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This is where we’re at
Hearable tattoos! That’s… different. Ladies, gentlemen, those unaffiliated, congratulations – as a species, we have officially lapped science fiction.
There’s not a lot else to tell you about soundwave tattoos: they’re tattoos of sound waves that play back through a not-yet-released app called Skin Motion.
Rad!
Whether this represents a serious social phenomenon (or exists beyond this one instance, or indeed exists at all – this is the Internet) is a worthwhile question, but more to the point, it could.
For lack of a better way of putting it, hearable tattoos exist even if they don’t.
That is to say, your humble narrator is a reasonably capable audio engineer in his spare time. Also a reasonably capable sous-chef and Shakespearean actor – I’ve had an interesting career arc. And I’m telling you that with the right suite of free tools, a tattoo artist of the same C-plus-or-better skill level and a few weeks to work the bugs out, I could create what’s shown in this video for any interested customer. Soundwaves are soundwaves, ink’s ink, and there is an app for that. Them’s the new rules.
The indie-fication
That’s what I want to talk about here. Call it the indie-fication of the marketplace. Uncounted 1s and 0s have been arranged in thoughtful orders to muse upon the effect of pervasive, user-friendly information technology in the form of phone apps and cloud storage, but most of it has been in terms of business and socialization.
I think there’s something more basic at work here, and that it’s likely to have a greater groundswell effect on life in the 21st century than big names like Big Data and zero UI: we’re rapidly approaching the point where anyone can do anything.
Not expertly
Being able to make pretty sounds in Audacity does not make me Bear McCreary. Nor is the hypothetical tattooist engraving said sounds likely to be Sailor Jerry. I mean, I hope not, since Sailor Jerry passed in 1973, though I’d consider breaking my strict No Zombie policy to work with the guy. But epiphenomena like hearable tattoos are just the instances that break the surface. The Big News is that if you want to record a song, on or off your skin, all you need is a recording device and Audacity. Want to make a game? Twine. Art? There’s an app for that.
Tattoos that sing are just where it starts. The 21st century is going to be the Hundred Years of Making Stuff.
