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Japanese Lab Creates 'Da Vinci' Voices

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the speaking-with-the-dead dept.

Mikki writes "Using methods employed in criminal investigations, the Japan Acoustic Lab has analyzed the skeletal structures of Leonardo Da Vinci and Mona Lisa's faces to replicate how their voices would have sounded." While Da Vinci is cool, I can think of a slew of other deceased notables worth talking with as well.

33 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. I, for one... by Solra+Bizna · · Score: 5, Funny

    *is brutally killed before finishing the meme*

    -:sigma.SB

    --
    WARN
    THERE IS ANOTHER SYSTEM
    1. Re:I, for one... by DrSkwid · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's ok, we can re-create your typing style from your skeleton and finish the job

      --
      There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  2. Ergh - yuk. by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    1) Promotion of lame movie.

    2) IE 6 Only.

    Please don't post this sort of crap (that's so hard to watch) again.

    --
    There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
    1. Re:Ergh - yuk. by jginspace · · Score: 3, Informative
      2)IE 6 Only.

      Huh? TFA opens fine in Opera and IE...

      The "(Leonardon) Da Vinci referece = promotion of lame movie" stance I shall ignore.

    2. Re:Ergh - yuk. by Whiney+Mac+Fanboy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Huh? TFA opens fine in Opera and IE...

      And the article contains a link to the MSN IE 6.0 only site, where you can actually listen to the clips the article discusses (they appear to be wmp only audio files too)

      Utterly typical of MS to attempt to force their crap software on the world (but thank god its only a link to their crap content).

      --
      There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
  3. Fine, but... by jolyonr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    how will bone structure determine regional accent?

    If you make assumptions about where someone was brought up and who by, this kind of thing could work - but let's see a blind test. Let someone do a recording of their voice, get these guys to analyse their facial structure (in silence) and see if their prediction matches reality. It's easy to say what dead people noone alive has heard sounds like.

    Jolyon

    --


    Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
    1. Re:Fine, but... by datafr0g · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I was thinking the same thing... to add to this - How would one be able to predict that vocal cords are even intact from looking at a skeletal structure??

      --
      "Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
    2. Re:Fine, but... by joe+155 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      that's a good point, but even if you did know the region, and even what accent was deffinately in that region at that time (because it's changed so much over the last 400 years) I think an even bigger point is the shape of the tounge; even the slightest change in size would change how your vioce sounded far more than any factor like head size/shape.

      --
      *''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
    3. Re:Fine, but... by JWSmythe · · Score: 2, Informative

      I agree.

          Accents change a lot by the way the local accent is spoken.

          Even my own voice, I know depending on where I am, my voice changes. There are a few places that I've spent a good bit of time, so I easily slip into the local accents. There are a few bad fake accents I do too.

          I will say my nice clear broadcaster voice with a midwestern accent (i.e., plain) is a whole lot different than say my southern drawl. And like when I do my totally bogus 80's valley wannabe, it's like TOTally different.

          And lets not forget the voice on my voicemail. A few people have asked why I haven't changed it from the computer synthesized voice. I have to break it to them that it's really my voice. :) It wasn't intentional, it's just a very flat monotone message, because I wasn't very excited about doing a voicemail recording.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    4. Re:Fine, but... by Eivind · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's worse than that. The skeletal anatomy is only going to give you a very vague idea, if that. There's just too many variables that are unaccounted for, a short list of examples:

      • Where did the person grow up.
      • What dialect did the people he spoke most to speak (parents, friends, teachers, relatives, neighbours etc)
      • What where his vocal-chords, tongue, lips and mouth like ? (for example, skeletal analysis will not tell you if someone has been smoking for 30 years or not)
      • Was he allergic to anything ? Nose open ? Size and shape of nose in general ?
      • What was his weight ?

      I'm fairly certain the unknowns add up sufficiently to make the entire exercise pointless. My guess is that given ten people with different voices, all raised in the same area, this method would not be capable of analysing their bone-structure and then correspond voice to person. (other than the relatively trivial job of getting the sex of the person correct, most women sound noticeably different from most men.)

  4. with them? by iogan · · Score: 5, Funny

    While Da Vinci is cool, I can think of a slew of other deceased notables worth talking with as well.

    Yeah, um.. you won't actually get to talk with them though, you'll just get to figure out what their voices might have sounded like. Sorry if that ruins it for you.

    --
    Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
  5. Enough said... by nakedforjesus · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mike Tyson ;)

  6. Da Vinci by dr_d_19 · · Score: 3, Funny

    No wireless. Less paint than Monet. Lame.

  7. What you don't see... by umbrellasd · · Score: 3, Funny

    Probably doesn't work too well for eunuchs either, :).

  8. Which is great because.. by Burb · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... we all know that we way we talk is completely determined by skeletal structure. Your native language, culture, education, temperament, mood, and state of health are completely irrelevant.

    Mind you, it would be funny if he sounded like Tom Hanks.

    --

  9. Stop the Viral Marketing please by owlnation · · Score: 2

    Could we please please pretty please have a ban on the use of the name "da Vinci" for at least a year?

