sonority

Here are a few sound-related bits of interestingness to tickle your ears today. Make sure you have some headphones!

Blind Pong: A simple twist spices up this tired game nicely: play Pong, but without any visuals. Let your ears guide you! The ball beeps regularly, and its noise gets louder as it travels (vertically) towards your side of the playing field, and the noise moves from left to right as the ball travels horizontally across. Very challenging, especially if you tried playing it with only one speaker.

Holophonic Sound: "Okay, people have two ears - makes it easy to figure out if a sound is to the left or to the right. But amazingly we can also determine if a sound is above, below, behind, or in front of us. How does that work? Top Men have figured out that it has to do with the folds and shape of the ear itelf, subtle delays and distortions of the sound that our brain subconsciously interprets to accurately pinpoint a sound location in 3D space."

Samples (Headphones required! You won't get the effect without 'em.):
Box of Matches (best sample)
Sweet Whispered Nothings
(this one's from Wohba!. They've got some more samples on their site.)

Youth Repellent: This GOD-AWFUL noise supposedly can only be heard by people under the age of 30. It is used by grown-ups in the UK to keep kids from hanging around certain places, or by certain (crazy, I might add) youths as a ringtone only they can hear. There was a BBC news article about it, and I'll post it when I find it.

The Lyrebird: Amazing. Just watch. That's all I can say.

Aural Mapping: This American Life (which is a great program, I might add), created this episode that explores different ways to map the world around you: visually, aurally, olfactorily, somatically, and gustatorily.

The reactable: Their site puts it most concisely: "The reactable is a collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface."
You twist, pull, push, tap, and rotate little blocks on top of a backlight table, which in turn creates a work of art for both the eyes and the ears (if you like electronic music, that is).


Enjoy!