I’m reprising the post of 30 November 2013 called Voices without bodies. The blog continued the reflections in my book The Tuning of Place: : Sociable Spaces and Pervasive Digital Media published by MITPress in 2010. Here’s the original with some updates — assisted by ChatGPT. Question to Siri:“What’s The Wizard of Oz about?”Siri: “It’s about some Dorothy, her intelligent assistants, and her…More
Category Archives: Voice and text
Geometry and affect
I’m reprising some older blog posts from 2013 that consider vertigo, oblivion, melancholy, the motion of swings, and the emotional experience of urban spaces. Later on I drew this material together in my book Mood and Mobility (2016). With assistance from ChatGPT I’ve updated the sentiments of these posts under the rubric of geometry. I also attach…More
Unclear thinking
It came upon a midnight clear. Clarity and its converse unclarity are in the air this season: as people seek clarity on what they can and cannot do during this phase of the pandemic. Clarity is about optics. Something is clear if the perception of it is unobstructed by darkness, fog, blur, glare, distortion or…More
Counting letters
A substitution cipher is one of the simplest methods for encrypting a message. A unique symbol stands in place of every letter in the hidden message. The symbol set can be just about anything, as long as each symbol maps uniquely to the letters of whatever alphabet you are using for the message you wish…More
Speech to text
A city that’s legible is easy to understand and to navigate, i.e. to read. You can read a city’s people, moods, signs, and what it denotes and connotes. In a previous post I explored the prospect that you might write a city, as well as read it. According to this theory, a city participates in…More
Beware of this message
Generals and soldiers must pass messages up and down the chain of command in secret to avoid interception by the enemy. The same applies to cities. Writing in the 1600s, the English natural philosopher (and proto-semiotician) John Wilkins (1614-1672) affirmed that “there are certain ways to discourse with a friend, though he were in a…More
The dissimulated city
As anyone who plays video games or works with digital media will tell you, a simulation of a city is a model or image of a city. A simulated city (as in SimCity™) is similar in some respects, but not the same as a brick and concrete city. Now consider the related word dissimulation. Something…More
Glitch demons
Tutivillus was the original glitch demon. He caused scribes to write the occasional wrong character in a manuscript. He would also collect a record of people’s sins, or would record the idle gossip of churchgoers. The word Tutivillus (or Titivillus) appears in the online OED, with its variant spellings. It seemed to originate from Latin,…More
Whispirators — In praise of whispers
The popularity of whisper videos (e.g. ASMR videos) demonstrates the longstanding fascination we humans have with the voice. Steven Connor has written extensively on the cultures of the voice. He says in his book Beyond Words: Sobs, Hums, Stutters and Other Vocalizations. “The whisper signifies intimacy and secrecy. It is the mode in which I…More
Dark whisperers
“Hush! Hush! Whisper who dares! …” I wrote about relaxation videos based on ASMR in the previous post — peculiar videos featuring whispers, combinations of phonemes in succession (t t t t), and non-oral substitutes: fingers tapping, fabric brushing, scraping, etc. At the right time and place such sounds can be relaxing and mesmerising for…More