singing eye > the Singing Camera

the Singing Camera 2004

a new instrument, an image-based sound synthesizer.
commissioned by Muziekwerkplaats de Trampoline, Amsterdam
music Mendel Hardeman
performed by Gośka Isphording
performed by Susanne Dick
performed by Tomoki Sumiya

If you plug the signal of a video camera into an audio system, what you hear is a 50Hz buzz. This is the synchronization signal, needed for a proper display of the image. It is so strong that, for the ear, it covers all the other information carried by the signal.
If you manage to get rid of the sinc-signals, what remains is a pure translation of LIGHT into VOLTAGE.
Whenever a camera sees a bright picture, it produces a high-amplitude electric signal. A dark picture is translated into a low amplitude. Each second the camera scans the picture 50 times, creating a 50Hz period in the voltage. This voltage can be made audible by simply plugging the signal into an audio system. In other words a camera, when modified, can become a sound synthesizer. This idea was the starting point of my research.

After finding a way to clean the sync-information off the signal, you can hear video. It is not an interpretation of the signal through, for example, a computer - it is the video itself. If then you use the camera to scan patterns of black and white horizontal bars, each white bar will produce a pulse, and each black bar will produce silence. In this way the camera becomes a pulse generator, and the amount of black and white bars determine the frequency you hear. The less bars the camera sees, the lower the frequency it produces. The more bars it sees, the higher the frequency. The closer the camera is to the pattern, the less bars it sees. Moving the camera away from the pattern, it has a bigger overview and thus sees more bars. In this way you create a glissando passing through all the available pitches.

In this project, the players of a baroque ensemble received small Black & White surveillance cameras. The recorder player had one fixed on the end of her instrument; the harpsichordist had two, one on each wrist; the violone player had one on his forehead.

The colour of the sound (timbre) varies according to the kind of pattern filmed. It can be influenced by modifying the brighness of the white or the black. The timbre also changes according to the thickness of the white bars in relation to the black ones. The sound becomes grittier through the introduction of dirt (texture) instead of pure black and white. The sharpness of the sound is influenced by blurrint the borders between the bars. It also changes by rotation of the camera: if a bar is not completely horizontal the pitch becomes less clear. The focus of a camera can also be used to create a sharper or less sharp sound (this works as a low-pass filter).
By mixing different patterns in one image you hear an interval instead of a single-pitched sound. In this way, music can litterally be drawn - any horizontal pattern of black and white is suitable: a black text on white paper; a wall of white bricks with dark cement; a zebral a harpsichord keyboard.

A new instrument,
with a huge range of possibilities,
just waiting to be used.