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Re: [microsound] New York Times: Cell Sounds



maybe the scientist worked in a cathedral and 1000Hz was the avg (let's assume, since it was organic, the signal had lots of micro variation)

a somewhat randomly jittery 1000Hz tone in a cathedral would be beautiful to some people. Probably though, he was seduced by the novelty of the discovery.

Anyone remember in the 70's when plants were "making music" - somehow using oscillators and bio-feedback or something?

mandra

On Dec 15, 2004, at 12:46 PM, John Hopkins wrote:

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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mandra
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realtime experimentalist / guitarist for skywheel, Telesma
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