I think I found a pattern in TH viewed as raw text data

[BunnyRabbit]

Where to start?

Firstly I'm totally unconvinced by the proposed link between apparently random strings from one large set of data appearing in other large sets of data. You know about statistics I presume? Can you really persuade anyone that the probability of finding such a correlation are so small that coincidence is ruled out? I truly suck at stats but I know enough to understand that you should start with a null hypothesis (no correlation) and then work out the probability of finding a correlation by chance. If you can beat those odds there is a correlation. Simply speaking. You have no proof to demonstrate that the matches you have found are anything other than probable given the data sets.

More intuitively there is no clue in the patterns you cite. If a clue was there it's more likely it would be signposted in such a way as to let you know you were onto something. Unless someone with specific knowledge of some obscure patterns sees what you have and makes a connection it's going nowhere because our combined general knowledge can see nothing. No clues, just quasi random patterns.

I simply can't begin to see anything compelling in your assertions about sinusoidal or oscillatory behaviour. Perhaps I don't understand but where is the novelty in audio data going up and down?

I spent more time than I would like to admit trying to crack the Red Moon code. It was fruitless and in the end the answer was mostly an obvious map reference. But I learned some stuff and took away a lesson about chasing clues. Have some fun but my advice is either come up with something in the data that is either intuitively and irrefutably a clue (like a plain message in the ASCII) or prove that there is a statistical anomaly with rigorous analysis and produce a result which cannot be anything other than a deliberate manipulation of the files to convey a message.

[You Could Feel The Sky]

[SCHIZOPHRENIA INTENSIFIES]

[NorthernFusion]

lol @ this entire thread

[JESUSANDHOES]

I don't have the time or the background in statistical analysis to determine with 99.9% confidence that there is some undeniable intentional connection between the official Bleep.com download of "Uritual.wav" when viewed as plaintext, and the publicly available NASA data on the internet.

This is a fan board. I'm speculating about a possible connection because I find it interesting. Every post I've made, I've reiterated that I might be wrong.

That being said, I respect and appreciate the kindly-worded opinions of all, including those who disagree. Thank you for your thoughts.

I've considered this a lot since my last post, and as I said above, I don't think I can "prove" anything. Hear me out, though:

At the very least, there is a completely unintentional but undeniable connection to data from the following NASA missions: Voyager 1, Voyager 2, 2001 Mars Odyssey, and Clementine. (There are more, I'm just lazy..)

For one example, take the following two strings, both of which appear around the 95% mark in Uritual: "wspmifb" and "WSOLGD". Let's look at how those strings are situated in the raw data. Below are the entire lines of data that the strings sit in:

{wspmifb^ZUQM!I D"?"9!3!,%

ikkhhfd`^[WSOLGD@>:651.+%!¯ˇÔˇÂˇ€ˇ

Both times, the string in question is surrounded by "placeholders" that are outside of the [a-z] or [A-Z] set of characters, making the pattern easy to recognize with the naked eye.

Both of the above strings link to the EXACT SAME 40Kb image file (1/527th the size of Uritual), sent from the Voyager to NASA during the Saturn Encounter on 11/29/1980, at 23:18:59:

http://pdsimage.wr.usgs.gov/cdroms/Voya ... 545327.ibg

This file is 6 subfolders deep into http://pdsimage.wr.usgs.gov/. There are easily a thousand, most likely easily ten thousand, subfolders within this website. That's not to mention the billions of other pages that this string DOESN'T link to...

When you get rid of whitespace in this /c3545327.ibg/ file, there are only 128 chunks of data where a string like "WSOLGD" could happen. Each chunk has two possible areas for descending [z-a] or [Z-A] strings and looks generally like this:

rvtrolkic^^YURNIHC?<863/-)'$"

So a chunk has two areas where text data descends: first [z-a], then [Z-A]. Therefore, there would be at most 256 possible spaces out of the 128 chunks in the file where a descending string like "WSOLGD" could happen. (This is a conservative estimate; it's probably more like 240).

Therefore, the plaintext data in Uritual happens to connect to a single 40Kb file (1/527th of its size), TWICE out of the ~240 possible spaces for pure [z-a] or [Z-A] data.

Going any deeper than this leads to a rabbit hole of possibilities and probabilities, when really I'm comparing two signals -- NASA satellite data, and BoC's music -- that are clearly supposed to go up and down, using a subset of the same characters. Yes I realize that you could re-cast the previous sentence in a negative light: "really I'm just comparing two signals." I fucking know.. I find the connection to be interesting and thought-provoking regarding the possibility of intentional action.

--------

More intuitively there is no clue in the patterns you cite. If a clue was there it's more likely it would be signposted in such a way as to let you know you were onto something.

While I certainly do appreciate the skepticism that "BunnyRabbit" provided in his/her post overall, I think the assumption that I'm trying to crack a "code" is misinformed. I'm not trying to crack a code. I am simply looking at connections here, nothing more.

There doesn't need to be a clear signpost in the data telling me that I'm on the right track. Semantic indeterminacy is beautiful and challenging. I view it as faithful to the BoC approach to mixing. It's perfectly impossible to know if it's a signal or noise.

Even if I'm completely off-track, I'd prefer to be challenged than shown the way with an overt "signpost" winking at me, telling me I was smart enough to get here. What the hell would we find anyway? A geocached second album? I don't expect there to be an obvious clue in the raw data. They're clearly into oblique stuff... It makes you think.

