A spectrogram is a three-dimensional picture of sound – any
sound. The three dimensions are time, frequency, and amplitude.
Spectrograms usually look abstract, like successions of clumsy
paint strokes or stills from Tron. They’re useful for sound
engineers, but not all that good to look at. However, some
software can also conduct spectral analysis in reverse,
translating images into sound. In this case, the images are
clear and the audio typically abstract. The sound clip above,
for example, was created from the picture(s) of me, moving from
left to right and reading discrete clusters of color and texture
as frequencies. The line of my thumb moves diagonally upward
from finger to nail, causing its attendant sound to rise in
pitch. Photosounder.com, home of Photosounder, has a great demo
video of how their program works with various images: This kind
of graphic sound creation has actually been around for several
years (though newer programs are increasingly sophisticated),
and musicians and sound artists have