Language Extension #4

Description

Two blenders sit on top of a TV mimicking the love / hate dialogues in soap opera videos. Blender noise becomes a vocal extension of the TV character, relaying sibilance of speech in mechanical form. The voice’s pitch and loudness control the speed and intensity of the blender, creating a sonic envelope of words.

Explanation

Language Extension #4 is from a body of works investigating psychoacoustics and the multiplicity of meaning in language. The conversation of TV characters is conveyed or implied through the mental combination of visual cues, and the sonic envelope that implies speech. This changes the perception of meaning by requiring one to rely on the visual reading of lips and gesture to decipher the sound-meaning produced by the blenders. It is a phenomenon where the brain pieces both sight and sound information together and naturally fills in the gaps.  This work was influenced by the McGurk effect, a phenomenon that is a mismatch between auditory and visual signals and creating a third phoneme different from both the original auditory and visual speech signals.

Technical Overview

The blenders are controlled by two homemade analog electronic circuits taking the audio and converting the sound amplitude into revolutions of blender speed.

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