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A friend of mine asked what the audio is and I thought you may also like to know: it’s an online demo of a text-to-speech program reading Buddhist quotes.
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A multi-disciplinary course taught by Anne Dalke and Laura Blankenship
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Guinevere–
quite the coup, here…
I am struck, first, by the remarkable appropriateness of your audio choice: the text-to-speech program has such an oft-kilter quality; it really contributes to the “argument” about the illusory nature of self.
What really intrigues me most here, though, is your choice of message: that self doesn’t exist, and that we will suffer as long as we persist on pursuing it. That really rachets up the questions we have been asking for the past few weeks, about the relationship between our real-life selves and our on-line avatars; it suggests (just for starters!) that we started in entirely the wrong (and entirely illusory?) space. Rather than asking what the relationship is, we should have begun (or @ least ended!) by questioning the terms of engagement.
Also striking to me to see, in this morning’s NYTimes Magazine, a very-relevant article called Enlightenment Therapy, about the relationship between Zen and psychoanalysis, in which a long-time Zen master, in therapy, admits to “how risky samadhi [oneness, ineffable joy] is from a psychological point of view.” So there’s more to say on this (and all) subjects…thanks so much for turning the conversation in this direction.
Your video is actually the first project that I looked at. Like Anne, I was surprised by the message of your project. Anne and I have been reading a book outside of class called Natural-Born Cyborgs. I’m convinced that one of the arguments Andy Clark (the author) was making was exactly what you have presented here (although Anne says she didn’t pick up on this at all).
The last bit of your video is especially striking. Where did you get the idea to use Buddhist quotes? Did you know about these particular ones before this project? What do you think letting go of a sense of self means in terms of gender? Is gender something we decide based on our sense of self? Would it exist without a sense of self?
Great job!
Like Anne, I really like your use of the online text-to-speech software. While in places you can tell it is not real, there are other places were it does quite a good job and it’s hard to believe that we have created software that can replicate human speech, as well as this program does. Speech software has been around for quite awhile (my brother’s first mac laptop that he got in 1994 had really basic text-to-speech software) It is also interesting that the voices are very distinctly gendered.
First, I want to explain my original idea. I was having a sarcastic conversation with a friend about the self and virtual reality. I made a ridiculous comment about the possibility that the meat-space self doesn’t exist unless the virtual self exists. All the images I found for this project are somehow connected to that comment. It was the original inspiration/thesis for the project.
@ Alex: I came across the Buddhist quotes while googling certain phrases I wanted to use in my audio. The original idea was to have people (real people) reading aloud and somewhat narrating the images. I was thinking of writing my own script based on the images themselves. I put the images in a randomized slide show and did some free-writing, but didn’t like what I came up with. I couldn’t find a cohesive message in my free-writing (even though I selected all the images with a specific thesis in mind). So I decided to google some of the phrases I liked from my free-writing and see what kinds of quotes/writings other people had about similar topics. When I came across the Buddhist quotes, I was really struck by how significantly their perception and opinion of self was in contrast to everything we have discussed in our conversations about self. I was hesitant to use them, since I was concerned that they didn’t support my original thesis, but I decided to throw out my original message and have the project force you to question your conceptions of self rather than tell you about some idea I had about self.
Also, @ Alex: I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about gender with this project. I’ve found that since Spring Break, my attention has turned more towards looking broadly at modern technology and how it is affecting society (mostly US, but also how it affects the major religions). For example, I plan to focus my final paper on technology’s role in the formation and function of The Republic of Gilead. Sorry I can’t tell you much about my thoughts on gender in this project!
@ Anne & Hillary: I’m glad you like the audio choice. I was really annoyed that I ended up using the text-to-speech technology. My original vision was to have real people read aloud the quotes (or whatever text I used). Even when I found friends willing to volunteer and read aloud for me, I was dissatisfied with their voices because they didn’t have to tone I wanted. I think I was aiming for something a la a documentary. There’s something about documentary narration that makes it sound right/correct/believable without sounding authoritative/dictatorial. I wanted someone that sounded knowledgeable and wizened, perhaps like an elderly priest or monk. Even before I decided to use the text-to-speech, I was hoping to find a man with a deep British voice to read some of the text. (I note this because it may be interesting to explore why I think a deep British male voice works well for a ‘documentary tone’). When I starting fiddling with the text-to-speech program, I found that the American English male voices sounded like football players or frat boys, so I opted to use the British voices instead. I’m sure there’s lots of interesting stereotypes in my subconscious that played into this decision, but in the space of a ‘three page paper’ I decided not to analyze it too much. Again, I’m glad you liked the use of a tool I was pretty unhappy with.