“The magic of performing art is one of the most difficult things to grasp from a technical standpoint. Laurent is a musician who studied at a conservatory in France and worked in music for 10 years. “We were very excited to get the invitation to bring Blob Opera to I/O with new features,” says Laurent Gaveau, who’s the head of Google Arts & Culture lab. “I stopped playing piano a very long time ago.” Pamela is a producer for Google, and despite her non-musical background, she’s part of a very special, very experimental musical project: bringing Blob Opera to I/O.

“I’m definitely not a musician,” says Pamela Peter-Agbia. At the time, he simply wanted to explore what technology could do with the human voice - but the Blob Opera quickly became a hit. 'Opera singers use their voices as expressive and beautiful musical instruments and I was interested in the idea of making interactive versions of these voices, so that anyone could play with them,” he says. Additional singing from Ingunn Gyda Hrafnkelsdottir and John Holland-Avery.īlob Opera is an experiment using the latest web audio technology and may not perform optimally on older devices.When artist David Li partnered with Google Arts & Culture on a machine learning experiment in late 2020, he didn't realize the project would make a return at this week’s I/O. Tenor Christian Joel, bass Frederick Tong, mezzo-soprano Joanna Gamble and soprano Olivia Doutney. Another machine learning model lets the blobs respond to and harmonise your input in real time.Ĭlick the Christmas Tree for a holiday surprise based on the top searched Christmas Carols of the year. Or forwards and backwards for different vowel sounds. In the experiment you don’t hear their voices, but the machine learning model’s understanding of what opera singing sounds like, based on what it learnt from them.ĭrag the blobs up and down to change pitch. Tenor, Christian Joel, bass Frederick Tong, mezzo‑soprano Joanna Gamble and soprano Olivia Doutney recorded 16 hours of singing. We developed a machine learning model trained on the voices of four opera singers in order to create an engaging experiment for everyone, regardless of musical skills. This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice. “Blob Opera is a machine learning experiment by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture.

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