Conflicted Phonemes (2012) - Lawrence Abu Hamdan I came across this project due to a fleeting thumbnail in the printed version of the Chicago Tribune. There is not enough mention of this project online, so I felt compelled to post about it. Across Europe, immigration departments have a triage procedure in which a person’s accent is analyzed in order to validate their eligibility for asylum. In this case, the artist attempted to visualize the Forensic Speech Analysis which is conducted by a Swedish company (subcontracted by the Dutch government) on Somali asylum seekers' voices. They decide whether you'll be allowed to emigrate based on your accent.
By scrutinizing phonemes, the smallest linguistic unit which conveys meaning, "officials" try to accurately determine the asylum seekers' place of origin. According to the artists who have illustrated this process, it is not always effective.
The voice maps show which people or places have had the strongest effect on the speaker's accent. The simple, stark black and white design of the voice maps only adds to an already powerful commentary. http://neromagazine.it/magazine/index.php?c=articolo&idart=1078&idnum=42&num=32 The larger, more colorful image in the photoset is Lisa Cooley's rendition of this project. High quality PDF >> http://www.jannaullrich.de/popup/conflicted/Conflicted_Phonemes_LawrenceAbuHamdan_JannaUllrich.pdf