Produced by: Peilu Chen
"s-stutter-r" is a project about the inner state of stutterers during their communication. By programming, the stutterer's fragmented language is visualized, and disorderly sounds are used to control visual changes. Visually, because sound affects the distortion of facial features, through constantly deformed eyes and mouth, the overlapping nose and the gradually disordered words, the three major characteristics of stutterers —— "repetition", "block" and "prolongation" are emphasized when speaking, highlighting the normalcy of irregularities. In this way, the project is aimed to show anxiety, madness, and annoyance of stutterers when facing stuttering disorders.
The project is inspired by Aayusha Shrestha's artwork "Knot A Stutter", which is a visualisation of an imperfect speech through the knotted string to show signs of behaviours in the language associated with stammering. Shrestha uses different knots to denote specific types of behaviours (ie. use Figure 8 knot to show a repetition). The knotting is also used to show the tension and constriction associated with stutters, which arouses my thinking of exploring the inner and outer space of a stutter through generative visual elements.
Stuttering is seen as a language obstacle, mainly reflected in disfluent speech. I choose three typical behaviours, which is prolongation, block and repetition, and express them through code. "Prolongation "is shown as constantly struggling eyes and mouth, they are pulled in horizontal and vertical directions and become distorted, creating a glitch effect that allows us to see tears in the mouth and deformities in the eyes. "Block" is reflected in the shaking texts. Once you click the mouse, the complete sentence will return to "OH MY GOD! That is not what I am Thinking", and then each word will gradually spread around the canvas and be disrupted. The meaning of the sentence will also become fragmented and lose its original meaning, reflecting the absence of language expression in stammering. "Repetition" is shown as continuously overlapping noses, which appear randomly in the center of the canvas. The combination of these three characteristics makes the whole picture a sense of distortion, disorder and absurdity.
Before designing these elements, I looked at Alda Villiljós's photography. She records some special facial movements with people's stutters. Usually, when people stutter, their faces will show a strained and distorted expression due to the inability to speak and express smoothly, such as tight eyebrows and exaggerated mouth movements, which will also increase their inner tension and frustration.
In the meantime, the recording by Morgantj called "short-circuiting talking toy" produces a stuttering voice by controlling an audible toy. I edited the recording and used it to control my visual elements through the minim library so that the distortion of the picture will change with the sound. The repetitive and disordered sounds can also increase people's anxiety and annoyance when stuttering (Please turn off the sound if necessary).
The project is more a reflection of a psychological state, that is, a language disorder under tension and anxiety. It is not only in stuttering patients, anyone is likely to go through these blocks or transient aphasia, making language and the mental state becomes fragile and fragmented. When distorted and deformed images, wordless words and annoying voices repeatedly showing up in front of people, they will get a feeling as they struggle and get frustrated from stammering. I hope this will help people understand more about the stutterers and also the inner state under a stuttering situation, giving them more patience and help.
Reference:
the example "Visuals of Earth" in Week5
"Knot A Stutter" by Aayusha Shrestha
http://www.aayushashrestha.com/knot-a-stutter.html
"s-s-stutter - An Interactive Exhibit" by Oliver Jordan
http://www.studentshow.com/gallery/51941357/s-s-stutter-An-Interactive-Exhibit
" Stutters" by Alda Villiljós
https://www.behance.net/gallery/32747515/Stutters
Garcias's code about text