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
Tag Archives: sound
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
The enthusiastic clone
My first blog post appeared in 2010 and followed the publication of my book The Tuning of Place. I titled the post “Tuning as …” The Christmas eve that followed I produced a post “Silent Night.” Here is an excerpt from Silent Night in audio format. It runs for 2 minutes: That’s not me speaking,…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
A word in your ear: Podcasting for introverts
Who would deny that a whisper excites the senses. People are accustomed to music listening via headsets. The speaking voice at intimate proximity surpasses even musical affect. In any case, the voice is immediate, close, of the moment, embodied, and active. Sounds envelop, as if clouds, with the voice, or certain voices, breaking like a…More
Voices without bodies
Question to Siri:“What’s The Wizard of Oz about?”Siri: “It’s about some Dorothy, her intelligent assistants, and her little dog too. Some are not so intelligent, I guess.” “All the world’s a stage,” wrote Shakespeare. Baroque architects arranged the urban environment as if it were a stage set. Now city inhabitants are more likely to experience…More
Bodies in motion
After two weeks of warm up, followed by seventeen days of recovery, came the real olympics, where applause and cheers were offered up for personal life triumphs, rather than for just winning on the track. The ordinary Olympics prepared the way, and put people in the mood for the Power-olympics. The other mood clinchers for…More
Haunted by media
This is Dying Matters Awareness Week in the UK. We are a “death denying” society inept at dealing with bereavement, planning for the end of life, and making arrangements for after we are gone. On the other hand, thanks to television, films, video games and the Internet, we confront our mortality every waking moment of…More
I am Spartacus
The perennial tussle between the right to free speech and the right to privacy has a spatial dimension of relevance to any designer. Architects, geographers and planners are acutely aware of the relationships between public and private spaces. Free speech roughly equates to the right of access to a place (eg a city square, the…More
The king’s speech impediment
Tom Hooper’s film The King’s Speech demonstrates the vital importance of the human voice in establishing and maintaining power. If you can’t get the words out then you will never assert authority.More