Neural Crest Hypervoice
interactive audio-visual installation, 2026
Neural Crest Hypervoice is an interactive fiction set in a hypothetical future on an island. Through developing the ability to use the “hypervoice” of the habitants, the player embarks on an investigation into the events that transformed the body to its current form. Neural Crest Hypervoice imagines an alternative evolutionary path through modelling how an accelerated state of self-domestication and cutemaxxing would affect the larynx, voice, communication and social structure.
During the game, the player controls only their character’s voice. Speaking and communicating are the sole means of interaction and progression, positioning the voice as humanity’s original interface.
Neural Crest Hypervoice is grounded in speculative research into what a future human voice might sound like, inspired by scientific attempts to reconstruct voices of the past from bodily remains. The project draws on the self-domestication hypothesis, which proposes that humans evolved through increasing social cooperation and reduced aggression, leading to the retention of juvenile physical and behavioural traits similar to those found in domesticated animals. One related hypothesis links these changes to alterations in the number and distribution of neural crest cells: a transient population of embryonic cells involved in the development of craniofacial structures, including the larynx and surrounding head and neck anatomy. By extending the logic of self-domestication, the project explores how the selective preference for "cute" traits might shape the future evolution of the human body and voice.
The player performs the voice of their character through a real-time speech synthesis system that models a hypothetical neotenous voice. The synthesis is controlled through a custom silicone interface designed after possible morphological changes to the human larynx associated with domestication syndrome. Neural Crest Hypervoice treats cuteness as an aesthetic category, but also a potential evolutionary force, amplifying the neotenous tendencies associated with self-domestication.
Neural Crest Hypervoice was exhibited in Rosalux gallery in Mai 2026 and the Sybil Arc 2 Showcase in June 2026, Berlin.