3 ms·

Extracting Audio from Pictures

69 points by shawndumas 11y ago

iamdanfox 11y ago
There's a gem right at the end from 1878: "Oldest known publication of a recording of recognizable phrases in the English language (“Brown University”; “How do you do?”)"
agumonkey 11y ago
Pretty amazing. This old reddit thread mentions work being done on extracting ambient vibrations potentially imprinted into pottery. http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_audio_from_pictures_three_years_ago_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_a...
- flarg 11y ago
  Sadly I believe this to be a hoax [0] but has been used several times as an interesting plot device - notably in G Benford's short story Time Shards (which I have not read). Similarly it has been proposed that stone stores electrical mental impressions [1] - again the subject of a quite wonderful TV play written by Andrew Nigel Kneale [1]. The most interesting version of the pottery-as-recording story is the one which proposes that Jesus's voice was recorded onto pottery - once in the X Files [0] and, to my knowledge, once in a BBC radio play, where Jesus's final recorded statement is the major plot point (sadly I can't find a reference to the play - but it could indeed be based on the short story of G Benford). Sorry to go on. [0] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape
  - Houshalter 11y ago
    IIRC the xfiles episode was a parody, the "lazurus pot" wasn't real. And the recovered audio of Jesus was him saying "I am the walrus.".
  - abecedarius 11y ago
    A hoax, sure, but as http://metamodern.com/2014/08/08/recovering-ancient-voices-from-clay-pots/ http://metamodern.com/2014/08/08/recovering-ancient-voices-f... points out it's plausible for there to be some interesting data to recover this way. I haven't heard of any actual attempts, unless you count the Woodbridge letter.
withdavidli 11y ago
Few weeks ago I saw a TED video about extracting sound from video through vibrations and figuring out their movement abilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo And now sound from paper/pictures.
userbinator 11y ago
This was possible only because of the high resolution and optical reproduction techniques they used at the time. I doubt you'd be able to do the same with a picture of a vinyl record on a magazine page that was taken with a digital camera.
131hn 11y ago
A 1860 recording extracted from paper http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php
huuu 11y ago
Related: extracting audio from scanning gramophones: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html
socceroos 11y ago
I'm loving the work going on in this space. It's very interesting. My only reservation is it's long-term implications for surveillance.

69 points by shawndumas 11y ago

There's a gem right at the end from 1878: "Oldest known publication of a recording of recognizable phrases in the English language (“Brown University”; “How do you do?”)"

agumonkey 11y ago

Pretty amazing. This old reddit thread mentions work being done on extracting ambient vibrations potentially imprinted into pottery. http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_audio_from_pictures_three_years_ago_a/ http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/1bwyf1/extracting_a...

flarg 11y ago
Sadly I believe this to be a hoax [0] but has been used several times as an interesting plot device - notably in G Benford's short story Time Shards (which I have not read). Similarly it has been proposed that stone stores electrical mental impressions [1] - again the subject of a quite wonderful TV play written by Andrew Nigel Kneale [1]. The most interesting version of the pottery-as-recording story is the one which proposes that Jesus's voice was recorded onto pottery - once in the X Files [0] and, to my knowledge, once in a BBC radio play, where Jesus's final recorded statement is the major plot point (sadly I can't find a reference to the play - but it could indeed be based on the short story of G Benford). Sorry to go on. [0] http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.html http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002875.h... [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Tape
- Houshalter 11y ago
  IIRC the xfiles episode was a parody, the "lazurus pot" wasn't real. And the recovered audio of Jesus was him saying "I am the walrus.".
- abecedarius 11y ago
  A hoax, sure, but as http://metamodern.com/2014/08/08/recovering-ancient-voices-from-clay-pots/ http://metamodern.com/2014/08/08/recovering-ancient-voices-f... points out it's plausible for there to be some interesting data to recover this way. I haven't heard of any actual attempts, unless you count the Woodbridge letter.

withdavidli 11y ago

Few weeks ago I saw a TED video about extracting sound from video through vibrations and figuring out their movement abilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npNYP2vzaPo And now sound from paper/pictures.

userbinator 11y ago

This was possible only because of the high resolution and optical reproduction techniques they used at the time. I doubt you'd be able to do the same with a picture of a vinyl record on a magazine page that was taken with a digital camera.

131hn 11y ago

A 1860 recording extracted from paper http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php

huuu 11y ago

Related: extracting audio from scanning gramophones: http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/DigitalNeedle/index.html

socceroos 11y ago

I'm loving the work going on in this space. It's very interesting. My only reservation is it's long-term implications for surveillance.