Speak Far and Wide

Hazel Smith

Writing and Society Research Group
University of Western Sydney
austraLYSIS

Roger Dean

MARCS Auditory Laboratories
University of Western Sydney
austraLYSIS

Abstract

This piece of computer-interactive sonic poetry is one of a series being composed by us with the use of software written in the Verbal Interactivity Project (VIP). VIP is a project initiated by austraLYSIS dedicated to text generation and processing, and operating in the programming language Python. In Speak Far and Wide the computer-interactive performer, Roger, puts in motion multiple computer voices which speak texts processed in VIP in a variety of different ways.

VIP includes the Text Transformation Toolkit (TTT) devised and created in Python by David Worrall and Roger, with additional input from Michael Bylstra and Jon Drummond. TTT permits both live coding in the Pycrust Python interpreter and manipulation of a graphic interface. It also uses several other substantial research and programming endeavours, such as the free association database, Wordnet, and the Natural Language Toolkit (initiated at the University of Melbourne), though the objective is not necessarily to replicate natural language. The purpose of TTT— which is under continuous development — is to generate text, in the sense of gradually transforming it, especially in real-time interactive and performance contexts. Manipulations of the text may be carried out at the level of the letter, word or sentence. For example TTT can substitute nouns and verbs for other nouns and verbs, either by recourse to a specific database of words complied by Hazel, or by using Wordnet, or the free association database. These substitutions might be synonyms, antonyms, or metonymic substitutions which have a close or distant link with the original word. TTT can also shuffle sentences and words, or append or merge different sentences. It can excise vowels, swap characters and so on.

The text for Speak Far and Wide, written by Hazel, originates from a screen-based piece by us, Instabilities 2, published in Drunken Boat at «http://www.drunkenboat.com/db12/06des/smith/instabilities.php». This piece explores some of the possibilities of VIP, and employs text generation and computer-based voices. In Instabilities 2 the texts which form the basis for the VIP transformations engage a diverse array of styles and genres of writing and evoke many forms of instability — linguistic, psychological, economic, political, geographical and technological — which are metaphorically cross-referenced so that, for example, mental instability is sometimes represented in economic terms. Instability, however, emerges as both negative and positive, and is viewed as a trigger to change, not just as a prelude to disintegration.

Speak Far and Wide utilizes only some of these texts from Instabilities 2 and transforms them progressively; the performer can take control over these processes or drive them algorithmically. The most prominent text used is a rewriting of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech as a utopian vision of the possibilities of experimental and electronic poetry, but there is throughout a creative tension between the audibility of the words and their reinvention as sonic texture. The computerised voices are those readily available on the Macintosh, and in this piece seven are used, including one which is described as ‘deranged’. The use of these voices contrasts to most of our other collaborations in which the voice manipulated is usually Hazel’s or that of an actor or actors.

This particular piece involves 4 channel presentation, including some sonic manipulation of the text-to-speech performances. It is presented here in a Quicktime compressed format, and for those who do not have a multichannel sound system attached to their computer, it will automatically mix down to 2 channels, though some information and effects are inevitably lost in this process.

« Listen to Speak Far and Wide »

About the Artists

Roger Dean is a composer/improviser, and since 2007 a research professor in music cognition and computation at the MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney. He founded and directs the ensemble austraLYSIS, which has performed in 30 countries. His creative work is on 30 commercial audio CDs, and he has released many digital intermedia pieces. His 400 substantive research publications include 7 books on music and improvisation. Previously he was CEO of the Heart Research Institute, Sydney, researching in biochemistry, and then Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Canberra.

Hazel Smith is a poet, performer, and new media artist. She has published three volumes of poetry, three CDs of performance work, and numerous multimedia works. Her latest volume, with accompanying CD-ROM, is The Erotics of Geography: poetry, performance texts, new media works (Tinfish Press, 2008). A member of austraLYSIS, the intermedia arts group, she has performed work extensively in the US, Europe, UK, and Australasia, and has been co-recipient of numerous grants, as well as five commissions from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.



Hazel is a research professor in the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, where she is co-editor of soundsRite, a journal of new media writing and sound. She is author of The Writing Experiment: strategies for innovative creative writing (Allen and Unwin, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Australian Publishing Association Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing, and Hyperscapes in the Poetry of Frank O’Hara: difference, homosexuality, topography (Liverpool UP, 2000). With Roger Dean she co-authored Improvisation, Hypermedia And The Arts Since 1945 (Harwood Academic, 1997) and co-edited Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts (Edinburgh UP, 2009). Hazel was the founding editor of infLect, an online international journal of new media writing.