Google's Blob Opera is a weird and wonderful experiment
Thanks to machine learning, you can make a bunch of colorful blobs harmonize with each other.
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The most musical blobs you've ever met.
A quartet of opera signing blobs is at your command, courtesy of an interactive arts and culture offering from Google and artist David Li called Blob Opera.
With Blob Opera, you have a set of four blobs -- a bass, mezzo-soprano, soprano and tenor -- whose pitch and vowel sounds you can change by moving them up or down, forward or back. Using machine learning, the blobs automatically harmonize with each other, and if you like what they're signing, you can record your musical creation.
"This experiment pays tribute to and explores the original musical instrument: the voice," Google said in a blogpost Tuesday. The blobs' voices are modeled on actual opera singers. What comes out of the blobs' mouths, though, is a machine learning interpretation of what opera sounds like.
If you can't get your blobs performing the way you'd like, you can toggle a switch and listen to them singing Christmas songs like Jingle Bells and Silent Night.
You can also share your creation. Here is a Blob Opera original that I crafted on the fly. Enjoy.