This machine rolls tightly-strung cellophane over two rollers at high speed while sprinkling it with very fine white powder. You lay back and sing under it, vibrations from your voice rearranging the particles as they go past. At the other end of the desk, more cellophane sandwiches in the powder, locking it into place as it is rolled onto a new roll.
They'll find a way to play it back in the future.-- fishboner, Apr 29 2009 Reminds me of this... Custom_20Echo_20Wall...one of my favorites by the way. [2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 06 2009] Good as an art-work [+]-- xenzag, Apr 30 2009 Sing it and they will (somehow) listen.-- Aristotle, Apr 30 2009 They'll find a way to play it, back in the future.
I fear that unless your original sprinkling mechanism is determinable and regular (or simply measured and stored), the distruptions that your sounds cause will forever be lost to the initial random scattering. Possibly a good encryption standard waiting to be realised. Also you need to consider removal of static charge build-up. [+] anyway for fast forward thinking.-- 4whom, Apr 30 2009 This would not work. I'm thinking (a) de Montfort vortices and (b) resonant monopoles. There's also the problem with peripheral tympanics, obviously.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 30 2009 A cellulose tape will degrade rapidly even under the best of conditions, a sealed container might be expected to have a functional shelf life of a few years, but after use the organic plastic will rapidly degrade, assisted by fungus finally completely loosing all plasticity. Your descendants will simply laugh at your complete lack of foresight and throw the powdery unrecognizable trash away. I cannot immediately think of a shorter lived media. Sound recorded in fine sand maybe.-- WcW, Apr 30 2009 I was just thinking abourt how mermaids might grow sun warmed kelp near an iceberg to create beautiful layers of warm n cool water to modulate their voices n act like sound conduits I thought they might make a squeak friendly dolphin audio playground that way kind of like the way radio energy acts at different atmospheric densities-- beanangel, Apr 30 2009 //the organic plastic will rapidly degrade//
well, it has to be cellophane, so I don't know what to tell you...-- fishboner, May 01 2009 [beanangel] meets [fishboner]. This should be interesting.-- normzone, May 01 2009 //it has to be cellophane// Why? Because of the texture? If so, mylar might be a good substitute. It has a similar texture and is much less prone to breaking down.-- spidermother, May 02 2009 okay. I love mylar. The Hyperblimp guy uses a clear mylar, and the supplier is his friend. Any clear film will do, really. I was really just going for a really high resolution and no loss in bandwidth due to electrical components.
//peripheral tympanics// good point. Easily solved by putting the sealer before the singer.-- fishboner, May 02 2009 bandwidth?-- WcW, May 02 2009 //bandwidth?//
look into point-to-point topography with relation to electronics involving signals.-- fishboner, May 03 2009 but the whole point is that it isn't electronic. "strip width" more like. Isn't the natural scattering of the media going to completely mask the signal? Vibration isn't going to leave distinct patterns in the media.-- WcW, May 03 2009 people - this is the halfbakery. [fishboner] just found a direct way to code vocals into cellophane and sugar, with the possible but unlikely outlook of it being decoded in (obviously overqualified and underchallenged)future times. with the additional charm of the voices being those of dolphin playing in a mermaid made playground, how much more beautiful can it get? [+]-- loonquawl, May 05 2009 keep telling yourself that...-- WcW, May 05 2009 {+} Check out [link] [fishboner].-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, May 06 2009 //Isn't the natural scattering of the media going to completely mask the signal? Vibration isn't going to leave distinct patterns in the media. //
are you saying there is something about magnetic tape that prevents this?-- fishboner, Feb 20 2011 The sixth time I read [beanangel]'s annotation, it actually made sense. Every word of it. There needs to be a hyphen between "squeak" and "friendly"; it took readings 5 and 6 to work that out.
It should be possible to create a sound hologram using particles on a membrane, in a way exactly analogous to an audio hologram. The particles would accumulate where there is destructive interference, preserving a slice of the sound field as a pattern of nodes. However, as with a light hologram, it would require the sound to be a nearly pure sine wave, or at least periodic, to get a meaningful pattern.
Perhaps this idea needs a reference beam, in the form of a speaker generating a constant tone, or a sound reflective surface above the membrane; there needs to be some form of interference, so that some regions vibrate more than others, in a non-trivial way. Even then, the constantly moving film, combined with the varying frequencies in the singing ... those future people had better have those big throbbing brains covered in pulsing visible veins, rather than just feeling like they do, like I do when thinking about this idea.-- spidermother, Feb 20 2011 If it can be encoded it can be decoded using present day technology. Simply take a high resolution EGK of the roll, write a program to unroll it in virtual space, and do the math to find sounds that make the same vibrations.-- Voice, Feb 20 2011 random, halfbakery