In the 1980s in France, musicologists and archaeologists Iégor Reznikoff and Michel Dauvois used their voices to explore caves with notable Paleolithic wall paintings. By singing simple notes and whistling, they mapped their perceptions of the caves’ acoustics.
They found that paintings were often located in places that were particularly resonant. Animal paintings were common in resonant chambers and in places along the walls that produced strong reverberation.
As they crawled through narrow tunnels, they discovered painted red dots exactly located in the most resonant places. The entrances to these tunnels were also marked with paintings. Resonant recesses in walls were especially heavily ornamented.
In a 2017 study, a dozen acousticians, archaeologists, and musicians measured the sonic qualities of cave interiors in northern Spain. The team, led by acoustic scientist Bruno Fazenda, used speakers, computers, and microphone arrays to measure the behavior of precisely calibrated tones within the cave.
The caves they studied contain wall art spanning much of the Paleolithic, dating from about forty thousand years to fifteen thousand years ago. The art includes handprints, abstract points and lines, and a bestiary of Paleolithic animals including birds, fish, horses, bovids, reindeer, bear, ibex, cetaceans, and humanlike figures.
From hundreds of standardized measurements, the team found that painted red dots and lines, the oldest wall markings, are associated with parts of the cave where low frequencies resonate and sonic clarity is high due to modest reverberation.
These would have been excellent places for speech and more complex forms of music, not muddied by excessive reverberation. Animal paintings and handprints were also likely to be in places where clarity is high and overall reverberation is low but with a good low-frequency response.
These are the qualities that we seek now in modern performance spaces.
started going wall climbing with my brother recently and it's so much fun! i used to do it as a kid but stopped because i was super short, dunno why i never picked it up again...
anyway i kind of imagine these two would do that too, like a fun date, especially in a human au scenario, although i drew them as trolls because i've realized i haven't drawn them much at all
i love you goncharov mythos, i love you innate human urge to make things up, i love you tumblr blorbos created By tumblr, i love you meta insight into current internet attitudes toward character archetypes that's inherent to this process of creation, i love you opportunity of witnessing yet another major event for very online people, and most of all i love you katya