  This work presents our advancements in controlling an articulatory speech
synthesis engine, \textit{viz.}, Pink Trombone, with hand gestures. Our
interface translates continuous finger movements and wrist flexion into
continuous speech using vocal tract area-function based articulatory speech
synthesis. We use Cyberglove II with 18 sensors to capture the kinematic
information of the wrist and the individual fingers, in order to control a
virtual tongue. The coordinates and the bending values of the sensors are then
utilized to fit a spline tongue model that smoothens out the noisy values and
outliers. Considering the upper palate as fixed and the spline model as the
dynamically moving lower surface (tongue) of the vocal tract, we compute 1D
area functional values that are fed to the Pink Trombone, generating continuous
speech sounds. Therefore, by learning to manipulate one's wrist and fingers,
one can learn to produce speech sounds just through one's hands, without the
need for using the vocal tract.
