The Art of Crafting Formal-Informal Linkages: On the Enduring Appeal of Belo Horizonte’s Hippie Fair

Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer explore the accelerating hybridization of formal and informal economic practices underway at one of Latin America’s largest open-air markets, Belo Horizonte’s “Hippie Fair,” officially called the Feira de Arte, Artesanato e Produtores de Variedades da Avenida Afonso Pena. Belying its uniform and ordered appearance, the fair’s multi-actor structure highlights the proliferation of formal-informal linkages that affect not only street vendors, manufacturers, and administrative bodies, but also large segments of the city’s population. The authors argue that two decades of globalization, in conjunction with the recent economic crisis and emerging forms of self-organized economies, have substantially altered the relationship between the informal and formal sectors, both conceptually and practically. They show the importance and ambivalence of the ongoing spatial transformation of informal markets in generating new economic climates that, in some cases, create alternative socioeconomic places, and in others, an expansion of capitalist markets

Gender Ambiguity in Voice-Based Assistants: Gender Perception and Influences of Context

Recently emerging synthetic acoustically gender-ambiguous voices could contribute to dissolving the still prevailing genderism. Yet, are we indeed perceiving these voices as “unassignable”? Or are we trying to assimilate them into existing genders? To investigate the perceived ambiguity, we conducted an explorative 3 (male, female, ambiguous voice) × 3 (male, female, ambiguous topic) experiment. We found that, although participants perceived the gender-ambiguous voice as ambiguous, they used a profoundly wide range of the scale, indicating tendencies toward a gender. We uncovered a mild dissolve of gender roles. Neither the listener’s gender nor the personal gender stereotypes impacted the perception. However, the perceived topic gender indicated the perceived voice gender, and younger people tended to perceive a more male-like gender

Introduction: Data is not a property but a relation

+ Data is not a property but a relation + Beyond data anxiety + Data citizens: emerging socialities and sovereignties + The rise and enclosure of user-generated publics + Dispossessing data + Dataism and the legitimacy of claim

Visual Cultures as Opportunity

Assemblies, gathering places, and agora-like situations have become popular sites for contemporary art. At the heart of these arenas is the search for new ways to counter the crisis-ridden experience of homo economicus—the pervasive and alienating marketization of all aspects of our lives. A great deal of hope is being placed on the potential of social formations enabled by new technologies of connectivity and exchange. Artists and cultural producers are at the forefront of testing the viability of transgressive actions such as coworking, crowdfunding, and open-source provisions. At the same time, it is apparent that global capitalism is expanding into multipolar constellations of top-down and bottom-up economic governance. In this volume, the fourth in the series Visual Cultures as..., Helge Mooshammer and Peter Mörtenböck analyze the networked spaces of global informal markets, the cultural frontiers of speculative investments, and recent urban protests, and discuss crucial shifts in the process of collective articulation within today’s “crowd economy.

Multi‐speaker experimental designs: Methodological considerations

Research on language use has become increasingly interested in the multimodal and interactional aspects of language – theoretical models of dialogue, such as the Communication Accommodation Theory and the Interactive Alignment Model are examples of this. In addition, researchers have started to give more consideration to the relationship between physiological processes and language use. This article aims to contribute to the advancement in studies of physiological and/or multimodal language use in naturalistic settings. It does so by providing methodological recommendations for such multi-speaker experimental designs. It covers the topics of (a) speaker preparation and logistics, (b) experimental tasks and (c) data synchronisation and post-processing. The types of data that will be considered in further detail include audio and video, electroencephalography, respiratory data and electromagnetic articulography. This overview with recommendations is based on the answers to a questionnaire that was sent amongst the members of the Horizon 2020 research network ‘Conversational Brains’, several researchers in the field and interviews with three additional experts.H2020 Marie Skłodowska‐Curie Actions http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010665Peer Reviewe

Do airstream mechanisms influence tongue movement paths?

Velar consonants often show an elliptical pattern of tongue movement in symmetrical vowel contexts, but the forces responsible for this remain unclear. We here consider the role of overpressure (increased intraoral air pressure) behind the constriction by examining how movement patterns are modified when speakers change from an egressive to ingressive airstream. Tongue movement and respiratory data were obtained from 3 speakers. The two airstream conditions were additionally combined with two levels of speech volume. The results showed consistent reductions in forward tongue movement during consonant closure in the ingressive conditions. Thus, overpressure behind the constriction may partly determine preferred movement patterns, but it cannot be the only influence since forward movement during closure is usually reduced but not eliminated in ingressive speech

Jaw and Order

It is well-accepted that the jaw plays an active role in influencing vowel height. The general aim of the current study is to further investigate the extent to which the jaw is active in producing consonantal distinctions, with specific focus on coronal consonants. Therefore, tongue tip and jaw positions are compared for the German coronal consonants Is, J, t, d, n, 1/, that is, consonants having the same active articulators (apical/laminal) but differing in manner of articulation. In order to test the stability of articulatory positions for each of these coronal consonants, a natural perturbation paradigm was introduced by recording two levels of vocal effort: comfortable, and loud without shouting. Tongue and jaw movements of five speakers of German were recorded by means of EMMA during /aCa/ sequences. By analyzing the tongue tip and jaw positions and their spatial variability we found that (1) the jaw's contribution to these consonants varies with manner of articulation, and (2) for all coronal consonants the positions are stable across loudness conditions except for those of the nasal. Results are discussed with respect to the tasks of the jaw, and the possible articulatory adjustments that may accompany louder speech

