My passions are music, technology and making things. And it's the combination of these things that has led me to the hobby of sound visualization, and, on occasion, has led me to play with fire.
我的激情 就是来自于音乐,科技,以及创造东西 是所有这些东西的合体 使我形成了一个令声音图像化的习惯 而且时不时地还带我与火共舞
This is a Rubens' tube. It's one of many I've made over the years, and I have one here tonight. It's about an 8-foot-long tube of metal, it's got a hundred or so holes on top, on that side is the speaker, and here is some lab tubing, and it's connected to this tank of propane. So, let's fire it up and see what it does. So let's play a 550-herz frequency and watch what happens.
这是一个鲁本管,这是近几些年来我做的所有东西的其中一个 今天晚上呢我也带来了一个 这玩意儿大约是由8尺长的金属做成 在它的顶部又有差不多一百个小洞 另一边是个话筒,这块儿 是一些实验用的管子,而且是和这个装满丙烷 的容器连接的 好吧,我们现在就把它点燃看看它会做些什么 嗯...我们先试试550赫兹的频率吧 看看效果会怎么样
(Frequency)
(频率)
Thank you. (Applause) It's okay to applaud the laws of physics, but essentially what's happening here -- (Laughter) -- is the energy from the sound via the air and gas molecules is influencing the combustion properties of propane, creating a visible waveform, and we can see the alternating regions of compression and rarefaction that we call frequency, and the height is showing us amplitude. So let's change the frequency of the sound, and watch what happens to the fire.
谢谢. (观众鼓掌) 我能理解你们为这一物理定律的鼓掌喝彩, 但是实际发生的是 (笑声) 通过空气和气体分子产生的声音的能量 在影响丙烷的燃烧性质 因而创造出一个可视的波段 而且我们可以看到不同地区的波段 以及空气稀薄的地方我们把它叫频率 高度告诉我们的是振幅 好吧.那让我们改变一下声音的频率 然后再看看火会发生什么变化
(Higher frequency)
{更高的频率)
So every time we hit a resonant frequency we get a standing wave and that emergent sine curve of fire. So let's turn that off. We're indoors. Thank you. (Applause)
每回我释放一个共振的频率我们就会有一个驻波 以及那个正玄函数图像般的火焰就会出现 好吧我们还是把这关了.我们在室内呢 谢谢. (观众鼓掌)
I also have with me a flame table. It's very similar to a Rubens' tube, and it's also used for visualizing the physical properties of sound, such as eigenmodes, so let's fire it up and see what it does.
我今天还带来了一个火焰桌 它跟鲁本管挺像的,而且它还是用做 将声音的物理性质图像化 比如说本微膜,那我们把它点燃吧 然后看看会发生什么
Ooh. (Laughter) Okay. Now, while the table comes up to pressure, let me note here that the sound is not traveling in perfect lines. It's actually traveling in all directions, and the Rubens' tube's a little like bisecting those waves with a line, and the flame table's a little like bisecting those waves with a plane, and it can show a little more subtle complexity, which is why I like to use it to watch Geoff Farina play guitar.
喔~(笑声) 好吧.现在,当这个桌子受到到压力 我想提醒一下声音不是以完美的直线在运动 实际上是在向各个方向去运动 鲁本管有点像通过一条线二分了这些波段 而这个火焰桌有点像 通过一个面二分了这些波段 它可以显示一些微妙的复杂性,这就是为啥 我喜欢用它去看Geoff Farina弹吉他
(Music)
(音乐)
All right, so it's a delicate dance. If you watch closely — (Applause) If you watch closely, you may have seen some of the eigenmodes, but also you may have seen that jazz music is better with fire. Actually, a lot of things are better with fire in my world, but the fire's just a foundation. It shows very well that eyes can hear, and this is interesting to me because technology allows us to present sound to the eyes in ways that accentuate the strength of the eyes for seeing sound, such as the removal of time.
好吧,这是个轻妙的舞蹈 如果你看的近一点--(观众鼓掌) 如果你看近一点,你可以看到 一些本徵模,不过你还可以看到 爵士乐跟火焰搭配更好 实际上,在我的世界里,好多东西一跟火焰搭配就更好 不过火焰只不过是个开始 它很明确告诉我们眼睛也具有听觉功能, 我对这个很感兴趣因为 科技允许我们去用眼睛来感受声音 从而加强我们眼睛的感受力度 通过看声音,比如时间的转移
So here, I'm using a rendering algorithm to paint the frequencies of the song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in a way that the eyes can take them in as a single visual impression, and the technique will also show the strengths of the visual cortex for pattern recognition. So if I show you another song off this album, and another, your eyes will easily pick out the use of repetition by the band Nirvana, and in the frequency distribution, the colors, you can see the clean-dirty-clean sound that they are famous for, and here is the entire album as a single visual impression, and I think this impression is pretty powerful.
