Tuesday, November 21, 2006

a beautiful signal to noise...

from a 1974 bell labs publication on computers today and tomorrow, here's a chart of potential voice sound similarities depending upon the amount of background noise on a phone line... the image is based on a "bell labs devised computer technique called multidimensional scaling", and shows how a listener could potentially confuse words like "core, pore, and tore" depending on how clear or noisy a phone line is... the little stacks of green lily pads resemble the 1920's expressionist architecture of herman finsterlin or pieces of matta's 1966 mallite system furniture. i love the idea that some form of scientific logic generated one of the oddest visualizations of sound i've seen...

1 Comments:

Blogger ZubZub said...

beautiful images - like a "how to stone stack" pamphlet.

good to have you back.

9:25 AM  

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