    I'm totally overmarketed.

    The tragic thing is that I was a big fan of the man himself until that trashy novel came out.

  10. Mona Lisa was a man! by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 2, Funny
    Probably doesn't work too well for Unix either, :).

    Well, as other posters have pointed out, the site is IE6 only...

    But apart from that, read this quote, and draw your conclusions:

    A former police engineer who specializes in audio analysis, Suzuki says he assumed the woman in the legendary famed Leonardo painting was 168 centimeters (5 foot, 6 inches) tall, giving her a relatively low tone for a woman.
  11. John 21, 15-17 by ArsenneLupin · · Score: 2, Funny
    15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I like you." He said to him, "Feed my lambs."

    16 He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I like you." He said to him, "Tend my sheep."

    17 He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you like me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you like me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I like you." (Jesus) said to him, "Feed my sheep.

    hmmm...

    And btw, in that infamous "last supper" picture, there is more than one character that looks like a woman...

  12. Paint and Sound by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I remember something from about 10 years ago about people running an LP pickup through the grooves made in paint by a painters brush. The idea is that sound makes the brush vibrate and records the sounds in the paint.

    Apparently they were able to get the sound of the word "blue" out of a patch of blue paint so this painter must have been talking to himself (or somebody else) while he worked.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Paint and Sound by Threni · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > I remember something from about 10 years ago about people running an LP pickup
      > through the grooves made in paint by a painters brush. The idea is that sound
      > makes the brush vibrate and records the sounds in the paint.
      >
      > Apparently they were able to get the sound of the word "blue" out of a patch
      > of blue paint so this painter must have been talking to himself (or somebody
      > else) while he worked.

      It's hard to imagine with half a brain anyone believing for more than a second that this technique would ever be possible.

    2. Re:Paint and Sound by $sjfsjf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Indeed, Archaeoacoustics However this technique has never been used to recover sounds from actual historical pots or paintings. I wonder why not, if their tests have been so sucessful... Maybe it only works if you know what you are supposed to be hearing, 'Here's to my sweet Satan' anyone?

  13. So by nickthisname · · Score: 5, Funny

    We now know what Da Vinci would have sounded like when he said:
    "Someone please shoot Dan Brown."

  14. Has anyone tested this tech? by Zaphod2016 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think this is a neat idea (although an obvious plant by some marketing parasites) but I have to ask: has anyone tested this?

    Specifically: has anyone recorded a voice, recorded an MRI, and generated a voice? Did they match? Were they close?

    --
    barack to the future?
  15. And what the Mona Lisas voice said.... by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Leonardo , I *really* need to go to the toilet! Now!"

  16. Quit screwing with this da vinci crap by skeptictank · · Score: 2, Funny

    and Get back to work on the robotic woman.

  17. Re:the article and direct link by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "Because the beard covers his jaws in his portrait, we could not tell his exact skeletal features. We assumed that he had a heavy-jowled face, giving him a nice, bass tone," Suzuki says.


    The translation is a bit off there. This should read:

    "Because the Hollywood studio paid us so much money and we didn't have anything to work with anyway, we made it all up."
    --

    May contain traces of nut.
    Made from the freshest electrons.
  18. Do you think Leonardo would have read Slashdot? by iBod · · Score: 2, Informative

    I think he'd have been very interested indeed in the maiden flight of the Airbus A380 yesterday, which received NO coverage whatsoever on Slashdot (stuff that matters!) and would be pissed off by this lame article about some fools trying to cash-in on his name (stuff that matters not).

  19. Oh goody! by CamDawg · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now we can look forward to authentic Da Vinci-voiced endorsements for vacuum cleaners. Ah, what a glorious age in which we live.

  20. Don't call him Da Vinci by Buchenskjoll · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please call him Leonardo, only Dan Brown calls him Da Vinci. I don't think Leonardo would have answered to it.

    --
    -- Make America hate again!
  21. I hear dead people! by jimwatters · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hear dead people!

  22. Re:the article and direct link by WinterSolstice · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No kidding - this article is complete crap. Typically when you "analyze" a skeleton, you actually do some real science. You don't just look at Mike Tyson, examine his face, and produce a voice that sounds anything like his.

    By all rights, he should sound more like Samuel Jackson :)

    Stupid story, stupid stunt, lame page. Thanks, slashdot, for supporting the MPAA.

    -WS

    --
    An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
  23. This is great news!!! by wideBlueSkies · · Score: 2, Funny

    A true advance in science

    I've always wanted to know what Snoopy's voice sounded like....you never hear him talk in the cartoons. Now thanks to this revolutionary skeletal analysis technique, hearing his voice is within our reach.

    And after that, I'd like them to map out Morn from Deep Space Nine. He never spoke either.

    Great mysteries are about to be solved.

    However, when this work is complete, these guys can devote their spare cycles to folding protiens..another worthy cause.

    --
    Huh?
  24. Re:surely not by whitehatlurker · · Score: 2, Insightful
    No, no, didn't you see the Digg story on this? They have recordings from even earlier.

    (Okay, just between us - it's a hoax, but don't tell anyone else.)

    --
    .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.