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Luke McGowanLuke McGowan - Robo Ursonate [LF067MP3] (March 9, 2006)

Robo Ursonate is a speech-synthesis program interpretation of Kurt Schwitters' classic sound poem Ursonate (1921-32). The text from Schwitters' original score was simply cut and pasted into a commercial text-to-speech synthesis program and left to do its thing with no attempt to correct interpretive error or structurally alter the system output.


This audio is part of the collection: Lost Frog Productions

Author: Luke McGowan
Date: 2006-03-09 00:00:00

Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

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http://www.lostfrog.net/releases/lf067mp3.html

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Reviewer: Indeterminacy - - August 6, 2008
Subject: Fantastic Idea
It's an audacious idea to juxtapose the Ursonate with text-to-speech. This would make a fascinating baseline to compare different software approaches to the problem.

Reviewer: situationed - - February 10, 2008
Subject: brief history of time
nice work. schwitters meets steven hawking! we need more comedy in avant garde poetry. and we need more poetry and art history in contemporary experimental music.

Reviewer: andrew_zito - - December 11, 2007
Subject: YEAH YEAH
"Sound poetry" interesting interesting as a wonderful label for another crazy humanless abstraction that is the velvet glove on the iron fist of reality, without any pertinence to humans except as another escapist trap frankly drugs are more coherent that the bread and circus character of this:

Now that we got rid of the art, and the artists, perhaps we can get rid of the audiences and sponsers.

I can give the "artist" "creator" some credit (did they create the technology which produced this? if not perhaps we should credit Intel and Microsoft) but I wouldn't gush over it as some people may.

As poetry it sucks as music it is worse as an indulgence in abstraction it is good, but not great. So to balance out the previous review of gush I am giving it the second lowest rating.

Oh on the whim of your suggestion I went to Ubu found all the human versions and the original done in I believe 1922 and found them that HUMAN!

A miracle for HUMANITY! So since I compared them and found them so good when compared to THIS MECHANICAL ASSAULT I lowered my rating to 1 since that is what I felt like when I first heard it ASSAULT. AUDIENCES ARE TOO OPEN TOO UNSCHOOLED ART IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT THOUGH IT CAN ENTERTAIN.

Reviewer: Jpeatt - - May 31, 2006
Subject: fantastic rendition of a classic piece
this is wonderful. Kurt Scwitters' 'ursonate' is an absolute classic in the history of poetry, music & perfomance in the 20th century, and this rndition does it justice. putting aside any potential criticisms that it's 'cheating' or 'lazy', this work really showcases elements of schwitters' text that a human performer simply can't. the fact that the sound is so neutral, so constant, so breathless adds up to a much less 'theatrical' experience than hearing it spoken by a human. a very relentless & strangely intense piece.
highly recommended, but if you've never heard a human perform 'ursonate' you should probably head over to www.ubu.com & listen to one of the renditions they have online there, so the comparison is clear.