With 'Dysphonia Device', Daniel Tuomey investigates the human need to reproduce speech synthetically. He draws guidance from the history of speech synthesis, from 19th-century mechanical models of the vocal cord system to contemporary digital voices. Tuomey subjects this technological history to a sociolinguistic analysis, with special attention to the 'upper class' accents that this technology attempts (often in vain) to imitate. Within this project, he compares this technological history with human ways of imitating and parodying accents. His own background in the Irish middle class and related social traditions play a central role in this. His findings come together in a stop-motion animation film in which he combines sculpted models of his body with mechanical and digital technology, creating a new speech device that uses a digitally synthesized voice to speak about the anxieties surrounding speech synthesis.