This lecture describes the IRENE technology, how the method enables the reconstruction of sound from the digital images, and the innovations and challenges relevant to scaling this method for working with thousands of cylinders. The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley is home to nearly 3,000 20th-century ethnographic field recordings that record Native Californians singing and speaking in native languages. These recordings are invaluable to contemporary linguists and community members, but are difficult to access as they were recorded on a fragile, often physically compromised medium: the wax cylinder. A three-year project is underway to use a method collaboratively developed by the Library of Congress and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to recover the audio on these recordings. The method, called IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), captures the audio information non-invasively through high resolution, three dimensional imaging of the grooved cylinder surface. For transcript and more information, visit www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7555

Be the first to comment