West African Voice-Disguisers and Audible Ghosts: A Case for Expanding the Fluency of Global Design History

Abstract

With reference to a Boki voice-disguiser, created by an unknown designer in south-eastern Nigeria circa 1925 and now on display in the Pitt Rivers Museum, this article uses the concepts of sound and magic to reveal the limitations of current approaches to global design history. The noise-producing aspect of the instrument is related to profound metaphysical manifestations that challenge the global design historian to think beyond the industrial and technical foundations of design as defined in “the West”. Alongside core literature around global design history, this essay engages with a diverse spectrum of methodologically focused scholarship, including anthropology and neuroscience, in an attempt to understand the case study as a design object and a generator of auditory environment and ritual.

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