PhD Thesis: Multimedia items accompany this thesis to be consulted at Robinson LibraryThis thesis is an exploration and problematization of the practice of lipsynching to prerecorded
song in both professional and vernacular contexts, covering over a century of
diverse artistic practices from early sound cinema through to the current popularity of
vernacular internet lipsynching videos. This thesis examines the different ways in which
the practice provides a locus for discussion about musical authenticity, challenging as
well as re-confirming attitudes towards how technologically-mediated audio-visual
practices represent musical performance as authentic or otherwise. It also investigates
the phenomenon in relation to the changes in our relationship to musical performance as
a result of the ubiquity of recorded music in our social and private environments, and
the uses to which we put music in our everyday lives. This involves examining the
meanings that emerge when a singing voice is set free from the necessity of inhabiting
an originating body, and the ways in which under certain conditions, as consumers of
recorded song, we draw on our own embodiment to imagine “the disembodied”. The
main goal of the thesis is to show, through the study of lipsynching, an understanding of
how we listen to, respond to, and use recorded music, not only as a commodity to be
consumed but as a culturally-sophisticated and complex means of identification, a site
of projection, introjection, and habitation, and, through this, a means of personal and
collective creativity
