[voice echoing itself throughout] I am an artist, I am a medium. I am an artist–medium. And perhaps, so, too, are you. [slow, quiet, meditative electronic music begins] This is a digital chapter about the potential, both in our scholarship and in our classrooms, to become, to try on, to experiment with being artist–mediums ourselves. [music stops]

As an artist–medium, I live intimately within the world, where my body interacts, [deep bass drone begins, nearly inaudible] inhabits, improvises, performs, and ultimately reprocesses my source material through and with digital recording and editing. [drone stops]

I borrow this term "artist–medium" [phrase is re-spoken in whispered, overlapping layers] from digital culture theorist and practitioner, Mark Amerika (2011). He writes that our relationship to text, archives, and source material is no longer one of close reading, nor even of textual analysis, but it is, instead, about another kind of intimate inhabitation. Another kind of close reading, where we still spend long hours with a sentence or text, but we do so performatively and digitally. The artist–medium happens when the artist, student, or researcher undertakes a practice [dissonant chord begins, becoming quiet, abstract music] of creatively and critically working with media, source materials, and digital technologies to inhabit, appropriate, and perform source material through their own voice or body, practicing with the media, recording and editing, in order to see what output or thinking might emerge.

In this practice, and it is a practice—that is, an intentional, repeated, exercise—the artist–medium chooses an archived person or character, [music stops] just as the logic of cinema or novels work, and intentionally "reprocesses"—through their own body—parts of language, images, video, text as a real-time improvisational performative practice, recording or otherwise capturing this process. In between the "transliminal space" of inhabiting [chaotic, percussive sound begins] the character, the artist herself might spill out [percussive sound begins to fade into a sound somewhat like raindrops and stops], and the result is the inventive importance of that in-between space. This practice is fluid [quiet throb of digital static], as the producer might move in and out of identifications, forging the creative act through the interstices [throb ends], morphing and extending the body [three digital gongs].

[And: Oh so much can happen as a result of this practice, through the interstices.] New stories, new experiences, new affects, and new futures—all of which I hope to hear about and practice with you in the future. What I am emphasizing, though, is that the artist–medium can result in all kinds of outputs and [sustained chord—the one you hear when something scary happens on a soap opera right before it cuts to commercial—begins] effects. Indeed, performance artists and digital theorists alike have stressed the ways in which the conjunction of the two brings about new aesthetic modes, experiences, and ontologues. [chord becomes music similar to the credits for Twin Peaks]

But what I want to share in this piece is what happened, both in my own practice of performing as the artist–medium, [music crescendos] and in teaching the artist–medium, which can be described as a renewed experience and engagement with empathy, one that can be intentionally practiced by using the concept of the artist–medium. [music stops] Yes. Let me restate. By using the artist–medium, both myself and with my students, I've come to experience empathy on a different level, on a more emotionally engaged level, and now I've come to believe that, through digital production, we can make intentional practices that result in empathetic engagements.

Empathy is a powerful output for this practice precisely because it takes one by surprise. It happens—in essence—through and because of the practice. By enlisting the body in repeated spoken and recorded outputs, [sentence repeats, echoing over itself] over time and repetition, a closeness evolves. [rustle of static begins, stereo right] One may begin to feel something, like empathy, long before fully comprehending it or placing it as empathy. [static increases in volume; higher-pitched electronic noise begins in stereo left and travels to right then back again] It might begin more simply as an intimacy, [static noise ends, sustained note from muted trumpet begins] proximity, closeness—which are all intended effects of digital performance and digital inhabitation. [trumpet ends]

As an aural illustration, let me take you through a brief example of inhabiting another's words through one's own body, voice, and recorded outputs. For this session, I'm going to inhabit the words of Chief Flynn, the Milwaukee police chief who interrupted a press conference on police killings with a rash account of why he needed to go to yet another call of a young black child being shot by a stray bullet. Some people experienced his accounts as irritable, rash, or even indicative of a larger problem with police killings, and yet others agreed with him and understood what he was saying. I found myself conflicted. And so, if I were to employ this practice of the artist–medium, I would intentionally try to speak with him, to hear him, but also speak as him. Reprocess through my own voice and body.

