This presentation was given at the Can Serrat international art center near Barcelona in 2009. I was there for a one-month artist residency, where I worked on all kinds of software experiments and application development. I even got a regular gig as a guest VJ at the City Hall Club right near the Ramblas in Barcelona. I met a lot of cool people and had a blast. You can check out a full tutorial here: https://ericmedine.com/tute_lip_synching.htm

This project was quite a challenge– the way computers (and humans) read text is quite different than the way we listen (or read) actual speech. There’s a rhythm and a cadence of spoken word that has to be taken into account, and quite often it is at odds with how we handle type. I’m not completely convinced the project was successful, but I learned a lot about design and building applications, especially in terms of defining goals and development cycles.

I also had to spend a lot of time looking at people’s lips, and doing research on phonemes (the shape of lips when making speech).