那么这里呢,我在用一个描写性的算法去画出 歌曲"Smell Like Teen Spirit"的频率 以一种简单的视觉效应, 进入我们的眼帘,而且这种技术还可以给我们 显示出来视觉皮质在模式观察方面 的优点 如果我给你这首专辑里面另外一首歌, 再另外一首,你的眼睛会很轻松地看出 乐队Nirvana对于重复的使用 通过频率分布和颜色方面也可以看出来, 你可以看到这个又干净又脏的声音 是什么使得它们有名的 这儿是一个以单独的视觉效应来代表整个专辑 我认为这个效应十分的强大
At least, it's powerful enough that if I show you these four songs, and I remind you that this is "Smells Like Teen Spirit," you can probably correctly guess, without listening to any music at all, that the song a die hard Nirvana fan would enjoy is this song, "I'll Stick Around" by the Foo Fighters, whose lead singer is Dave Grohl, who was the drummer in Nirvana. The songs are a little similar, but mostly I'm just interested in the idea that someday maybe we'll buy a song because we like the way it looks.
至少,强大到 如果我给你看四首歌 而且我提醒你这首是"Smells Like Teen Spirit" 你应该能准确地猜到,在不听的情况下, 这首歌 一定会被疯狂的Nirvana歌迷所享受 Foo Fighters的歌曲"I'll Stick Around" 他们的主唱是Dave Grohl 他是Nirvana的鼓手 这些歌曲有点相似,不过大多数来讲 我只不过对于有一天我们买这首歌因为它好看 这个想法而非常感兴趣
All right, now for some more sound data. This is data from a skate park, and this is Mabel Davis skate park in Austin, Texas. (Skateboard sounds) And the sounds you're hearing came from eight microphones attached to obstacles around the park, and it sounds like chaos, but actually all the tricks start with a very distinct slap, but successful tricks end with a pop, whereas unsuccessful tricks more of a scratch and a tumble, and tricks on the rail will ring out like a gong, and voices occupy very unique frequencies in the skate park.
好吧,现在是到一些声音数据的时候了 这是一个从州立公园的数据 这个是Mabel Davis滑冰公园 在德克萨斯州的奥斯丁.(滑板的响声) 你听到的声音是从八个 在公园附近障碍上附上的话筒中传来的 听起来有点混乱,不过实际上 这所有的戏法从一个明显拍击开始 不过成功的戏法以砰然声结束 不成功的戏法 以更像是擦伤和绊倒的声音结束 这些在杆子上的戏法会像锣声一样结束, 这些声音在这个州立公园都有着独特的频率
So if we were to render these sounds visually, we might end up with something like this. This is all 40 minutes of the recording, and right away the algorithm tells us a lot more tricks are missed than are made, and also a trick on the rails is a lot more likely to produce a cheer, and if you look really closely, we can tease out traffic patterns. You see the skaters often trick in this direction. The obstacles are easier.
不过我们要是想把这些声音视觉化的话, 我们应该得得到这样的东西 这是40分钟的记录 算法立即就告诉我们 失败的戏法要比成功的戏法要多 而且在这些栏杆上的戏法更有可能去 产生一些欢呼声,如果你非常仔细地看的话, 我们可以发现关于交通的图案 你可以看到滑板者通常朝这个方向,这些障碍比较简单
And in the middle of the recording, the mics pick this up, but later in the recording, this kid shows up, and he starts using a line at the top of the park to do some very advanced tricks on something called the tall rail. And it's fascinating. At this moment in time, all the rest of the skaters turn their lines 90 degrees to stay out of his way. You see, there's a subtle etiquette in the skate park, and it's led by key influencers, and they tend to be the kids who can do the best tricks, or wear red pants, and on this day the mics picked that up.
然后在这个记录的中间, 麦克风把这个记录了下来 但是在这记录的后部分,这个家伙出现了, 他开始在公园顶部使用一条新的路线 来表演一些高级的戏法 就在这些高摇杆上。 这非常的有意思.在这个时候, 所有的滑板者都把他们的路线转了90度 从而给他让开了路 你可以看到,在这个公园里有个约定俗成的礼仪 是由颇具影响力的人带来的, 他们能够做一些最好的戏法 或者穿红裤子,这边麦克风就记录了下来
All right, from skate physics to theoretical physics. I'm a big fan of Stephen Hawking, and I wanted to use all eight hours of his Cambridge lecture series to create an homage. Now, in this series he's speaking with the aid of a computer, which actually makes identifying the ends of sentences fairly easy. So I wrote a steering algorithm. It listens to the lecture, and then it uses the amplitude of each word to move a point on the x-axis, and it uses the inflection of sentences to move a same point up and down on the y-axis.
好吧,从滑板物理到理论物理, 我是霍金的大粉丝, 我想用他在剑桥的八个小时的 讲座来表示我对他的敬意 现在呢,在这段讲座里面,他的演讲是通过电脑助手完成的, 这样使得辨认句子末尾变得非常简单. 因此我写了个操作算法 它一边听讲座,然后它利用 每个词的振幅去在X轴上来回移动 它还利用句子之前的变调 从而在Y轴上上下移动
And these trend lines, you can see, there's more questions than answers in the laws of physics, and when we reach the end of a sentence, we place a star at that location. So there's a lot of sentences, so a lot of stars, and after rendering all of the audio, this is what we get. This is Stephen Hawking's universe.
