Speech/Media_To_Text_Poetry_Translation

Par

Processing media into strange texts with S2T software. Using speech to text software trained to my scratchy and yet (in the afternoon) velvety voice, I process the worlds of media ….. (movies, radio, music, crowds, the ocean). The software, as all technology, is an imperfect and jealous lover that misunderstands explosions, or ambient noise as text, and retranslates the sounds and dialogues, finds hidden words beneath what we (and it) hears. Think of the process as an interpretive dance, a jittery technological oracle for our electronic boxes that shine out uncertain media prophets. These poems are the first in a series of noise to poetics experiments. The rules: Once the raw text file was generated from the source (recording the movies, radio programs and on and on) I recreated the text into a poetic form. All text stayed in the same order, but words were removed, lines broken, enjambment toyed. And the only text additions allowed were a few prepositions or conjunctions, the occasional plural/possessive, some grammar wrecking punctuation and a titling system to give the whole chaotic swagger a bit more framework. The questions: We are increasingly reliant on technology to translate the world’s texts. So how do these gizmos mutate our perceptions? How do they season and cook our words? Can these technologies be used to reveal meanings, like silent orphans hiding between gun’s cracking, crowded conversations, and the manipulative musical score of our surroundings.