Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Fixing nothistory sounds

Modernity impinges on our awareness in the most historical of sites.  This can be good: visiting a medieval city is far more pleasant is the tourism board hasn't gone all out to recreate the pong of untreated sewage and the adults you share the space with have bathed since reaching puberty.  The absence of plague-bearing fleas can also be counted as an advantage.  But what about sound?  There have been many attempts to recreate musical sounds of the past using period instruments in ancient structures.  Dr. Damian Murphy, a sound artist and lecturer in the Department of Electronics at the University of York, has recreated the sounds of sites that are no longer intact.  You can listen to music as it sounded in Coventry Cathedral before it was destroyed in the Blitz and druidic ritual complete with the resonance created by the once-complete circle of Stonehenge but without the sounds of the nearby highway here.

Nice rescue of nothistory.

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