The science of archaeoacoustics investigates sound stored in an artifact via vibration at the time of manufacture.

My idea, to unlock the sound of a photo, is not that different. I do not assume that the sound I get as a result is the sound of the object in the photo. It represents an aural reproduction of the image itself. The image then becomes a new reality and starting point.

To get the sound I export every line of pixels from an image. Then I convert those files into a sound file to which I assign a musical instrument: guitars, drums, piano. This results in a kind of minimalist music. Thirty cloud photos have now been converted to sound. The software I am using shows the sound in blocks that resemble digital clouds. As an experiment, I punched this out of paper with a laser cutting machine to play it with a music box.

For this project I use again photos of clouds most of the times.

I started experimenting with sound and a visual representation. One of the things I  used is the great app:  phonopaper.

Line by line each image is exported to be saved as a RAW file and opened in RAW f files supporting sound software. From there it is saved to be a MIDI file so that an musical instrument could be attached/chosen; hear the sound of the image.

An early attempted with an image of the see.

Example of the resulting sound

Strokes made out of printed images

Example of the resulting sound