MIT PhD student, computer vision wizard and rap artist Abe Davis has co-created the world’s most improbable audio instrument. In 2014, Davis and his collaborators debuted the “visual microphone,” an algorithm that samples the sympathetic vibrations of ordinary objects (such as a potato chip bag) from ordinary high-speed video footage and transduces them into intelligible audio tracks.
Davis is also the author of Caperture, a 3D-imaging app designed to create and share 3D images on any compatible smartphone.
““Imagine someone listening in to your private conversation by filming the bag of chips sitting on the other side of the room. Oddly specific, I know, but researchers at MIT did just that: They've created an algorithm that can reconstruct sound (and even intelligible speech) with the tiny vibrations it causes on video.”” — The Washington Post, August 4, 2014
Chris Anderson introduces this talk by saying that we were about to see a technology that could be as game-changing as Jeff Han’s touchscreen demo in 2006, a year ahead of the iPhone.
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