Instead of making people sing comforting operatic songs, the Blob Opera makes four multi-colored blobs (yes, blobs!) sing like the pros. You can drag them up and down, forward and backward to change the pitch and the vowel sounds respectively to create your own festive song. This interactive opera is an experimental project by David Li in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture. It essentially lets you create a festive song from scratch and record it to share with the world. Moreover, you can choose from an array of pre-loaded songs to make the cute blobs sing in sync with each other.
How Does it Work?
Now, getting into technicalities, these colorful creatures are powered by a machine learning model. Google developed this AI-powered model based on 16 hours of singing by four professional opera singers – Christian Joel (Tenor), Frederick Tong (Bass), Joanne Gamble (Mezzo-soprano), and Olivia Doutney (Soprano). So, the model uses the knowledge it gained from the singers to make the blobs touch the right notes and create the right sounds to produce a joyous festive song. Apart from the machine learning model that powers the singing of the blobs, there is another one that makes them sing together. So, when you drag a blob to make it sing, the others will join to create a melody that matches your pitch and vowel sound in real-time. So, if you are someone who loves festive songs, you can create your own one using Blob Opera. The results can vary from exotic to really funny as you can manipulate the pitch and sounds in any way you want. You can check out my song from right here, and you can create your own from here.
