ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes media artworks that use oral and written language as two distinct aesthetic strategies. The separation of these strategies is not intended to reinstate an ontological difference between orality and writtenness; rather, it is a pragmatic response to the fact that in many artworks either voice or script is the center of attention. It discusses media artists challenge the everyday transparency of the medium of language by making the materiality of its modalities, speech, and script palpable. Transitions continually occur between the level of transmitting a message and the perceived materiality of the voice. Transrational speech lays bare the acoustic dimension of language, liberating language from its everyday purpose of 'making sense' for the sake of communication. Most media artworks share one specific characteristic: an on-screen speaker performs speech using the alphabet as a structuring principle.
