Tim Cremin
Bot Kerouac
One of the first projects I worked on at the startup was to train a bot to replicate Jack Kerouac’s voice. There is a good amount of recorded material available to train with. Primarily, we used the album he recorded with Steve Allen. That by itself would have been enough, but in the interest of thoroughness we used other recordings too. Once we got the voice working, we had it read On the Road. Can you imagine seeing On the Road read by Jack Kerouac available on Audible? You would think there would be enough money in it to make everyone happy, but the lawyers couldn’t get the copyright issues sorted out. I still have the files, though, and I listen to them once in a while. The voice is spot-on to my ears. It’s a little like watching a film about Abraham Lincoln—you know it’s really Daniel Day-Lewis, but while you’re watching you can let yourself pretend it’s Abraham Lincoln. Well, this is a voice that was made out of Kerouac’s own voice so it’s even more convincing. When you think about it, hearing the voice on the album is one step removed from hearing the real voice in person; it’s already an electronic reproduction of the voice, not the man himself.
reaching for
who knows what
ganglia
About the Author
Tim Cremin is a high school math teacher in Massachusetts. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including Acorn, bottle rockets, Failed Haiku, Frogpond, Mayfly, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, and tinywords.