Science Quickly Enter One of the World’s Quietest Rooms
10 snips
Oct 3, 2025 In this engaging conversation, artist Seth Cluett shares his experiences as an artist-in-residence at Nokia Bell Labs, where he delves into the fascinating science of silence inside one of the world’s quietest rooms. He reveals the unique sensations of total silence, such as hearing your own heartbeat and nervous system. Cluett also discusses the groundbreaking audio innovations that emerged from Bell Labs, including digital audio encoding and speech synthesis, and explores how art and engineering can spark novel ideas in sound perception and design.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
How Anechoic Chambers Work
- Anechoic chambers absorb nearly all incidental reflections to eliminate echo and external noise.
- Bell Labs' chamber uses four-foot wedge panels and a centered experiment space to remove reflected sound energy.
Hearing Your Own Body
- In extreme quiet you perceive internal body sounds like heartbeat and nervous-system tones via bone conduction.
- Those internal sounds reveal parts of yourself you normally never hear in everyday environments.
Spinning Pure Tone Demo
- Seth sang a pure sinusoid and rotated to demonstrate how the chamber absorbs reflected sound as he turned.
- The tone started loud when faced forward and disappeared as reflection paths were removed.