So, at one affective level, I might just read the transcript of him talking that day in the press conference, or I might just watch the YouTube video of him talking at the press conference and, if oriented intentionally, try to understand him in his moments. And, certainly, that probably does open the pathway tooward empathy if done so intentionally. But I can also read the transcript as him, performing or acting as if I were him, always reprocessed through myself. If I were to read the transcript as him, it would take several recordings as I attempt to perform and be him and as I attempt to feel as he did in this moment. I may try to inflect or breathe in particular places, recording and re-recording. Just as an actor begins to feel for the character they are performing, so, too, do I begin to feel for and with Chief Flynn as I perform. I sigh when he sighs, I breathe when he breathes, I stutter when he stutters.

But on the second affective level, I could, in conjunction with reading the transcript, download his voice from the press conference for my own listening and performing. I could listen to it a few times over and over again with the intent to record my own voice with his voice, speaking as he spoke. The question is, [sound of woman singing] what would be the effect of this experience? And what would be the affect of this experience? They may both offer a pathway into empathy if done intentionally, but let me take this a little bit further.

If I found myself uncomfortable [singing ends] with his comments and even his voiced thinking from the press conference, disagreeing, and maybe even prepared to argue with him, what can this practice of the artist–medium offer? What happens when I digitally perform as and with him through my own voice all while listening to his recorded voice? By way of answering I want to recall a moment for me that was so unforgettable from the [deep bass tone begins] Western States Rhetoric and Literacy conference in 2013, where Marilynn Cooper was the keynote, and she said something—something I cannot forget [bass tone trembles]. She said (this is a paraphrase): Rhetoric has long been defined as one argument for another, persuading and conquering through persuasion. What if, she intoned, we defined rhetoric against its long history [woman begins singing again] of argument and instead as a way of listening and being even more careful in our responses. Yes, what if?

So I go back to Chief Flynn, who I initially want to argue with [singing ends], and instead I intentionally record myself saying as he says, voicing as he voices, interrupting the press conference as he interrupts the press conference, breathing as he breathes and so on. It may sound something like this: [bass tremble ends]

[both Chief Flynn's and Trisha N. Campbell's voices sound together, not always in sync and with varied stresses and pauses] Well, I was on my phone, and yes, that's true. I was following developments with a five-year-old little girl sitting on her dad's lap who just got shot in the head by a drive-by shooting. And if some of the people here gave a good god-damn about the victimization of people in this community by crime, I'd take some of their invective more seriously. The greatest racial disparity in the city of Milwaukee is getting shot and killed. Hello. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2014)

[Loud, sudden cello solo begins to saw] But that recording, that very brief recording, took me hours to complete and it was so profoundly intimate that I can now tell you [balance of cello and narration begins to favor the author's voice] when Chief Flynn starts to register annoyance and when his voice breaks. And even more interesting, to me, is that I feel ["feel" begins to repeat by a second voice] almost as if [quiet sound of music box] I can understand him or at least almost feel what he feels in those moments ["feel" repeat ends]. An effect, an affect—an empathetic engagement—that came through a practice of the artist–medium, and one, which I assert here has profound ethical and political consequences for our soundwriting pedagogies and soundwriting scholarship. [music box ends; muted gong sounds]

With this theoretical impetus in mind, in what follows I share with you how we can begin teaching the artist–medium and intentional empathetic practices like this one. I offer you some background on the course I first used this concept in; a discussion of digital performance as a necessary aspect of the artist–medium; a discussion of the resources I use to guide students through this concept; [choir sings sustained chord] a justification for why voice, specifically, might invite this intimacy more acutely (though I maintain that other bodily outputs combined with the digital can have a similar effect); and an assignment designed to foster digital–pedagogical environments that invite us into an ongoing practice as artist–mediums.

At the end of this chapter, I discuss the ethical consequences and commitments of these digitally forged empathetic relationships. Because my own research has taken me to a place of practice, then I also want to suggest that the discussion that comes at the end of this piece about empathy, about artist–mediums, and ethical engagements emerged because of and through the practice of both teaching and becoming an artist–medium myself. I follow Amerika (2014) once again as he proclaims ([whispered] maybe even a bit too strong for my liking, but nevertheless provocative): "theory as we know it is dead, what has taken its place is the practice-based efflorescence found in the [electric organ arpeggios begin] digital humanities and digital arts" (p. xi). In this way, at the close of this piece, I offer a discussion of ethics and empathy only as they have emerged from the practice, both my own and my students'. [organ ends; quiet thud]