[accessibleimage] Re: Mental synthesis of images

Hi Chris and all,

> Is there somehow I can help beta test or have something 
> more substantial to play around with?

Definitely yes, and you are most welcome to: if you have a
PC running Microsoft Windows and can get hold of a webcam
with its driver software, you can start playing right away 
with the visual sounds of live camera views. These sounds
are synthesized on-the-fly and track any changes in the
camera view within a second. The vOICe Learning Edition 
software is available for free from the web page at the URL

   http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

and the direct download link to its executable is

   http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voice.exe

Upon startup, it will attempt to find a connected webcam
or equivalent video capture device, and immediately start
sounding the live camera view. When lacking a camera, you
can still import image files via its file requester under
"Control O", apply zoom (function key F4), next move around
with your arrow keys, and so on. In fact, you can load 
the very source image for the curve-and-little-squares
sounds that we have discussed here: it is just a GIF image
file at the direct URL

   http://www.seeingwithsound.com/voiscopebw.gif

Here too you can now zoom in and move around to make the
shapes of the little squares appear more apparent, or slow
down the sounds with function key F3. If the image had 
been a real painting, you would have used the camera and
moved the camera closer to the painting to effectively 
enlarge any parts of interest, equivalent to zooming in.

These expanded modes of user interaction should help 
take care of where you rightfully say

> The squares, after another half hour of playing with 
> both the fast and slow samples, remain to small and too
> "still" to distinguish much more than their locations.

If you do the free registration, you can next try the
alternative 3D audio rendering feature, which you find
as a checkbox labelled "HESTER" ("Hesternalized sound
rendering") in the menu Edit | Visual Sound Preferences.

Best wishes,

Peter


Seeing with Sound - The vOICe
http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

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