Martin Riches - Talking Machine

Martin Riches

Talking Machine

32 voice pipes, 4 wind chests, blower and steel frame, 230 cm high


While I was voicing the pipes for a mechanical organ I noticed that when they were playing incorrectly they would sometimes make sounds quite similar to human speech. I wondered if it would be possible to make special speaking pipes and whether it would be possible to make them talk.

The result was the Talking Machine — an acoustic speech synthesizer.The speech sounds are produced using a flow of air and resonators just as in natural speech.The machine has 32 pipes, each one a simplified version of the human vocal tract. They reproduce the spaces which are formed in the mouth, nose and throat when we speak.The pipes are built according to measurements of X-Ray photographs taken of a person speaking. In other words, the E-pipe reproduces the narrow shape of the human mouth saying E, the OO- pipe has something like the small round OO-shaped lips and so on. S, F, Sh and similar sounds are produced by special whistles which reproduce the shapes made by the lips, tongue and teeth. The valves which control the flow of air are operated by a computer.



The 32 pipes of the Talking Machine


The machine is being taught to speak English — about 400 words so far — and a few words in other languages. For example, in Japanese it can speak a few polite phrases and can count to 100. It also recites concrete poems, for example, Canzone di Maggio by Giacomo Balla.


http://www.floraberlin.de/soundbag/talk.ram

真正了解多媒体艺术是不易之事，非常考究学问和灵感。

。。。。。。。。。。。
其实台湾有关这方面的网站很多，介于平面于多媒体之间的。关于MR等人的介绍甚至于泛滥，氛围很好的说//////唉喲喂，最近有强烈想去台湾的欲望，高雄开了好多讲座啊~~