Friday, June 02, 2006

Oddly, She Sounds Like Nat King Cole

Speaking of Da Vinci, scientists in Japan have somehow managed to simulate the voice of the Mona Lisa. Interesting, but I have to throw the B.S. flag here:
Japan Acoustic Lab...gets the occasional request to recreate the voices of historical personages, he said, so being asked to unravel the Mona Lisa and da Vinci vocal codes was not an unusual request.

For the Mona Lisa, the laboratory worked with a photograph of the painting to get detailed measurements of her face and hands, Suzuki said. They used this data to then recreate her skull and estimate her height, which they put at 5 feet 6 inches, he said.

The data was then run through the lab's voice simulation programs to recreate the vocal cords and other organs that produced the mystery woman's voice and determine its pitch.

A native Italian speaker was also employed to help the lab get the right intonations for the Mona Lisa's voice, he said.

It was unclear, though, if that individual spoke the same Italian dialect as the woman portrayed in the Mona Lisa painting -- whose identity remains unknown.
Interestingly, the first thing "she" said was "The Da Vinci Code sucked."

1 comment:

DrJoeWebb said...

aren't these the same people who brough us this? http://www.bowlingual-translator.com/