First, a succinct update of this week’s progress.
(1) We received the first round of recordings from the voice actor.
(2) Vier and I have begun animating the main worm character.
(3) Our sound colleagues are due today for their first round of deliverables, which include:
(a) voice editing of the dialogue between mother + Kuno.
(b) the sound of worm eyelids (the user’s) opening at the beginning.
(c) variations for all sorts of buttons.
(d) the atmosphere of the larger machine, as experienced while the user climbs the ladder in the huge, dark shaft.

We had our mid-term crit this past week, and we prepared our presentation alongside the sound artists. An interesting thread came up which underlined the whole project: a sort of gender fluidity. As I presented, I kept on misgendering the main mending worm, despite being adamant about making the character ambiguous. Of course, a deep Barry-White-like voice is gendered in itself. Nevertheless, the body is less straight-forward. The contrast in itself is what at this point remains interesting to me: that out of a worm-like machine, a hearty (and perhaps gender-less) voice projects itself.

We later realized there was another event in which we played with gender subconsciously. One of our male sound colleagues recorded the voice for the mother. Next week, we will have a conversation about this as a group so we can clearly define how we are applying this theme of gender fluidity to romance, technology, and dystopia.