• Photos from the lecture

Prof. Dr Dr Birger Kollmeier
Institute of Physics

For us humans, it is perfectly normal to speak and to understand the language of other people. But how does that actually work?
An age-old dream of humankind is to build machines with which one can converse as one would with a human being. But this is difficult, because even the best computers sound rather unconvincing when they try to speak. These machines also fail miserably when trying to understand us humans. Why is that, actually?
To understand all this better, we’re going on a journey of discovery through the human vocal tract. We’ll learn about the vocal cords, the larynx and our speech-forming apparatus, and recreate everything using a computer. By the end, whilst we may not be able to understand talking
machines any better, we’ll understand why we understand so little!

Presenter: Anke Genius, NDR

Wednesday, 27 February 2008
4.30 pm to 5.30 pm
Audimax, lecture centre