He, she, it - Vertrauen muss mit?: Auswirkungen geschlechtsneutraler Stimmen in Sprachassistenten auf ihre Vertrauenswürdigkeit

Knapp 70 % der aktuell existierenden Sprachassistenzsysteme nutzen ausschließlich weibliche Stimmen. Assistenten mit männlichen Stimmen oder mit der Möglichkeit, zwischen verschiedenen Optionen zu wählen, sind dagegen deutlich in der Unterzahl. Technologien, die soziale Hinweisreize aussenden, werden gemäß des CASA-Paradigmas wie soziale Akteure behandelt. Dies führt dazu, dass auf Sprachassistenten, die ein bestimmtes Geschlecht andeuten, beispielsweise Stereotype angewandt werden können – ein Effekt, der in der Forschung bereits verschiedentlich beobachtet wurde. Mit der Entwicklung der geschlechtsneutralen Stimme Q durch einen Zusammenschluss dänischer Firmen und Organisationen ergab sich 2019 die Frage, ob sich dadurch die Anwendung von Stereotypen umgehen lässt oder neutrale Stimmen im Gegenteil als unangenehm empfunden werden. Dies wurde in der durchgeführten Masterarbeit in Hinblick auf das Vertrauen in ein Sprachassistenzsystem betrachtet. Dafür wurde eine geschlechtsneutrale Stimme entwickelt und in einem Online-Experiment mit einer männlichen und einer weiblichen Stimme verglichen, die jeweils über ein stereotyp männliches, ein stereotyp weibliches oder ein neutrales Thema sprachen. Es zeigte sich, dass der neutrale Stimme in einigen Variablen eine geringere Vertrauenswürdigkeit zugeschrieben wurde – auch, wenn sie als männlich oder weiblich empfunden wurde. Die Geschlechtszuordnung war wiederum davon abhängig, welchem Geschlecht die Proband*innen das Thema zuordneten, über das die Stimme sprach. Die Ergebnisse lassen vermuten, dass die Uneindeutigkeit und Ungewohntheit der neutralen Stimme zu einer schlechteren Bewertung führt. Daher muss bezweifelt werden, dass entsprechende Projekte zu einer breitenwirksamen Überwindung von Stereotypen führen können, sondern im Gegenteil sogar negative Reaktionen auf Entitäten mit sich bringen und festigen, die nicht der Geschlechternorm entsprechen.Almost 70 % of the currently existing language assistance systems only use female voices. Assistants with male voices or with the option to choose between different options, on the other hand, are clearly in the minority. Technologies that emit social cues are treated like social actors in accordance with the CASA paradigm. As a result, stereotypes, for example, can be applied to voice assistants who indicate a specific gender - an effect that has already been observed in various research. With the development of the gender-neutral voice Q through a merger of Danish companies and organizations, the question arose in 2019 whether this would avoid the use of stereotypes or, on the contrary, neutral voices are perceived as unpleasant. This was considered in the master's thesis with regard to trust in a language assistance system. For this purpose, a gender-neutral voice was developed and compared in an online experiment with a male and a female voice that spoke about a stereotypically male, a stereotypically female or a neutral topic. It was found that the neutral voice was assigned a lower level of trustworthiness in some variables - even if it was perceived as male or female. The gender assignment, in turn, was dependent on which gender the test subjects assigned the topic about which the voice was speaking. The results suggest that the ambiguity and unfamiliarity of the neutral voice leads to a poorer rating. It must therefore be doubted that such projects can lead to a broad-based overcoming of stereotypes, but on the contrary even bring about and consolidate negative reactions to entities that do not correspond to the gender norm

Interaction between Phrasal Structure and Vowel Tenseness in German: An Acoustic and Articulatory Study

Phrase-final lengthening affects the segments preceding a prosodic boundary. This prosodic variation is generally assumed to be independent of the phonemic identity. We refer to this as the ‘uniform lengthening hypothesis’ (ULH). However, in German, lax vowels do not undergo lengthening for word stress or shortening for increased speech rate, indicating that temporal properties might interact with phonemic identity. We test the ULH by comparing the effect of the boundary on acoustic and kinematic measures for tense and lax vowels and several coda consonants. We further examine if the boundary effect decreases with distance from the boundary. Ten native speakers of German were recorded by means of electromagnetic articulography (EMA) while reading sentences that contained six minimal pairs varying in vowel tenseness and boundary type. In line with the ULH, the results show that the acoustic durations of lax vowels are lengthened phrase-finally, similarly to tense vowels. We find that acoustic lengthening is stronger the closer the segments are to the boundary. Articulatory parameters of the closing movements toward the post-vocalic consonants are affected by both phrasal position and identity of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed with regard to the interaction between prosodic structure and vowel tenseness.Peer Reviewe