然后这些指明趋势的线,你可以看到在物理世界中 问题显然比答案要多得多 当我们到达一个句子的末尾时, 我们就在那个地方放一颗星星 所以呢有很多句子就会有很多星星 之后在放完所有的可听片段后,我们得到了这个 这就是霍金的宇宙
(Applause)
(观众鼓掌)
It's all eight hours of the Cambridge lecture series taken in as a single visual impression, and I really like this image, but a lot of people think it's fake. So I made a more interactive version, and the way I did that is I used their position in time in the lecture to place these stars into 3D space, and with some custom software and a Kinect, I can walk right into the lecture. I'm going to wave through the Kinect here and take control, and now I'm going to reach out and I'm going to touch a star, and when I do, it will play the sentence that generated that star.
全部是在剑桥的八个小时的讲座 由一个单独的视觉效应来表达 我非常喜欢这个图片 不过很多人认为它是假的 因此呢我做了个有互动部分的版本 我是通过在演讲过程中适当的时间中, 将这些星星放置在3D空间里, 伴随着一些个性化的软件和一个动作察觉器 我可以走进这个讲座 我现在准备向这个察觉器挥手 然后控制它,然后我们伸手去 抓一颗星星,当我这样做的时候 它会放出这句话 就从那个星星里面
Stephen Hawking: There is one, and only one, arrangement in which the pieces make a complete picture.
霍金:这有一个,并且只有一个排列 在这个排列中,这些片段组成一个全体的图形
Jared Ficklin: Thank you. (Applause) There are 1,400 stars. It's a really fun way to explore the lecture, and, I hope, a fitting homage.
Jared Ficklin:谢谢 (观众鼓掌) 这里面一共有1400颗星星 这是个很有意思的方式去探索这个讲座 并且我希望是一种合适的敬意
All right. Let me close with a work in progress. I think, after 30 years, the opportunity exists to create an enhanced version of closed captioning. Now, we've all seen a lot of TEDTalks online, so let's watch one now with the sound turned off and the closed captioning turned on.
好吧.让我用仍进程中的工作来结束这个演讲吧。 我认为,30年后,我们有可能 去创造出字幕的一种改善版本 我们现在在网上可以看到好多TED演讲 因此呢让我们就不带声音去看一个吧 当然我们把字幕打开
There's no closed captioning for the TED theme song, and we're missing it, but if you've watched enough of these, you hear it in your mind's ear, and then applause starts. It usually begins here, and it grows and then it falls. Sometimes you get a little star applause, and then I think even Bill Gates takes a nervous breath, and the talk begins.
对于TED主题歌是没有字幕 因此我们就错过了,不过你已经看得够多的了 你可以在你心里面听到, 然后呢你就会鼓掌 通常是从这开始,然后成长,最后失败 有时候你会得到一个小星星的鼓掌 然后我认为即使比尔盖茨也紧张地深吸一口气 然后开始讲话
All right, so let's watch this clip again. This time, I'm not going to talk at all. There's still going to be no audio, but what I am going to do is I'm going to render the sound visually in real time at the bottom of the screen. So watch closely and see what your eyes can hear.
好吧,那么就让我们在看一次这个 这次,我不准备说话了 依然是没有声音 不过这回我要做的是我准备去使得这个声音 变得图像化,就在屏幕的最底下 因此呢,看仔细了然后看看你的眼睛能听到什么
This is fairly amazing to me. Even on the first view, your eyes will successfully pick out patterns, but on repeated views, your brain actually gets better at turning these patterns into information. You can get the tone and the timbre and the pace of the speech, things that you can't get out of closed captioning. That famous scene in horror movies where someone is walking up from behind is something you can see, and I believe this information would be something that is useful at times when the audio is turned off or not heard at all, and I speculate that deaf audiences might actually even be better at seeing sound than hearing audiences. I don't know. It's a theory right now. Actually, it's all just an idea.
这个对我来说非常神奇 即使看第一次,你的眼睛也会成功地 看出一些图案,不过在重复看之后, 你的脑子会对于把图案转化为信息 的能力运用地越来越好 你可以感觉到说话人的语气和音色 以及演讲的速度 一些你从字幕中得不到的东西 在恐怖电影中的经典镜头, 当有人从后面走来时 变成了你可以看到的东西 因此我相信这个东西会成为 一个有用的工具当声音被关掉的时候 或者根本无法听到的时候,我还猜测耳聋的观众 会更擅长看声音 而不是去听观众 我也不太清楚.目前为止只是个理论 实际上,这只不过是个想法
And let me end by saying that sound moves in all directions, and so do ideas. Thank you. (Applause)
因此在我结束前我说这样一句话吧:声音会向所有的方向移动 想法也会。 谢谢 (观众鼓掌)