I’ve been working on an entry for a group show in Athens for a couple of weeks now. First off, I learned how to play around with Flickr images. Then I went and played with Wiki and with Twitter API, so text came up instead of images. So the mix of visuals I intended to make became a mix of texts, with a screen reader to give voice to the words.  Much trial and much error led to an application,  I’ve called it OraclR after the ancient Oracle. It reads out random noise about Athens, which our brains then try to make into meaningful sentences. Again: much like how things worked with the ancient Oracle.

Here is what needs to be done to access the work:

go to  http://webanywhere.cs.washington.edu/beta/  this is a screen reader service that reads out web pages. Set preferred language to ‘english’ and confirm.

At the top of the page there will be a url highlighted in blue. If it is not highlighted, press [control + l } and it will highlight. Now replace this url with the following: http://www.visual-art-research.com/test-9/ .  then press ‘go’ – if all goes well the Oracle will start speaking  to you.

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Please check it out and give me some comments ;)