Embracing Unnaturalness
Cloning Voices from 70s/80s Home Computers
Presenter: Paulus van Horne (PhD, University of Boulder, Colorado, USA)
Abstract
Abstract: In the relentless pursuit of "natural" synthetic speech, the tech industry has inadvertently encoded binary gender norms into the very fabric of voice synthesis. But what if we embraced the unnatural? This presentation explores an alternative trajectory in voice technology by resurrecting and cloning the distinctly artificial voices of 70s and 80s home computers. (Research supported by Media Archaeology Lab at University of Colorado Boulder).