Distributed Vocalizing: Exploring Empathy and Intercorporeality in Online Community Choirs

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Rachel Elliott of Brandon University, Canada Abstract: This paper offers reflections about the possibilities and limits of online intercorporeality and empathy. During the Covid-19 pandemic I participated in two online community choirs: the Toronto Sacred Harp Singing Group and the Transnational Vocal Exploration Choir lead by Chris Tonelli of the University of Groningen. To my surprise, both choirs functioned successfully using standard-issue video conferencing software despite their need for substantive embodied reciprocity among vocalists, and between vocalists and the conductor(s). Using the phenomenological interview to supplement my own phenomenological descriptions, I collected data on the lived experiences of participants regarding intercorporeality and empathy during online choral gatherings. This paper will present my findings that suggest intercorporeality and empathy are, with caveats, genuinely enabled in musical interactions using simple online video interfaces. With this finding I aim to enrich and re-direct trends in the human sciences that tend to regard online intersubjectivity as purely symbolic or representational. If these trends were to be correct, contra my assertions, then only extended or high-level empathy would be possible in such spaces: low-level or primary empathy - which relies on intercorporeality - would be incompatible. Marshalling evidence to the contrary, that intercorporeality can be enabled online (at lease while musicking interactively) will, I hope, spark new philosophical reflections on the nature of online collaboration and shared digital agency, as well as contribute to thinking about the social affordances engendered by community musick-making in particular. Biography: Dr. Rachel Elliott works on social ontology at the level of intercorporeality and affect, particularly regarding improvised collective agency in art and politics. She has published on topics such as the transformation of the habit body in music, and the exclusionary tendencies of synchronization, in journals such as: the Journal for International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, and Punta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Intercorporeality Online. Dr. Elliott received her PhD in 2019 from the University of Guelph, and is currently Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Brandon University in Manitoba, Canada. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/