Don Quixote
From the Publisher. A book generated by processing the Audiobook version of Don Quixote through speech recognition software. After training the speech recognition software to recognize the voice of George Guidall – the narrator of the audiobook, the recording was played to the computer. The resultant text was reformatted to once again be a book.
This book extends the self-reflexive, tale-telling nature of Don Quixote even further by using a text generated though the playback of an audio version to a dictating software program. The artist labored to train the program to recognize the book-on-tape's voice, but the software still tripped over silences and pauses. The word Quixote also proved elusive for the computer's comprehension as the name doesn't appear anywhere in this version.
This book was generated by processing the Audiobook version of Don Quixote (Edith Grossman's 2003 translation) through speech recognition software. For the software to work it must first be trained using a very particular script to understand an individual's voice – in this instance, the narrator of the audiobook, George Guidall. To accomplish this, the words in the training script were found within the Grossman book version. These words were then located on the corresponding audio CD, removed from their contexts and rearranged as if George Guidall was speaking the training script. Certain words that were not found in the novel ('module', as an example, was not a common word in 17th century Spain) were created by combining words: the first syllable of 'modesty' was put with the word 'jewel' to create the phonetic sounds of 'module'. After the audio files for the training speech were completed, this constructed speech reading was played to the speech recognition software, effectively training the computer to learn the voice of George Guidall. With this in place, the speech recognition software was ready to hear Guidall's reading of Cervantes' book.
The constructed voice of Guidall, however, did not make for a perfect cypher. Often, Guidall used different voices for characters or Guidall ran words together – not necessarily enunciating each word to its fullest, throwing off the accuracy of the software. At other times, words such as 'Don Quixote' were unknown to the software's built-in dictionary and came out differently, in certain instances, as 'Donkey vote.' Further, much of the text reads like a Joycean stream, as the speech recognition software could not decipher the silent punctuation of the audio source. The moments in the text where punctuation does appear are most likely mis-hearings of other words (where 'calm' is heard as 'comma,' for example).
This generated text was then culled and printed as a book, closely resembling the standard paperback edition of the 2003 Grossman translation.
Beyond Don Quixote's obvious canonical importance as the first modern novel, the story itself is about books and reading through plays with meta-narratives, questions of authorship, and the book as an object of fetish. Like the novel, this new version is also preoccupied with these and many other subjects, including the exploration of the differences in reception between the act of both reading and listening.
I can’t think of a “copy” more fittingly perverse than Gareth Long’s Don Quixote (2006). Long generated this text using speech recognition software, which he trained to identify the Don Quixote audiobook narrator’s voice. He played the subsequent recording into a computer and produced this clever doppelgänger. His “Chapter XVI” begins: “regarding what they fail in the ingenious government in the American debut Castle.”
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister
- Quote of the Day: Witold Rybczynski & Paradise Planned
- Summer Reading for Design Lovers: The Story of Architecture
- One Book and Why: Design School Dean Frederick Steiner Recommends . . .
- One Book and Why: Graphic Designer Stefan Sagmeister Recommends . . .
- Book List of the Week: Milton Glaser
- Imagining Information: Symbols, Isotype, and Book Design
- “The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn” To Be Reissued in a New Facsimile Edition
- Do We Need a Completely New Approach to Marketing Books?
- Question Everything: A Conversation with OK-RM’s Rory McGrath