VocaliD’s technology works by capturing a few seconds of vowel sound (the source) from the recipient, and applying it to the filter provided by a donor. The combination allows the production of a voice that’s largely “of” the recipient.
Blog
Guided Tours Are Tacky, Touristy, And The Best Way To Sightsee
Jeffrey Bloomer: “Friends offered stories of backdoor culinary tours in Istanbul down rickety staircases and through secret restaurants. I heard about guides whom you pay just to skip the line at overrun international museums but then charm you half to death anyway. And then there were many stories of guides like mine in Vermont, stewards of decidedly unexotic locations who know enough local chicanery to make every government building and local landmark feel like the seed of the next great American novel.”
World War I Footage Restored, Colorized By ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Director
“[Peter Jackson] admitted even he had been surprised by what was possible using the latest technology. ‘We can make this grainy, flickery, sped-up footage look like it was shot in the last week or two,’ he said. ‘It looks like it was shot with high-definition cameras … It is so sharp and clear now.'”
Why Russians Are Churning Out Dozens Of Parodies Of A 15-Year-Old Music Video
It started when just over a dozen cadets at the air transport academy, wearing very little, did a lip-synch cover of Benny Benassi’s “Satisfaction.” The effect was rather Tom of Finland, which got them in trouble when the powers-that-be found the video online. Masha Gessen recounts what happened next – “a story of spontaneous solidarity, self-organization, and, ultimately, just possibly, the triumph of freedom over bureaucracy.”
Some Scientific Thinking On Music As A Universal Language
A new study finds categorizing obscure songs by their intended function is surprisingly easy to do—even when they’re the product of a faraway foreign land. Universal patterns of human behavior steer songs “into recurrent, recognizable forms,” writes a research team led by Samuel Mehr of Harvard University. It adds that these commonalities can be detected even as music maintains “its profound and beautiful variability across cultures.”
Some Skepticism About “Music As A Universal Language”
“While music is universal, its meanings are not,” adds Anne Rasmussen, an ethnomusicologist at the College of William and Mary. And those meanings are created both by the people making and hearing the music, and by the entire cultural package that surrounds it. A Bach cantata that was composed to celebrate God, for example, means something very different when played in a 21st-century concert hall or in a New York deli. The meaning of music, in other words, “is not something you can perceive while listening through a pair of headphones,” says Rasmussen.
Scientists, Activists Push For American Museum Of Natural History To Kick Rebekah Mercer Off Board
“This week, more than 200 scientists and other academics who have advocated policy action on climate change endorsed an open letter that calls on the museum to remove [the prominent right-wing donor] from its board and ‘end ties to anti-science propagandists and funders of climate science misinformation.'” Protesters have been demonstrating in front of the museum as well.
Olivia Cole, Actress Who Won An Emmy For ‘Roots’, Dead At 75
A dedicated stage and screen performer – and an African-American woman who earned degrees from Bard College, London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and the Univ. of Minnesota in the 1960s – she won the Emmy for playing Matilda, the wife of Chicken George in the Alex Haley miniseries. She was nominated for a second Emmy for Backstairs at the White House and co-starred in the Oprah Winfrey production The Women of Brewster Place.
How A 16th-Century Legal Document Ended Up In A Copy Of ‘Alice In Wonderland’ In Rural Australia
“Lorraine Smith’s detective story began at her second-hand bookshop in Warrnambool, Australia, when a customer came to her with what looked like a piece of paper. It had been hiding in an old copy of Alice in Wonderland, the customer said, that she had paged through while browsing in the back of the store. … Smith grew determined to discover what this manuscript was and where it had come from. What was that obscure writing? Who was the document’s original owner? And how did it end up in Australia?”
Three Ballerinas Explain How They Actually Pull Off Those 32 Fouettés In ‘Swan Lake’
“You’ve done your variation, you run offstage, you have a moment to collect yourself, and you just go. If you were to give yourself time to think, ‘I have to do 32 fouettés now,’ I don’t think you’d go back out on stage.” Elizabeth Murphy, Lesley Rausch, and Laura Tisserand, principals at Pacific Northwest Ballet, explain how they do it, physically and mentally. (includes video)