mattbutt : work Atom feed | about mattbutt

thumbnail screenshot

Smalltalk

MattButt:Speaks(An attempt to communicate something worth listening to or God is in my rear view mirror). Brainwave, idea, notion, inspiration, insight, flash, bolt will now be referred to as THEY.THEY come to you from out of the blue, if you concentrate too hard or think about having one, it will never come, therefore you just have to get on with other things and wait. Recent research into sleep has shown that it's not during REM that THEY come to you but during the quiet period before REM called "slow wave sleep" where the brain hardly functions at all. So not thinking might be the key to thinking of something worth saying and worth people listening to. MattButt:Speaks automates the speaking process without the complication of thinking at all. Perhaps without any type of thinking THEY will come. Speech has been broken down into the international phonetic alphabet which consists of 24 consonant sounds and 21 vowel sounds. I have applied certain text rules to the phonetics such as alternating consonant sounds with vowel sounds and allowing for exceptions for example R can come after most other consonants and E comes after TH more that before it. The consonant and vowel are chosen at random however the frequencies of the letters has been adjusted to comply with the frequency of that letter occurring in the English language. Other random features include volume, silences, length of each phonetic and the amount of grouped phonetics that make up words.

Most of the time the program makes absolutely no sense even though it sounds like it should. From a distance it sounds like someone speaking but you just can't make out what they are saying. Sometimes, however, it does make sense. This is the most exciting part of the work. The program has the potential to say the most profound statement you are ever likely to hear.

collection:2004 | date added:2004-10-03 | enter project

mattbutt : about