Vagn Steen celebrates his 88th birthday today.

10 years ago we got together each day for a month and recorded a short poem based on a letter of the Danish alphabet. Those recordings were later taken apart and reassembled as the Lydfabet – a journey through the Danish alphabet in the form of a sound montage.

V som Vagn V som vej vej til Vildskab vej til Vipperød vej til Verden vej til Vandet vej til Virkeligheden

Happy Birthday Vagn.

VoiceOver Piece, for Tessa (a South African voice)

Ag ja you know. I mean I've said it a hundred times before. 
You can't just. I mean. Ja.

What we need to do is…
And then we can.

Like ja we should. I mean it's like I said,
But ja you never can tell you know.

No man I'm telling you…
It's not that. 
Ja, no,
It's just that
Ja. 

Okay.  
I don't know.
Ja. I just keep coming back to the same thing again and again, 

And then just when you think…

No. You realize…

I'm not sure what you said.  

Screen Reader Piece for Hilbert, with a nod to Vagn Steen.

Move down one line.
You read to the right.
Move up one line.

You read to the right. 
Move down one line.
Left the to read you. 
Move down one line.
Move down another line.
You read to the right.
Move up one line.
You read to the right.
Move down one line. 
You read to the right.
Move up one line.
Move up another line.
Left the to read you.
Move up one line.
You read to the right.

You have now reached the end of the second curve.

VoiceOver Nocturne – speak selection:

Ki kri ki kri Kurrr ki kri Ki Kurrr kri ki kri Kurrr ki kri Ki Kurrr kri ki kri ki kri Kurrr Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki Kurrr kri ki kri ki Kurrr kri Ki kri Kurrr ki kri ki Kurrr kri Ki kri Kurrr ki kri ki kri Ki Kurrr kri ki kri ki  

Turns out that VoiceOver on iOS automatically selects the Hungarian Eszter for the block of text above when using “speak selection” – which gives a more satisfactory result from a sound point of view.

Playing around with VoiceOver trying to make a little sound-text nocturne. The interesting thing is that even though the text fragment simply repeats VoiceOver gradually changes pitch over the course of the block.

Select the black box and listen via “speak selection”:

Ki kri ki kri ki kri  Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri  Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri  Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri ki kri Ki kri ki kri.

Another aspect of creating sound poems for screen readers is that the way they interpret the text is by no means consistent. Some of the older voices on my Mac read certain combinations of letters individually whereas the more recent voices (including all of those on iOS) combine them into a single word. Another tricky thing is getting the reader to make pauses. New lines, even with the inclusion of periods, are interpreted differently depending on how VoiceOver is activated. Activating speech via a context click on my Mac gives different results from triggering the same selection via a keyboard shortcut.

I’ve been experimenting with sound-poems created especially for screen readers. Text-to-Speech, long a feature on Macs, is now also very convenient to use on iOS 9: Settings → General → Accessibility → Speech: Speak Selection, Speak Screen. (My universe is admittedly Apple centric, so I’d be curious if anyone would care to send results recorded on Android or Windows.)

The fun part has been experimenting with how to coax VoiceOver into making sounds that are not necessarily the words of everyday speech. Including a vowel in a crazy combination of consonants so that it doesn’t read the letters individually, for example.

Screen Reader Pieces:

1.

kshdku.
kshdka.

kshdko.

kshdke.
kshudk

Kshdku.
Kshfffdka Kshdka.
Kshdko Ksfffffmhdko.

kshdke
kshudk

Kshutdk tscihm.

2.

tscihm
tscihm
tscihm

tsscihmmmm
tsssscihm

tsci, tscih, tscihm.
tsckihm, tsckhehm, tscihm.
tscihm, tscih, tscihm. 

tsci tsci tsci

qukrtqsckho tscki tscki
qukr

um
am
uhm
aahm

eekr
kretqschka

3.

chka
schka
qschka
tqschka
rtqschka
wrtqschka
qwrtqschka

ertqschka
etqschka 

etqsch
etqsc
etqs
ets
et
e

easily

4.

and so it came to be 
that in the interim, 
the x were comprised of x, 
leading to a situation 
in which x, 
the sum of x, 
effectively x, 
tried…

5.

ktahktah
ktahktah
ktahktahktahk
tahktahktahktah
ktahktahktahktahktah
tahktahktahktahktahkt
ahktahktahktah
tahktah