In this linking assignment, I’m going to make connections and analyze differences between the reflections my classmate, Vera Xiong, and I did for Task 3 Voice to Text.

Before going into Task 3 I would like to mention that, in more general terms, I found Vera’s blog page inspiring, as her posts are nicely produced with images. There is an aesthetic element that for me, as an artist, is essential for user-end experience, which made me think about how I could improve my own blog site and future work. I saw her posts before doing Task 4, and this motivated me to improve my blog’s design and also be more mindful of aesthetics while producing content.

While reading Vera’s reflection I noticed that we both realized how punctuation was not translated while doing this task, an issue that arises from the fact that punctuation represents silence. In my analysis, I mentioned that this created an ever-flowing long line of text that is difficult to read. What I found interesting about Vera’s observations is that she went a step further, explaining how this can alter the meaning of sentences. She provides a great example that illustrates this:

Without comma: I found John an experienced doctor. (John is an experienced doctor).
With comma: I found John, an experienced doctor. (I found an experienced doctor for John).

I found some differences between our reflections, not in a contradictory way, but simply in the way we experienced the excessive. Because of my background in music and performance, much of my analysis explored how the act of speaking (or singing) is different from the act of writing, however, I didn’t go much into what is it that makes them different. Vera did a good job in identifying some of these differences, particularly on the emotional content that becomes ambiguous when producing text, which can only be clarified with extra information. She gives a great example about how the phrase “I am so excited to see you” could be said with excitement or sarcasm and this could only be expressed clearly in text with the addition of more words, such as “she joyfully said, I am so excited to see you”. This observation made me think about Kress’ (2005) assertion that words are relatively empty entities and how voice, in contrast to text, has a greater potential to hold emotional content. In effect, it is very difficult to find vocal content without emotional content. I think this has its pros and cons. As a very sensitive person, I find that sometimes interacting through text can be more practical and fast as I don’t have to process much emotional content that is not relevant to the particular situation I am in. However, in the context of appreciating art (for example a great song) the power of a singer’s voice goes way beyond the lyrics they are singing to.

References:

Kress (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.