Audible Visuals
Spectrogram of the Venetian Snares song Look (source)
The concept of concealing or uncovering hidden information is often seen as subliminal, subversive or sinister. Sometimes it’s just for fun. Here’s a look at some techniques musicians have used to hide images and games in the music.
The image above is a spectrogram of a song. Using software, it’s possible to turn images into sounds, which can be recorded and later analyzed to see the original image. Another well-known example of this is from a song on the Aphex Twin album Windowlicker, made using a program called MetaSynth for Mac.
Spectrogram of the Aphex Twin song “Equation” (source)
Embedding images and data in songs started as early as the 1970s, when television gaming systems stored games on cassette tapes. Musicians or programmers could record game data onto the end of vinyl albums. Playing it on your stereo would produce only noise, but recording it to a tape and then loading a tape into your Sinclair ZX Spectrum would let you play the games. I’m fascinated by this interplay of analog and digital.