Soundaroid: Polaroid Camera Capturing Sound

The Soundaroid is a weird thing: it works like a Polaroid camera but instead of capturing the an image, it captures sound. After one minute of recording the device, created by Wei-Hao Chang, spits out a piece of paper just like a Polaroid camera, but instead of a photograph, a visual representation of the sound you just recorded becomes visible.  

To be honest the result is not great, but what I like about the Soundaroid is how it tickles the imagination. We know we can not capture sound instantly like a photograph captures a moment, but what would it look like if we could? As if being able to hear sounds is not magical enough, somehow we like to make things visible even if they are not. We have already seen examples of sound sculptures here, here and here.

Comments

[_blank]

It's an interesting idea, but the author doesn't explain much, he just says that the photos are based on sound data, but all the images are more or less the same and quite black, so I guess that these visual interpretations have not much in common with the recorded sounds.

I've always been interested in the relationship between imagen and sound, but right now reading the explanations of this project in vimeo I was wondering why there's so much people obsessed with seeing sound and not with hearing images...

[admin]

That's a good question, _blank. I have heard about some projects dealing with live sonification of images, to be used by blind people for instance, but most of the time these things are really only very functional and don't sound good.

You are right about the lack of explaination about the Soundaroid. It is not the project itself but the idea that fascinates me :)

[Blackooo]

Damn Drugs, just couple of joints and you see sound and hear images, and walk on the ceiling as well