Were you ever walking or driving somewhere, lost in your own thoughts, the real world fading at the edges. You forget what you’re doing, and then, as you're scanning your surroundings, you see an ad column, and on it you read: "This is your inner voice. Right now. Reading." Breaking the fourth wall of your thoughts, you say to yourself: "How does my inner voice sound?"

Well, this is the manual for the inner voice.


This work continues in the response of your inner voice. Leave a trace by answering four short questions.




Emerging from an ongoing exploration of the inner voice, a manual of experimental practices meant to engage with the inner auditory construct, tracing the intersections of thought, sound and perception. Created as part of a Student Summer Scientific Internship funded by the Research Council of Lithuania.





MANUAL
FOR THE INNER VOICE 



PREFACE
The inner voice can be activated using any text.
When you become familiar with this practice it is even encouraged.
For the sake of example some of these practices will be done with the instructions themselves.
The goal is to play with the inner auditory construct.
This practice works best when outer distractions are minimised, preferably even taken completely away, like on the barren ice plain in Antarctica, in a white room torture cell, or in a white cube gallery. Feeling as though you yourself are on a blank page.




Echolocation
(Where is your inner voice coming from? Measuring a space with auditory imagination.)

Focus on the location of the sound.
Imagine the sound of a clap.
Give the sound a space — imagine an echo reflecting off it, returning back.
Listen to how long it echoes before fading, then again.
Once you’re used to the sensation, try timing the duration from the moment the sound is released until the echo returns.
Multiply this time by 343 m/s, then divide by 2.
The resulting number is the length of a real space that would match the echo imagined by your auditory imagination.
Where is the echo coming from — only from the front, or also from the sides?
If it's coming only from the front, the shape is like a tunnel.
If it's coming from the sides, the shape is more square.

(Imagine this as the space for your mind, where the inner voice resides — a large, invisible chamber — all in your mind.)




Residual Self
(Now with a grasp around the rough proportions and size of the inner auditory construct, a natural question arises: what’s inside it?)

This is your inner voice. Right now. Reading.
Listen to it — is it similar to your real voice?
Try to grasp its acoustic qualities: timbre, pitch.
Try to change its location in the inner acoustic space.
Imagine it coming from outside, outside the space, outside your head.
Can you distinguish the voice you read with from the voice you think with?
What control, then, can text have over thought?
making telepathy possible through text?

(Since the acoustic space is a creation of your own mind, you can control it however you want, and be wherever you want in it. The space holds your residual self-image of voice, similar to your real voice, but off in some small way. You might be able to place it anywhere, even beyond the chamber of your own auditory construct.)

Echoes of Kin
(Apart from your own residual auditory image,
the space can be filled with residual auditories of others.)

Read this with your mothers, relatives or a close friend's voice.
Locate their voice in the space.
Try again to change their location —
try to imagine their voice coming from outside it, outside your head.
As you read in their voice, imagine how they would pause,
pronounce words,
react to the meaning.
When unsure about something, use their voice, to think of how they might react.

(The inner acoustic construct is full of voices you hear most often. They sometimes live inside it, sometimes outside. Within each voice lives its residual tone and its residual opinions, filtered through your perception of them.)




Borrowed Tongues
(If you stand guard at the border of your inner auditory construct, you may let strangers in—or keep them out.)

Find a stranger talking in a gallery, in a café, or another space.
Listen to their voice.
Its timbre, its rhythm.
Its tone, their accent.
Try to say something in your mind with their voice.
Predict what they will say.
When they leave, preserve their voice.
Speak with it, until it fades

Meditations
(Besides your mind and voice, the space holds traces of your body.)

Breathe in, breathe out
hold your breath
continue breathing in your mind,
imagining the sound of your breathing,
do so until you run out of breath,
breathe in, repeat.




Reduction
(to hear the inner sound, enter reduced listening)

To hear the inner voice as pure sound,
stripped of all semantic meaning,
when you finish reading this instruction,
read it again —
every section, sentence, word —
backwards.


FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS IMMINENT

Your inner space is always evolving —
your voice shifts, the sounds you encounter shift, and so does the space itself. 
Any of the mechanisms above can be adapted and applied to any other text you find, changing their perception.
Notice how your inner (echo)location expands as you read, imagine, and listen.
Pay attention to the voices you carry, the echoes you create, and the ways the space responds.
Let your focus drift from meaning to sound. 
Be present in your inner auditory construct.



This project has received funding from the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT), agreement No. S-SV-25-227.