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+--- Thread: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? (/showthread.php?tid=4773)
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HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Matt Lukes - 02-15-2006
This is wild- apparently somoeone has finally succeeded in isolating real recorded vocies from the stylus-impressed decoration on a vase from Pompeii... it's muffled- sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher (ha)- but there's a clear LAUGH in there...
www.zalea.org/article.php3?id_article=496
If you can't watch the video, just save the mp4 file- the audio will play in WinAmp or Media Player. It starts at time 1:10 (about).
Here's a short article on Archaeoacoustics: members01.chello.se/christer.hamp/phono/archaeo/archaeo.html
Matt
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Jona Lendering - 02-15-2006
Isn't this a variant on the jounalist Daedalus' joke about palaeophonography? Walls can talk, he said, and designed a similar technique to restore ancient sound. He hoped to disprove the old fallacy that the Americans spoke an English that resembled the language of Shakespeare closer than British English. The joke was current when Daedalus was still writing, somewhere in the eighties, I gues..
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Matt Lukes - 02-15-2006
Okay, right, my enthusiasm got the better of me- IF IT'S ACTUALLY TRUE it's amazing :lol: The friend who told me about this said that it's just recently that those who produced the sound from the vase used a powerful computer to filter out extraneous sound and isolate the 'voices'.
The thing is that if the stylus used to decorate the pot were part of an armature or something semi-rigid (not in the potter's hand that is), and the pot were on a rotating wheel, it's at least plausible that vibrations from voices could be transferred by the stylus into the clay... it sure would be cool if it's true
Matt
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Gaius Decius Aquilius - 02-15-2006
Ok... lets get down to the important issue here. Does the vase have any music? I sugguest this might be the lost link to Hip Hop, or some of the primitive Techno! I personally hope for the older traditional Rap... Some might argue Heavy Metal, but tis is doubtful given the known Roman limitations in stage lighting.
Gaius Decius Aquilius
(Ralph Izard)
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Arthes - 02-15-2006
Greetings,
well EVP is possible......Electronic Voice Phenomena - the recording of the voices of spirit beings or what may be embedded in the walls or ether around you...If you saw White Noise, you will know what I mean...!
Basically leaving a tape recorder with new tape and microphone running against a background of static, then running the tape through a computer sound mixer changing the speed and pitch, can bring out obvious words and sentances on the tape. You can also record direct to your computer with a microphone and downloaded mixer software.
I thought I could hear the laugh Matt mentioned, or something recorded at a different speed that sounded like a laugh and possibly something like music, although being in the early hours, I could not turn up my speakers....
There are things we take for granted now that would have thought impossible one hundred years ago. Television, Internet, Video phones.....
I remember reading a story a few years back, can't remember the exact title....The something Machine, I think. A piece of Electronic equipment that could be tuned into the past to listen to what was happening on any date and time in any place ...!
The inventor is eventually approached by religious leaders who want to hear Jesus preaching his sermon on the mount and it is all arranged that every city in the world will be linked in by radio to hear this broadcast on huge speakers in public places. Only one problem...nobody realised he would be speaking in his own ancient tongue and nobody could understand it...!
Thinking about it, how were the first recordings made.....wax cylinders....?
regards
Arthes
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - aitor iriarte - 02-15-2006
But folks... the vase that appears on the video is not Roman or even Ancient at all! It is nothing but a modern, glazed, 'ancient Peruvian-like' decorated ugly 'flower-pot'!!! :evil:
Aitor
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Thiudareiks Flavius - 02-15-2006
Quote:Greetings,
well EVP is possible......Electronic Voice Phenomena - the recording of the voices of spirit beings or what may be embedded in the walls or ether around you...If you saw White Noise, you will know what I mean...!
Basically leaving a tape recorder with new tape and microphone running against a background of static, then running the tape through a computer sound mixer changing the speed and pitch, can bring out obvious words and sentances on the tape. You can also record direct to your computer with a microphone and downloaded mixer software.
Well, that's one explanation of 'EVP'. Another is that the human brain can find patterns in just about anything given enough motivation and imagination. Personally, I find that rather more plausible than any 'ghosts' in the 'ether'.
