Send Postcards through the Ether

TTS-FM, the text-to-speech radio, was conceived as an emergency radio tool for low-bandwidth environments. I never thought I would turn it on myself. Live and learn.

Throughout my residency from the August to the end of October 2002, TTS-FM will be used to plug the outside world into the beautiful yet remote air-space around Grizedale. Whatever you believe I am missing out on while living through my residency, this is your way of delivering the world to my doorstep. E-mail to tts@lowlive.org or post messages on the site or you can supply me with URLs from the web. In return I will post some diary entries to TTS-FM for the outside world to enjoy.

The limited bandwidth in Grizedale does not allow the generous use of online audio material to be put back and forth between the local FM transmitter and the Internet. Instead, TTS-FM is an on-line/on-air solution allowing to deliver talk radio across the poor connectivity to the local FM transmitter via a text-to-speech synthesis application. If you post a message, TTS-FM will convert the writing into spoken word and file is as a MP3 file. Posting a URL will pull the content of the site also to be stored as MP3. TTS-FM is also capable of generating audio from e-mails.

Once a day, a local computer in Grizedale will connect with the central server and retrieve the new texts. Once downloaded, the material will be converted into audio files and played as loops on the local FM transmitter.

The exact same archive which is on the local server, out of reach for the rest of the world, is also available here on this server. Feel free to browse, listen and comment, similar to using a weblog system.

Looking forward to gossip and news alike,

Micz Flor

The Text2Speech Radio (TTS-FM) was implemented for the residency programme of Grizedale Arts. TTS-FM was developed as part of the lowlive projects.