Wikipedia might be the world’s largest encyclopedia, accumulating huge amounts of information everyday, but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t get a bit more interesting. And how do you give an interesting twist to something as great as Wikipedia? Well, you turn it into music.
Mahmoud Hashemi and Stephen LaPorte have done exactly that and converted Wikipedia edits to perfectly synthesized sounds. Their pet project ‘Listen to Wikipedia’ turns Wikipedia edits into soothing, meditation music.
Not just that, while listening to it, you can actually click on different bubbles that keep on emerging on the screen and even gain some new information about a multitude of topics, while your nerves are being calmed by, what can be termed as nothing less than magical sounds.
Don’t believe me? Just listen to it.
Isn’t it amazing?
Here’s a video of a wall-installation running the Listen Wikipedia project at North Carolina State University, which is something that I would recommend for every office and shopping mall.
The idea in itself deserves a lot of credit. While Wikipedia does get a lot of hits per day, this might be a way to make the whole process even more interesting. Currently, how it works is that you search for a certain thing and Wikipedia shows you the associated content.
Mahmoud explains the detailed process on his site, Hatnote.
Listen to the sound of Wikipedia’s recent changes feed. Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note. Green circles show edits from unregistered contributors, and purple circles mark edits performed by automated bots. You may see announcements for new users as they join the site, punctuated by a string swell. You can welcome him or her by clicking the blue banner and adding a note on their talk page.
But, if you tune in to ‘Listen to Wikipedia’, you might just have your morning meditations, while gaining some information about a topic that you might have never known about otherwise. This project could give you calmer nerves and a smarter mind? What else would you need?
The guys have even come out with a Listen to Wikipedia iOS app.
Listen to Wikipedia could become a new way of getting people of different ages interested in knowledge enhancement.
Do let us know what you think about it in the comment section.
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