Raymond Kurzweil Lets Virtual Rock Star Ramona 'Come Out & Play' at 2001 New York Music and Internet Expo.Entertainment Editors & Music Writers NEW YORK--(ENTERTAINMENT WIRE)--April 18, 2001 Kurzweil Introduces Ramona, Virtual Performing and Musical Recording Artist and Web Avatar, to Music Industry Visionary, inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil (pronounced: [kɚz-waɪl]) (born February 12, 1948) is an inventor and futurist. He has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition will present his female alter-ego, Ramona, to rock the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Music and Internet Expo (NYMIE) in his presentation at 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 21, at Madison Square Garden Current arenas in the National Hockey League Western Conference Eastern Conference in New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. . In his keynote, Kurzweil plans to showcase his vision of the powerful possibilities offered by virtual reality and artificial intelligence through his latest creation, Ramona. Demonstrating the concepts of virtual reality and avatar technology, Raymond and his colleagues recently developed Ramona, a virtual rock musician and Kurzweil's digital alter ego A doctrine used by the courts to ignore the corporate status of a group of stockholders, officers, and directors of a corporation in reference to their limited liability so that they may be held personally liable for their actions when they have acted fraudulently or unjustly or when , to enable music industry professionals to experience a key emerging trend. "Virtual performing and recording artists will transform the music industry during this next decade, just as virtual instruments such as synthesizers did during the last decade," said Ray Kurzweil, a pioneer in musical synthesizer synthesizer Machine that electronically generates and modifies sounds, frequently with the use of a digital computer, for use in the composition of electronic music and in live performance. technology. Ramona, 25, is a virtual performing and musical recording artist whose voice and movements are provided by Kurzweil and transformed in real time using motion capture, advanced computer graphics and audio processing systems. Ramona debuted on February 22, 2001, at Richard Saul Air Vice-Marshal Richard Ernest Saul CB DFC RAF (16 April 1891 – 30 November 1965) was a pilot during World War I and a senior Royal Air Force commander during World War II. References
The City of Monterey is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in central California. As of 2005, the city population was 30,641. . Ramona also exists as an avatar on www.KurzweilAI.net, in which advanced "conversational" software and other technologies enable Ramona to hold conversations with visitors and respond to typed questions with lip-synched speech and lifelike, real-time facial animation. In his keynote address at NYMIE, Kurzweil will show videos of Ramona performing two songs -- Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" and "Come Out and Play," a new composition by Ramona (Kurzweil) and Zoux, Kurzweil's musical collaborator. Kurzweil also will present a four-minute documentary-style video on "The Making of Ramona." "We plan an entertainment career for Ramona," Kurzweil added. "She will record songs and conduct performances on television and other entertainment venues. Our creative team of musicians, dramatic coaches and choreographers matches the strength of our technology team. All together, at least 50 talented people contributed to the creation of Ramona and her performance." Lifelike, Photorealistic Having the image quality of a photograph. , Conversational Avatar "Ramona is more than a technology demo or a novelty," added Kurzweil. "While she has a burgeoning career as a celebrity performer, Ramona is not limited to the stage and recordings. She also will have an ongoing role as virtual hostess of Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence Network (KurzweilAI.net), a Web showcase for the ideas of leading visionaries and breakthrough Web technologies." On KurzweilAI.net, Ramona is a lifelike, photorealistic, conversational avatar (virtual personality). She is programmed to verbally explain hundreds of ideas (such as "artificial intelligence") to visitors as well as offer a wide range of links and other information. Answers are also explained using a visual knowledge navigation tool called The Brain. Kurzweil's vision of Ramona represents the possibilities for virtual personalities in a wide range of everyday scenarios, such as engaging in spoken dialogues on Web sites or via telephone or acting as personal information assistants. The Cyber Artist In addition, Kurzweil will introduce the company's latest exploration in artificial intelligence, AARON, a software program that was developed over a period of 30 years by Harold Cohen, a computer scientist and artist. AARON works just like a real artist and has created original paintings that have hung in museums around the world. Kurzweil is introducing AARON as an AI-based screen saver that paints original paintings right on your screen. Every painting created by AARON is different. A free trial copy of AARON will be available starting on April 23, 2001, on www.KurzweilCyberArt.com. About Raymond Kurzweil/Kurzweil Technologies Raymond Kurzweil is the author of "The Age of Spiritual Machines" (achieved No. 1 Science Book on Amazon.com) and "The Age of Intelligent Machines" (awarded "Best Computer Science Book" of 1990 from Association of American Publishers (body, publication) Association of American Publishers - (AAP) A group engaged in standardisation efforts in document preparation. ). He was the principal developer of the first omni-font optical character recognition optical character recognition (OCR), method for the machine-reading of typeset, typed, and, in some cases, hand-printed letters, numbers, and symbols using optical sensing and a computer. system, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the first CCD CCD in full charge-coupled device Semiconductor device in which the individual semiconductor components are connected so that the electrical charge at the output of one device provides the input to the next device. flat-bed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed large vocabulary speech recognition system. Kurzweil has received scores of honors, including the 1999 National Medal of Technology, MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Inventor of the Year, Carnegie Mellon University's Dickson Prize (its top science honor), awards from three U.S. presidents, and 10 honorary doctorates. KurzweilAI.net is an affiliate of Kurzweil Technologies Inc. (www.KurzweilTech.com), a research and development company. Other KTI KTI Kiinteistötalouden Instituutti (Finnish: Institute for Real Estate Economics) KTI Key Technical Issue KTI Kaney Transportation, Inc. KTI KG-84 Trunk Interface companies include: Medical Learning Company, developer of www.FamilyPractice.com, a comprehensive online resource for family practice physicians, which has also developed a virtual patient; Kurzweil CyberArt Technologies (www.KurzweilCyberArt.com), which develops artificially intelligent software to aid the creative process, including Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic cy·ber·net·ics n. (used with a sing. verb) The theoretical study of communication and control processes in biological, mechanical, and electronic systems, especially the comparison of these processes in biological and artificial systems. Poet (helps users write poetry and song lyrics) and the forthcoming AARON ("paints" original art on computer screens); and FatKat Inc. (Financial Accelerating Transactions from Kurzweil Adaptive Technologies), which is developing pattern recognition-based technology to make stock market investment decisions. For further information, contact www.KurzweilAI.net, 15 Walnut St., Wellesley Hills, MA 02481; 781/263-0000; or info@kurzweilAI.net. For more information about New York Music & Internet Expo, visit http://www.newyorkexpo.com. |
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