Quote:But folks... the vase that appears on the video is not Roman or even Ancient at all! It is nothing but a modern, glazed, 'ancient Peruvian-like' decorated ugly 'flower-pot'!!!
My thoughts exactly. Which is a pity.
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Tarbicus - 02-15-2006
I think it's a very well made joke. The professor with the pipe, etc, and look at his eyes, he's laughing
I remember as a youngster being riveted to the screen watching an April Fool's TV documentary about the Mars Viking landings, where a "rock" suddenly moved with purpose at the end! It was very convincing, especially with all the "boffins" leading the viewer to the climax.
Very good :wink:
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Viventius - 02-15-2006
This came up in an episode of CSI. Someone was making a pot on a wheel and mentioned some clues, which eventually lead to a conviction:
Quote:Grissom talks to the hospital's art instructor who recalls that Nurse McKay angrily pulled Adam out of ceramics class. Using an acoustic recovery technology, Sophia Curtis places Adam's pot on a turntable in the CSI lab and uses a laser to pick up some sound that was recorded in the grooves. She hears "Robbie" and "that's my angel,"
http://www.csifiles.com/reviews/csi/committed.shtml
Uh-oh. In which case, archaeologists all over the world should be playing their pots now, to find out what's going on :wink:
Some time ago, I heard a programme on BBC Radio 4 where they discussed archaeoacoustics and tried to 'play' pots. The track sounded just like background noise, and very muffled. Not entirely convincing.
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Praefectusclassis - 02-15-2006
Yes, and yesterday in CSI Miami they blew up a surveillance camera shot from 2*2 pixels to a high-res 1024*768 on their computer... :roll:
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Tarbicus - 02-15-2006
Quote:Yes, and yesterday in CSI Miami they blew up a surveillance camera shot from 2*2 pixels to a high-res 1024*768 on their computer... Rolling Eyes
Oh, the stories I could tell about "movie magic" ....
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Viventius - 02-15-2006
I was dubious about CSI before the pottery incident, but as soon as I saw that one, I knew that a lot of it was pie in the sky :roll:
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - john m roberts - 02-15-2006
I have long fantasized about raising voices from ancient, inanimate objects. But then I worry that we'll learn that the Romans all spoke in high-pitched, squeaky Monty Pythonesque voices. Or that Homeric verse was recited like rap.
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Gaius Decius Aquilius - 02-15-2006
Well, I just got off the phone with a Psychic Investigator. Here is what she has to offer after going into a trance on the matter. First, the vase is actually an early form of a recording devise similar to the first Victrola cylinders. The second is that Rome had a large entertainment industry that has, largely been ignored in History and Archeology. Bands recorded on different vase labels and the industry was quite diverse. There were even a few vases featuring stand up philosophers.
The most illustrative event the psychic was able to clarify for me was the incident of Pompey's head. This was actually the band Pompey's Head, an alternative music group, that the young Ptolemy booked in concert for Caesar. Caesars negative reaction was more from the controversial lyrics of Pompey's Head, who had recently cut a hit vase, "Rubricon". Caesar, was himself, a Country-and-Western Empire fan in any event, and probably did not enjoy the progressive urban sound of the Ptolemaic court.
There are many bands that the psychic could recall, but space only allows for a few. There was Twisted Agrippina and Rage Against The Republic, who appealed to young audiences and then the more conventional Scipio Africanus V. There was also the underground sound of The Catacombs.
I suggest RAT form its own reenactment band. Members should submit a name for the band and put forward what RATers should make up the band, and what instrument they should play.
Gaius Decius Aquilius
(Ralph Izard)
former High School percussionist
Re: HOLY COW- Roman VOICES recorded on a pot from Pompeii? - Matt Lukes - 02-15-2006
:lol:
Nuts. I was so hoping that this might be real- it's just weird enough to be true... but not if CSI did it :lol: When they first took a wound casting from a corpse that clearly identified the knife that stabbed him, I gave up on the reality of it and just accepted it as entertainment.
I couldn't get the video to play, so didn't get the image of the vase or the subtlties of the people involved- the one thing that did strike me is that in order to have even a few seconds of 'recording' the stylus-impressed decoration would have had to be a spiral... and while I've seen lots of rings, I can't say I've seen much in the way of long spirals.
Matt