FM Timbre Experiment
Two images were split into their RGB channels. The three color values were then fed to a FM synth patch in nine second intervals. Each image is ~2:25 with three seconds of silence between. Rough and raw, but it’s a start.
Two images were split into their RGB channels. The three color values were then fed to a FM synth patch in nine second intervals. Each image is ~2:25 with three seconds of silence between. Rough and raw, but it’s a start.
Love the idea of hearing images. It’s like a translation or shift in frequency from visual wavelengths to audible wavelengths. I think the key is giving some significance to the shift, some way to relate the visual to the audible, so it’s just not a random translation. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Cheers.
That’s the big question: What makes this interpretation “right”? At first it was random and I couldn’t escape the feeling that there had to be something that grounded it in the original.
I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about this. But in the end it is just an interpretation. And an abstraction. Tonight I was reading a student’s paper on peoples’ use of mediating devices (social media, SMS, etc.) vs. genuine sensory experience of the world. She referenced Jaron Lanier’s “You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” (2010) in which he said, “information is alienated experience.” The sort of translation I’m doing from image to sound is similarly alienating because it’s simply a re-purposing of the data. The ones and zeroes of the original image file don’t mean anything, they are simply a configuration that represents the appearance of the original.
For the project I am currently pursuing this sort of abstraction is acceptable to me because I will apply it uniformly to every image. I am not concerned about accurately representing the originals, but by maintaining consistency in the way each original is interpreted, there will be distinguishable differences (or audible significance) between individual sounds. In the end, when I have a body of sounds that have all gone through the same process, the initial “random” decision becomes the single, unifying element.
Thanks for your comment.