Mona Lisa’s Voice Re-Created by Scientist

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

A Japanese scientist, who also happens to be the creator of the BowLingual, a dog-human translator (which I have somehow managed to keep from buying), has managed to not only re-create the voice of the Mona Lisa herself, but da Vinci as well.

“Normally, we do crime-related research. We recreate the voices of suspects based on information about their physical characteristics, lifestyles, dialects and so on,” Suzuki said.

However, his company, Japan Acoustic Lab, also gets the occasional request to recreate the voices of historical personages, he said, so being asked to unravel the Mona Lisa and Leonardo vocal codes was not an unusual request. A native Italian speaker was also employed to help the lab get the right intonations for the Mona Lisa’s voice, he said. Source: AP via USA Today

The way it works is that measurements are taken (in this case, determined via a photo of the painting) of the face as well as the subject’s height and hands. The skull is recreated and then the data is run through a program which determines the person’s vocal pitch. A similar method was used to determine da Vinci’s voice.

You can click the buttons beneath the portraits on this site to hear their voices.

We Say: Not surprisingly, this was all part of a promotion for the movie, The Da Vinci Code. Unfortunately, the re-created voice still has no exact answer for the question of who the woman in the painting really is.