Thursday, August 21, 2003

Songs in the Key of Cone 06 Taking a brief break from our Chinese ceramic star chart reseach, while I see if anyone has any idea where to go with it... Just for fun... There are many ways a pot can hold "meta-information". A particulary interesting one is the idea that sounds could be recorded on a spinning pot, just like they are on a vinyl record. The earliest I'd heard of this idea is from a work of fiction, A Potter's Companion by Ronald larsen. TIME SHARDS seems to have first been published in a short story collection IN ALIEN FLESH. (thx George) However, Lyall Watson, Supernature. First published 1973, says there are some work being done in the Middle East with varnished pots whos results are encouraging. (Thanks Graeme Anderson) Later, the X-Files TV show HOLLYWOOD A.D. featured the Lazarus Bowl Jesus' words to raise Lazarus recorded by a potter throwing on pot on a wheel. Playing it back has the power to raise the dead. (thx Rob Johnson) In a similar way, folks have thrown out the idea of Paleoacoustics where lava flowing by a sharp rock records local sounds. This all would sound odd, except that faily recently Ofer Springer claims he can play music from scanned images of vinyl records this might allow for some interesting attempts to extract sound from objects. Note this is different than: Acoustic Pots used in the 11th to 16th century to amplify the human voice. Applying arbitrary sound to data points such as The Climate Symphony: Rhythmic Techniques Applied to the Sonification of Ice Core Data by Martin Quinn. (thx badger @ halfbakery.com ) 11:25:35 PM