has been deleted from the manual in favour of a rather canonising narrative of Cher’s pioneering role in the history of the software. 55 Lady Gaga, Artpop (Streamline Records, 2013).