__NOTOC__ Oramics is a

drawn sound Graphical sound or drawn sound (Fr. ''son dessiné'', Ger. ''graphische Tonerzeugung'',; It. ''suono disegnato'') is a sound recording created from images drawn directly onto film or paper that were then played back using a sound system. There are ...

technique designed in 1957 by musician

Daphne Oram Daphne Blake Oram (31 December 1925 – 5 January 2003) was a British composer and electronic musician. She was one of the first British composers to produce electronic sound, and was an early practitioner of musique concrète in the UK. As a c ...

. The machine was further developed in 1962 after receiving a grant from the

Gulbenkian Foundation The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation ( pt, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One of ...

. The technique involves drawing on 35mm film strips to control the sound produced. Oramics was also the name used by Oram to refer to her studio and business interests generally. Oram's composition machine consisted of a large rectangular metal frame, providing a table-like surface traversed by ten synchronised strips of clear, sprocketed 35mm film. The musician drew shapes on the film to create a mask, which modulated the light received by photocells. Although the output from the machine was monophonic, the sounds could be added to multitrack tapes to provide more texture and create

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice, monophony, or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords, h ...

. The original machine was exhibited at the

Science Museum A science museum is a museum devoted primarily to science. Older science museums tended to concentrate on static displays of objects related to natural history, paleontology, geology, industry and industrial machinery, etc. Modern trends in mu ...

in London between 2011 and 2015.

Related techniques

The Oramics machine, which creates music from graphic elements uses similar principles to Yevgeny Sholpo's "

Variophone The Variophone was developed by Evgeny Sholpo in 1930 at Lenfilm Studio Productions, in Leningrad, the Soviet Union, during his experiments with graphical sound techniques, also known as ''ornamental'', ''drawn'', ''paper'', ''artificial'' or ''s ...

", which produces sound by reading shapes cut into and drawings on cardboard. Canadian filmmakers

Norman McLaren William Norman McLaren, LL. D. (11 April 1914 – 27 January 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).Rosenthal, Alan. ''The new documentary in action: a caseb ...

and

Evelyn Lambart Evelyn Lambart (23 July 1914 – 3 April 1999) was a Canadian animator and technical director with the National Film Board of Canada, known for her early collaborations with Norman McLaren as well as her later films, as sole director. In 19 ...

have made films that feature sounds created by drawing or printing various patterns, such as triangles and circles, along the optical soundtrack area of the film. In 2016 Tom Richards, a PhD Student at

Goldsmiths, University of London Goldsmiths, University of London, officially the Goldsmiths' College, is a constituent research university of the University of London in England. It was originally founded in 1891 as The Goldsmiths' Technical and Recreative Institute by the Wor ...

, re-imagined and built a working Mini-Oramics machine.

References

External links

* * * () *
Mini Oramics machine
;Video * * ;BBC News * * {{citation , title = How Daphne Oram's Oramic machine changed electro music , url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12956702 , date = 4 April 2011 Graphical sound Articles containing video clips

Related techniques

See also

References

Further reading

External links