a beautiful signal to noise...

from a 1974 bell labs publication on computers today and tomorrow, here's a chart of potential voice sound similarities depending upon the amount of background noise on a phone line... the image is based on a "bell labs devised computer technique called multidimensional scaling", and shows how a listener could potentially confuse words like "core, pore, and tore" depending on how clear or noisy a phone line is... the little stacks of green lily pads resemble the 1920's expressionist architecture of herman finsterlin or pieces of matta's 1966 mallite system furniture. i love the idea that some form of scientific logic generated one of the oddest visualizations of sound i've seen...