Using the same idea as the guys who recorded the "sound" of a black hole, create a wave form in some oscillator out of an outline of your city's skyline.
Chicago for instance might sound like a creaking door, Manhattan like a whistle, I have no idea. Now they might all sound alike but those antennas would represent peaks and transients that might affect the sound, not in a pleasant way but you could compress it or limit it to make it more pleasant. Would change the shape a little but still be your city's outline.
You'd obviously loop it since it would just be a split second "playing" it only once.
Now would they sound distinct from each other enough to be interesting? Dunno. Be kind of cool to find out though.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022 So this would be the audio wave form of Manhattan for instance. https://www.etsy.co...ine?ref=share_v4_lx [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022] Chicago https://www.istockp...m457898281-14338978 [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022] Hong Kong https://www.vectors...nbow-vector-1956193 [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022] Paris might sound a little different. https://www.etsy.co...france-skyline-city [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022] The "sound" of a black hole. https://www.youtube...watch?v=_tXhBLg3Wng [doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022] https://dust-digita...uced-audio-980-1980 Patrick Feaster has doen a lot of work on creating audio realisations from written or printed wave-forms. [pocmloc, Aug 25 2022] https://griffonaged...re-of-a-sound-wave/ waveform eduction software to download [pocmloc, Aug 25 2022] ANS https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/ans/spectral synthesiser app to download [pocmloc, Aug 25 2022] https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/phonopaper/ [pocmloc, Aug 26 2022] Some experiments with phonopaper https://www.dropbox...NmicuJAKWPhtBa?dl=0Including an audio generated from Paris skyline [pocmloc, Aug 26 2022] Reverse proposal: use sound spectrograms to design buildings http://www.gillesazzaro.com///In 2007, he thought up a new architectural concept whereby the shapes of buildings are determined by voice prints: words and phrases can design buildings, districts and towns.. // [pocmloc, Aug 26 2022] For longer, more accurate, soundscape, put a drone up, film around the perimeter* of the city, run image through a 3D MOOG synth renderer-thingy, hit 'Play'.
* 'Perimeter' may be defined as that overhead metal wire outlining the observant Jewish section of town, for example.-- Sgt Teacup, Aug 25 2022 I think that black hole “sound” has opened up a whole slew of possibilities. Mountain ranges? Family pictures maybe. Get an app to do this and try posing for different pictures in different arrangements, shortest to tallest for instance.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022 See links to Patrick Feaster's work. You can download his software and have a go.
The black hole "sound" is very misrepresented; its basically using the photo as a polar spectral chart.
Spectral synthesisers are excellent musical instruments; I did a mini-album of freaky spectral music but it was too weird even for avant-garde experimental musicians.-- pocmloc, Aug 25 2022 Whoa Poc, you’re the one to do this! All my home studio gear is gathering dust. Maybe I’ll brush it off, update it and play around with this.
Incredible cool links!-- doctorremulac3, Aug 25 2022 Given that the profile of the city would be utterly dependent on where you are looking from, you could do a long-range circle around the city, taking a snapshot every somethingth of a second, & turn that series into your soundbite. (Obvs. works best for cities on flat open ground. Those built among hills would be a little more difficult, but GoogleMaps 3D data could provide a work-around for obtaining the profiles.)-- neutrinos_shadow, Aug 25 2022 That makes me think this would make a fun program to use with anything that looks wavy. Mountain range, tree line in a park. Could line up everyone at a family gathering, move around to try to make different tones. Neat toy. Point your iPhone, click “make waveform” and hear what the outline of that flower sounds like.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 26 2022 Alexander Zolotov's "phonopaper" app (via the ANS link) does exactly his using a spectral analysis of what it sees. Just choose "play everything" from the menu. Its very silly.
I haven't seen a waveform equivalent, probably because it is harder to parse the visual scene into a waveform line? Or because it is an even more stupid idea?-- pocmloc, Aug 26 2022 ============================ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---------------------------- ,*. .. ,/(,.,*.. .,,. /#. ,*.,. *(&@@@@&/* *###%&(*// #%(@@#@%/, .,((,%@&, .., ,(,. ..,#/. .**@@%%*, .* **#%*.,* . ---------------------------- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ============================-- pocmloc, Aug 26 2022 So phonopaper (in "free mode") can playback ascii-art renderings of spectra. but the halfbakery's non-fixed-width font and space elimination kind of makes it impossible to paste sound files straight into here.-- pocmloc, Aug 26 2022 Whoa! I've gotta play with some of this stuff.
The voice print skyline idea proves there are people crazier than me.-- doctorremulac3, Aug 26 2022 Excellent category choice, by the way.-- pocmloc, Aug 26 2022 [+]-- Voice, Aug 29 2022 random, halfbakery