Intersections - Nguyen Dang Binh

Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel
Voice Mosaic
Internet art
ARTIST STATEMENT
The human dream of talking with computers in natural language
is not new. Scientific fiction books and movies present several examples
of it. In the early 21st century, voice recognition and speech
synthesis technologies achieved enough accuracy and reliability for
large-scale use, bringing to the surface the possibility of finally realizing
our dreams of talking with computers, and more: not only talking
with one computer at a time, but to several computers in a network.
In this context, and aspiring to create an experiment where people
could talk to the web via telephone, the Voice Mosaic project was
created.
The work, launched in July 2004, is a web art project that merges
speech and image into a visual/aural mosaic on the web. The tiles in
the mosaic are created by the chosen colors and recorded voices
of people who interact with the work by phone, from any location in
the world, through speech synthesis and voice recognition (natural
language processing). The mosaic is seen and heard on the web,
where several modes of interaction are available. Interactions can
happen in three distinct human languages in order to encourage
global participation.
Several dualities, which do not oppose each other, but instead mix
and complete each other, are combined in the work: aural/visual,
simple/complex, art/science, old/new, low-tech/high-tech, time/
space, human/computer, individual/community, passive/active,
CONTACT
Martha Carrer Cruz Gabriel
Universidade de São Paulo
Rua Ibaragui Nissui 115, #1204
São Paulo 04116-200 Brazil
BRAZIl
martha@martha.com.br
www.voicemosaic.com.br
causality/chance, and others. Their dialogue and mixture intend to
raise questions that can increase our awareness of boundary dissolutions,
hybridizations, convergences, and transdisciplinary activities
that influence the world more and more.
TECHNICAl STATEMENT
The Voice Mosaic project would be impossible without a digital
environment. The web is the most appropriate environment since it is
multi-user by nature and broadly available. Database and phone/web
hybridization/convergence are key features of the application. All
data from the phone calls are stored in a database and used to form
the mosaic on the web, and the convergence of telephone and the
web allows all interactions to be seen in real time in the mosaic.
At the human interaction level, one technology is the core of the
work: VoiceXMl, which enables voice interactions between humans
and computers. Without a voice gateway rendering VoiceXMl commands,
it would be impossible for users to “talk” to the application.
Completing the interaction scenario, Flash technology integrated
with the database realizes several data-visualization methods (including
mapping) allowed by digital media environments.
Artworks Art Gallery Electronic Art and Animation Catalog
9