Prior art

Writing

Roger Ebert gets his voice back

Well, kind of, thanks to a company that custom builds text-to-speech voices. Ebert’s new voice is compiled from his vast accumulated archive of reviews and commentary tracks.

CereProc didn’t need to hear me speaking a specific word in order for my “voice” to say it. They needed lots of words to determine the general idea of how I might say a word. They transcribed and programmed and tweaked and fiddled, and early this February, sent me the files for a beta version of my voice. I played it for Chaz, and she said, yes, she could tell it was me. For one thing it knew exactly how I said “I.”

CereProc is now blending in my audio snippets for “Casablanca,” where I sound enthusiastic, and “Floating Weeds,” where I sound calm and respectful. It’s nice to think of all these great movies sloshing around and coming out as my voice.

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Greg Allen on Gareth Long’s Untitled (Stories)

Gareth Long’s giant lenticular prints based on the iconic-yet-anachronous 1991 cover designs for JD Salinger’s books are freaking me out right now … Something an aesthete in an early Star Trek movie might have had hanging on his wall.

To fully appreciate these you have to watch the videos on Gareth Long’s website.

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Making websites with WordPress

Tonight I’ll be giving an introductory presentation on using WordPress as part of the Trade School workshop series. Unfortunately my session is already full, but I’d like to do this again in the future (perhaps for The Public School?). In any case, here are my presentation slides (pdf).

Trade School has an interesting model: students bring an item or perform a task in exchange for the teacher’s time. In my case these objects (no tasks in my case) fall into two categories: personal enjoyment and materials for my projects. They range in “material value,” but the point for me isn’t so much that I get a fair exchange. Besides, our society is really bad at arriving at a reliable price on education.

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Presentations

When Is Transparency Useful?

Aaron Swartz is skeptical of politicians who trumpet “transparency” as the solution to government corruption.

When you create a regulatory agency, you put together a group of people whose job is to solve some problem. They’re given the power to investigate who’s breaking the law and the authority to punish them. Transparency, on the other hand, simply shifts the work from the government to the average citizen, who has neither the time nor the ability to investigate these questions in any detail, let alone do anything about it. It’s a farce: a way for Congress to look like it has done something on some pressing issue without actually endangering its corporate sponsors.

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Rhizome’s Seven on Seven

This one day conference at the New Museum sounds interesting.

Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new — be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine — over the course of a single day.

$250 registration ($75 for students) until the February 23rd early bird deadline.

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The Days of Miracles and Wonder

Greg Knauss travels back in time and has a conversation with himself about the future:

That’s why I wanted to talk to you, 1990 me. Your cynicism is important, even vital. God knows, there are times when it will seem like bunnies-and-rainbows optimism given what actually happens. Things get really, really bad for a while, and no amount of cynicism seems like enough.

But I also wanted to make sure that there are some things that are, in fact, awesome. The world’s been through a hell of a lot, and I’m not sure I trust my own eyes anymore.

Link via Daring Fireball

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