RE: [microsound] New York Times: Cell Sounds

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@xxxxxxx>]

> You'll want to revise your definition, as a guitar,
> a trumpet, your voice, and my computer can all make
> sound at a 1000Hz frequency.

yup, not a single 1000 Hz 'note' though, that's what I meant...  when 
describing a sound by giving a single Hz frequency, it actually 
doesn't describe much at all, except a single sinusoidal pressure 
wave.  the voice and the trumpet contains an incredible layered mix 
of frequencies that makes it a 'voice' and not a 1000 Hz sound... 
the computer comes closer to having a 'pure' 1000 Hz sound, though 
the 'system noize' adds all sorts of nice goodies to enrich the lives 
of people seeking to improve the S/N ratio.

I think the practice of describing a cell as "emitting a 1000 Hz 
sound ... that is beautiful"  is a bizarre contrast of scientific 
reductionism and a lack of poetic imagination.

(just the banal limitations of a typically reductive scientific 
system for describing the world around us...)

In the end, I'd rather hear the recording, made with a goat-hair 
nano-mike, pressed on vinyl on a wax-paper-and-cup speaker system....

cheers
jh



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