Posts tagged science
Smounds!
I have long said that the next sense-related subfield to get big should be “smell studies.” Maybe this is why:
Ever wonder why buffalo wings always smell so awesome when a football game is blaring in the room? Scientists have proposed that the way food smells could possibly be related to the sounds we hear when we consume them.
They note that there could be a connection between smell and sound, a hybrid sense they call “smound.” The theory is in findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
(via Discover)
From Boing Boing, ACOUSTIC LEVITATION. Sounds that are so loud that when adjusted to form standing waves, their nodes can support light objects in the air.
This is a great example of how sound is actually a physical, material phenomenon. People so often think of sounds as immaterial or transcendent or intellectual objects, but here they are, just picking stuff up. An interesting corollary to the use of sound as weapon.
(via Boing Boing)
In the “everything seems to do with things I’m learning in class” file: This video shows a proof of concept for a microphone that uses a laser and smoke for more accurate transduction of sound waves.
On Thursday in a class I’m auditing, we’ll be messing around with the basics of speakers and microphones. I’ll try to record some of that and put it up here for the sake of science.
(via AudioLemon)
Apparently a violin made from wood treated with fungus sounds “better” than a Stradivarius!
Judging the tone quality of a musical instrument in a blind test is, of course, an extremely subjective matter, since it is a question of pleasing the human senses. Empa scientist Schwarze is fully aware of this, and as he says, “There is no unambiguous scientific way of measuring tone quality.” He was therefore, understandably, rather nervous before the test.
Yeah…
“Look Around You” is always good for a laugh, and I hadn’t seen this one about music! Watch at 2:40 if you’ve ever wondered how synthesizers work.
(via the music of sound)
Click through to hear a Mathematica-generated sound file of what the early seconds of the universe might have sounded like.
Assuming, of course, that there were ears then, and that they could hear frequencies that are subsonic to us.
(via believekevin)
I love these projects that visualize auditory vibrations, probably because they tend to stretch just beyond my understanding of the physics involved. The sublime!
(via Everyday Listening)
Hearing (with) the Ears
As I mentioned in a previous post, I just participated in a hearing study. The researchers are gathering data about people with tinnitus and hyperacusis, as well as people like me, with regular hearing. Part of the testing they do uses otoacoustic emissions (OAEs).
These are sounds actually made by your ear in response to sounds you hear. From what I understand, measuring these sounds (through a little microphone in the ear canal while playing beeps through a little speaker in your ear) can tell someone how good your hearing is, without requiring you to say “yeah, I hear that.” Because of this, OAES are often used to test hearing in babies. I’m assuming it has something to do with the resonant frequencies of your hearing apparatus, although I’m sure some actual scientist could give a better explanation. If you by any chance are such a scientist, please put a real explanation in the comments!
As you might expect, artists have gotten their hands on this bit of auditory trivia:
Jacob Kirkegaard
Kirkegaard has a work titled “Labyrinthitis,” in which he stimulated OAEs in his own ears (you can hear a sample of the piece on the site but it does not induce the effect in your ears). These sounds, amplified, were then paired to stimulate the ears of the audience. From there,
Stimulated by the distortion that these two tones will create in their own ears, the audience will be able to perceive a third tone. In a next step, Kirkegaard lets the two primary tones disappear and adds the third tone to the composition: It can now be heard “for real”, not just individually, in the room. Once this tone is established, a new tone is added in order to create, in combination with the earlier (third) tone, a further distortion in the same manner as before. By feeding more and more of these pairs of frequencies into the spiral structure of the ears of the audience, Kirkegaard goes on to create a descending tonal structure based on the resonant spectrums of the human cochlea itself.
I have no idea if this is actually what goes on in the ears or just a projection based on the math of OAEs but it is certainly an evocative reflection on the hearing apparatus and the existence of otoacoustic effects.
Great writer on sound art Douglas Kahn wrote an appraisal of the work.
Maryann Amacher
Amacher works with the acoustics of architectural space as a medium, exploring the site-specific qualities of hearing. Some of her work (though to be honest, I am not that familiar with her output) induces OAEs in the audience, when played at loud volumes, effectively making melodies out of these sounds. I assume the “loud volume” part is to make the normally quiet sounds actually audible in your own head. Having experienced the effect, it is a strange and spatializing kind of hearing—depending on how you turn your head and the shape of the room, this buzzing melody seems to move around and change just inside your head.
I’ll post a clip of her work in an audio post after this one.
Two other things
Tartini tones in music are ostensibly related to OAEs (although, like many such musical terms, they work in mysterious ways/might actually be a few different phenomena).
and
Your ears’ response to stimuli designed to provoke OAEs is apparently specific to your own cochleas. Cue creepy futuristic use of OAEs as biometric ID to ensure that only you can listen to your iPod (what?).
Sonic Black Hole Traps Sound Waves
A black hole created by Israeli scientists won’t destroy Earth, but it could make our planet just a little bit less noisy. Using Bose-Einstein condensates, the scientists created a black hole for sound.
(via kottke)
