Seeing Sounds

We have just begun getting into the senses, which reminded me of a TED talk I watched last night. For any of you who don't have it, I highly recommend getting the TED talk app for your smart phone. It even has an "inspire me" button for when you're just waiting to be inspired or have your mind blown. Or both. Anyway, last night I was scrolling through the new TED talks when one caught my eye. It was called, "psychedelic science." It probably caught my eye because it looks similar to "psychological science." It was about a Swiss artist and photographer who makes art out of science. He basically visual creates representations of the natural forces.

In case you're wondering, I'm not bringing up this video because the name sounded like "psychology." Actually, this artist specializes in manipulating the senses. In the photos/video I am referring to, he combines the senses of vision and audition (sound). What does that mean? Well, I shall explain that in just a moment.

First let's talk a little about vision so we know what's about to be mixed. First, we must recognize that this is all sensation and perception. We are sensing what is around us, whether it is the light waves that are transduced (turned into neural messages) in the rods and cones in our retina, or it is the sound waves that are transduced somewhere in our temporal lobe (auditory nerve, I think). All of this raw data from the outside world is taken in by our receptors. Transduction then occurs, meaning the raw data turns into neural messages, and it is interpreted. This is the perception aspect. Once we perceive the raw data, we are consciously aware of it. And thus, sensation and perception have occurred. Or at least, that's the simple version.

Hearing and seeing is actually a bit more complicated. To hear, the sound waves cause a vibration in the ear drum which must travel to middle ear bones then to the oval window.. Since we have not discussed this in class yet, I don't want to risk getting all of this confused, so we'll move on to vision.

In class we talked about light waves and how they go through the eye. First, they enter through the cornea (the protection film) then they go through the iris, which determines the color of the eye and is the muscle that lets the light in,  then through the lens, which is what bends the light waves (if it overbends or underbends the light waves--you need glasses), then the waves travel through all the vitreous humor, and then to the retina. The retina is where the transduction occurs. There, the light waves become neural messages. To be more specific, it actually occurs in the rods and cones. The cones deal with the color while the rods handle the black and white images. After this, the physical activity has set off action potentials. So, these new messages are then sent to the horizontal, bipolar, and amacrine cells. After that, they go to the ganglion cells and then to the optic nerve. The visual information processing starts at the thalamus and then goes to the occipital lobe and then to the visual cortex. It is a lot of places and a lot of traveling for these light waves, but it ultimately ends in the person being able to see.

So, now that we've discussed the whole process of seeing, we can return to the TED talk. The artist demonstrated a few really cool ways to mix art and science, but the one I want to show all of you is his visual representation of sound waves. Yes, he made it possible to see sounds. Kinda cool, right? The way he did it is by putting a thin plastic foil over a speaker. Then, he put multicolored crystals on this foil sheet. He then would play an audio signal causing the crystals to move up and down. He then filmed it with a really special camera. This is what it looked like (skip to 3:22):

Believe it or not, he's not the only person to do this. A Kabbalistic artist (calls it mystical art or Kabbalah art) in Tzfaat also likes to incorporate "sound" into his work. He made a visual representation of the shofar blasts by blowing the sounds and then running the sounds of the shofar into a software that analyzes the sound waves. This is what he ended up with:

Anyway, I found it interesting. Oh, and by the way, I looked it up and I don't think it's possible to be born without a cornea, but I did find a story about a baby who was born without eyes. The condition is called anopthalmia. She was born with no occipital tissue. Apparently, it's just a sporadic mutation. Well, on that note, have a lovely weekend.

PS. Here's another picture of the crystals on the speaker in case you don't want to watch the video: