Humanizing bionic voice: interactive demonstration of aesthetic design and control factors influencing the devices assembly and waveshape engineering

Electrolarynx is a speech aid providing voice source for people who have their larynx resected. Bionic voices (BV) extend the device capabilities by combining the biological and technical parts in a functioning communicative system. This interactive demonstration illustrates the challenges in material design and sound engineering in the domain of BV which are aimed at enriching the performance of a conversing dyad in the social context. The factors of control and aesthetics will be introduced by alaryngeal speaker presenting novel prototypes. The participants will experience the concepts in a multimodal demo, try various devices and talk with a laryngectomee.