I’m just back from a short break in the Faroe Islands. One evening I was standing in the reception area of our hotel when I heard the faint sound overhead of robust voices in unison accompanied by the slow rhythm of what seemed like feet stamping on the floor. The next day we were at…More
Vintage futures
I’m continuing the theme from the last post of looking back and looking forward. To that end I am reviewing the next set of posts authored in 2012. I start with the romance with digital technologies as they were then. When I wrote Vitruvius does steampunk in 2012, I was interested in how steampunk revelled in retro-futurism:…More
A digital time capsule
I’m looking back at old blog posts and publications. In 2012 I was also looking back to older studies, e.g. to 1994. See the 2012 post: “What’s a modem?” I’m indebted to ChatGPT for suggesting that the 2012 post served as a “time capsule.” In that post I revisited our 1994 study of computer-mediated communication…More
ChatGPT as trickster
As I continue to trawl through earlier blog posts I see that one of my 2012 posts followed a one week sojourn in Iceland. Iceland’s traditional narratives and mythologies draw on the activities of a pantheon of heroes, one of whom is the trickster god Loki. In that post, and subsequent publications, I referenced Lewis…More
Adaptive re-use of digital content
I’m in a cottage in the countryside. There’s an attic, a shed, a greenhouse, old gardening tools and furniture. Such legacy paraphernalia and economic necessity invite strategies of repair and re-use — practices that spill into the intellectual sphere. I’m re-using earlier blog posts. These posts were published between March and May 2012, beginning with…More
Pause for effect
I have been blogging about text-to-speech and voice cloning apps. I’ve also been turning compilations of my posts into audio files using Speechify suitable for podcasting. (See previous posts.) It seems the TTS (text-to-speech) tools I am using do not accommodate TTS HTML or other reliable means of introducing intonations and pauses into the readings.…More
2011 and all that
I am reviewing my early blog posts on technology, media and culture. The compilation here includes weekly posts between 9 April and 31 December 2011. The posts make reference to “actual events” that year. These include: Apple’s iPad 2 release; the impact of social media in the January “Arab Spring”; Osama Bin Laden’s death; the…More
2010 redux
This audio file (generated by Speechify’s synthetic voice) contains the first 41 regular weekly blog posts I published starting in 2010. I began the blog after the publication of my book, The Tuning of Place. I have just called on ChatGPT to set the context for the original content. My prompt: “This content was first published…More
Mood tags
Silent personal reading emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries, coinciding with the wider circulation of printed books and pamphlets, according to literacy scholars. Before this period, reading was typically performed aloud, even in solitude. Text-to-speech (TTS) software seems to be returning us to that read-out-loud practice. Our texts can be read to us by…More
Clonecasting
The term “clonecasting” often refers to copying an actor’s persona, presentation style, appearance, and voice to create visual and audio media content. Audiences might think they are seeing and hearing a particular actor in a film, but the actor’s presence is fabricated from digital models. Famous cases involve the reconstruction of the deceased actor Peter Cushing in Rogue…More