Language Extension#4

The two blenders sit on top of a TV and mimic the speech of the people in the soap opera video. Blender noise becomes a vocal extension of the TV character that relays the sibilance of speech manifested in mechanical form. The voices pitch and loudness control the speed and intensity of the blender creating a sonic envelope of words. This piece deals with the McGurk effect, in the mismatch between the auditory signal and the visual signal to create a third phoneme different from both the original auditory and visual speech signals. Here the McGurk effect changes the perception of meaning by forcing one to rely on the visual reading of lips and gesture for the decipherment of the sound meaning. The meaning is altered but conveyed through implied meaning associations of lip motion and gesture. This piece is one in a series that investigates language and the multiplicity of meaning.