The Noise Hits All at Once: A Trans History of the Votrax SC-01 Voice Synthesis Chip

Very happy to announce my article, “The Noise Hits All at Once: A Trans History of the Votrax SC-01 Voice Synthesis Chip” published in Flow Journal: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture. You can read the article here on Flow Journal: https://www.flowjournal.org/2025/12/noise-hits-all-at-once/

“The Noise Hits All at Once” looks at the intertwined history of transgender (trans) voice synthesis technologies in the context of my own archival research with Jamie Faye Fenton, a game programmer who coded the arcade game GORF, which was released originally as an arcade cabinet in 1981. The arcade cabinet’s hardware includes one of the early voice synthesis chips, the Votrax SC-01, which “speaks” when playing the game.

In this article I connect trans history and historical trans interests in voice and voice synthesis technologies to glitch art, and trans game and computing history.

I’m very thankful to Flow and the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin for inviting me to be a contributor. I will be writing and publishing another article for Flow later on in 2026 as well. The article can be downloaded as a PDF below.