[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

This audio clip is from Hear the Bill, a project organized by a group of voice actors to read the entire health care bill and make it available online. If you are like me, you are probably thinking, “Dear God, why would anyone want to listen to someone read legislation?” or “How would listening to hours of mp3s actually make me understand the health care bill?”

At first, I assumed this must be in the camp of right-wing health care opposition (the folks who use length as a symbol of government inefficiency and waste)—reading the whole thing is a pretty good way to emphasize just how long it is. But, if there is a political agenda here, it is quite well-hidden; the length is never referenced (at least I couldn’t find it while looking for some “total mp3 hours” count on the site).

This video is a PSA from the group: (sorry dashboard/RSS people, you probably need to click through to see it)

I find the implication that a child would actually listen to this with his parents quite hilarious.

What the whole project (and particularly the opening bit I posted here) says to me is something about the different natures of literacy and orality. The structure of the bill (the audio clip here is introductory material and a table of contents, read aloud—no, seriously) is not an auditory one. Tables of contents do a particular kind of visual work for readers, and when they are read aloud, their embeddedness in visual process is made quite obvious. At first, I thought this must be some kind of art project. Who wants to hear someone read a table of contents? It reminded me of One Million Years by On Kawara [not really his twitter feed in that link].

In the end, it seems most likely that this is about publicity for a group of voice actors, as their bio pages are very focused on voice-overs and their history with them. But it makes me wonder: What would a sonically organized healthcare bill sound like?