The Weekly Address, A model for a politician

Type:	Algoliterary Work
Datasets:	The Weekly Address, videos on [youtube]
Technique:	Markov Chain, PocketSphinx
Developed by:	Gijs de Heij

The Weekly Address, a Model for a Politician researches the role of language and image profiles in politics and their ability to influence our judgment.

The installation employs speech recognition and machine learning to analyse patterns in a politician’s way of speaking. While machine learning recognises patterns and produces reliable and repeatable results based on a data set, politicians construct patterns through rhetoric, often repeating their message to convey their own truth.

The installation is based on on a database which was generated by letting a speech recognition algorithm listen to Obama's Weekly Address. The recognised words were stored as text and analysed using a Markov Chain. There are two interfaces to this database, one showing repeated sentences or word combinations and the other allowing the generation of new speeches.