Assignment:
Oh my, here we go again. I have to use a camera to do something impossible! How would you photograph sound, something that you cannot even see? I don’t believe Ansel ever tried to photograph sound, so who am I to attempt this?
My first thought was using the “Schlieren photography” techniques. Schlieren photography was invented by a German physicist August Toepler, way back in 1864. The Schlieren technique uses mirrors and a knife edge to show changes in density of fluids. You have no doubt seen pictures in your high school physics textbook of a supersonic jet with shock waves streaming from the jet being recorded with the Schlieren technique:
Unfortunately, since I currently don’t own a supersonic jet, I am not able to capture the ‘sound’ of the sonic boom on film. So I will have to come up with another idea.
I do know of a certain pair 3 year olds, who practice vocalizations at extremely pegged decibel levels. I thought of maybe a close up photograph of one of those mouths at full throttle which, I think, would communicate the idea of “sound” quite well. The difficulty is that they are a 7 hour drive away, one way, and getting high energy 3 year olds to patiently listen to instructions and wait as you figure out a lighting setup would deplete all of the dark matter in the universe.
What to do?
While driving down a boring sun warmed Interstate, my mind was suddenly struck with an idea. Recording! For thousands of years people have been recording their sounds to preserve them for future use. Some of the earliest writings are cuniform. Cuniform was made around 3400 BCE, which is about 5000 years ago, which is truly amazing! Cuniform marks are made with a sharp reed pressed into soft clay and then dried, to harden the clay tablet.
It is interesting to me that the earliest writings in history are still able to be seen, but there are large gaps in history where we don’t seem to have much recoverable information at all. Writing on stone was a bit difficult, and writing a book would mean that the book would have to stay in one place, but one cannot fault the durability of the medium. I wonder what will be come of this era when most of our writing is hidden in tiny minuscule electrons stuck to a delicate, soft, blanket of silicone?
Ok, so humans have figured out how to preserve sounds by making marks in some kind of medium. How to I capture that? Most people (i.e. the young and restless), who listen to sounds today did not grow up with sounds coming from physical media. But I did! And I have copies of those sounds that can still be heard today! They were known as ‘records’ or LP’s, but now days the hipsters call it ‘vinyl’, (today they are indeed made from vinyl i.e. PVC). An ‘LP’ has tiny grooves that are the exact representation of the sound vibrations coming from a microphone. So if I can zoom into a record close enough, I should be able to ‘see’ the sound! My macro lens only goes to 1:1 ratio, but if I crop in I get this:
What song is this? Well, of course, the Sound of Silence.