Listen to Wikipedia


I imagine that most users know that Wikipedia is an inexhaustible source of knowledge where you can find (almost) any information that is worthy of being known. How many of you, however, know that Wikipedia can be transformed into a generator of inexhaustible music? How many of you know that you can listen to endless music composed by … Wikipedia?

That’s what happens with the project designed by Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi, who have developed software that generates sounds based on the real-time updates that happen on Wikipedia.

Changes, additions and deletions of text, registration of new users are all actions that trigger the generation of sounds Listen to Wikipedia, the name of the project of LaPorte and Hashemi.

If you look under Aleatory Music on Wikipedia, one of the first lines that read “is music in which some element of the composition is left tochance, and/or some primary element of a composed work’s realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). “

The L2W software allows you to listen different sounds depending on the type of renovation: bell sounds if some Wikipedia entry has been modified with the addition of material and/or information, sounds of plucked string if something was deleted, but if you happen to feel a sustained chord violins then you are listening to the sound of a new user who is registered on Wikipedia.

screen-of-l2w

The screen of L2W with circles of different colors, depending on the type of user who made some changes.

That’s it? No, the frequency emitted depends on how important the update that was made. To be clear, can-depth and wide is the change, the more serious will be the sound. The color of the circles varies depending on the type of user making the change, will be green if it is an unregistered user, purple if the change is made by a bot or light gray if it is a member.

You want to play some more? Try to click on any of the circles of renovation, maybe one of those green … And if you want to try different experiences, do not forget to select the nationality of interest to you, even more than one.

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Listen to Wikipedia lets you listen to the updates of many local editions of Wikipedia. Also try to select multiple items, and listen to the result.

L2W is open source, if you visit the reference site and listen to your first performance of Wikipedia, this is the link. I anticipate that L2W is also available as an application, but only for iOS devices, you can find it by following this link.

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