I felt this connection made sense. It links to obscure data formats that were uploaded to the internet in the 1980s of images taken from the farthest human-made object from Earth, while passing the bodies of our solar system.

--------

As I said earlier, I don't have the time or statistical knowledge to prove some undeniably intentional connection, and frankly I don't fucking care! For me, that's not what art's about.

I very much respect users like "BunnyRabbit" who spent time explaining what aspects of my hypothesis remain wholly unverified. Again, thank you for your time and thoughts.

On the flipside, I think it's sad to make light of mental illness:

[SCHIZOPHRENIA INTENSIFIES]

The above remark is exemplary of the Online Disinhibition Effect. It's documented here: http://www.samblackman.org/Articles/Suler.pdf

Yes, we're on the internet.. There is a somewhat dominant paradigm emphasizing that it's okay to "type a message and move on." Please, take a step back and consider that there is a real person receiving and considering your thoughts, regarding an issue that he/she cares about.

I don't know everything. I consider being shown that I'm incorrect to be a learning experience. But being mocked for caring about art and considering what its implications might be is truly disappointing. I expect more from fans of this deeply thoughtful band.

Peace,
Jesusandhoes

[MathIsMusic]

Ignore the haters We need people who are willing to do this kind of digging.

Caveat -- the strings you're finding might individually have low probabilities, but you didn't know beforehand what you were looking for. The probability of finding any eye-catching thing is much greater than the probability of finding a specific thing that you defined before looking. There are many things that will catch your eye (collectively they're not rare).

Plus, even if you define something like "a string of six 6's in a row", it might not be improbable if the text you're searching is long enough. In the simple example of a randomly-generated text, as the text length approaches infinity, the chance of seeing that string will approach 100% (whereas if the text were only six characters long, then of course the probability would be low).

[re-phaelam-ed]

neat stuff....even if i dont understand it at all!

[Jonse]

I think I found a sock in my sock drawer.

[JESUSANDHOES]

I think I found a sock in my sock drawer.

It's hard to tell how closely you read this thread, but the hypothesis has kinda changed since my original post about hyper-precise amplitude modulation down to the byte.

Within the same second or so in Uritual, there are two strings both of which link to the exact same 40Kb NASA satellite image, broadcast 11/29/1980, at 23:18:59. In this image file, there are approximately 240 places where [a-z] or [A-Z] strings occur.

Each [a-z] or [A-Z] string is between 6 & 8 letters and is contained in a larger string:

#qrpnlga`]WSOLGD?=842

The set of 240 [a-z] and [A-Z] strings, from a single NASA image, connects TWICE to the ~44Kb file that is one approximate second of data from Uritual.

I find this to be a more interesting occurrence than the banality that you've suggested, even if it is completely unintentional.

Good day!

[Jonse]

I think I found a sock in my sock drawer.

It's hard to tell how closely you read this thread, but the hypothesis has kinda changed since my original post about hyper-precise amplitude modulation down to the byte.

Within the same second or so in Uritual, there are two strings both of which link to the exact same 40Kb NASA satellite image, broadcast 11/29/1980, at 23:18:59. In this image file, there are approximately 240 places where [a-z] or [A-Z] strings occur.

Each [a-z] or [A-Z] string is between 6 & 8 letters and is contained in a larger string:

#qrpnlga`]WSOLGD?=842

The set of 240 [a-z] and [A-Z] strings, from a single NASA image, connects TWICE to the ~44Kb file that is one approximate second of data from Uritual.

I find this to be a more interesting occurrence than the banality that you've suggested, even if it is completely unintentional.

Good day!

I remember my adderall days...

[akrotiri]

BOARDS OF CANADA CONFIRMED ILLUMINATI

[JESUSANDHOES]

Haha, ok. Well, none of those triangles are congruent bro. Or maybe that's the pattern?

Also WHERE DA RHOMBUSES?

[polarbear]

BOARDS OF CANADA CONFIRMED ILLUMINATI

lol

[Wildfire]

Most entertaining thread on here for some time. Great work JESUSANDHOES.

Unbelievable that you're getting stick from other BOC fans about analysing seemingly patterns in their music. The irony is overwhelming.

I just hope you're right, because this is utterly awesome if you are.

[Cupz]

[Najlepsiejszy]

Unbelievable that you're getting stick from other BOC fans about analysing seemingly patterns in their music. The irony is overwhelming.

lol, open a random song in notepad and google some letters, you'll probably get to CIA's website

[3noneTwo]

I just hope you're right, because this is utterly awesome if you are.

Nah.

What happened here is that JesusAndHoes opened a WAV Audio file as if it were a Text document. Because WAV files are often uncompressed (although not necessarily raw data), JAH was able to see patterns in the resulting text data — oscillations, data going up and down. Wave forms oscillate by nature, so all JAH saw was the result of a Text-based program trying to parse audio data as raw text. There's nothing more to it.

JAH's "analysis" is really more just a case of someone dicking around, mashing files into programs that aren't equipped to correctly read the data, and then claiming results because something came out the other end. All with zero understanding of what they're actually doing.


Open an (uncompressed) EXE file as a Raw (u-Law) audio file sometime for a similar effect. The larger the EXE file, the better. The results are often* pure audio chaos, but at least the patterns in the noise are interesting, even if EXE files aren't meant to be heard.

*Sometimes, in least in some older PC games, raw audio is actually embedded within the EXE file. But that's another topic altogether.

[Waterbagel]

I just hope you're right, because this is utterly awesome if you are.

Nah.

What happened here is that JesusAndHoes opened a WAV Audio file as if it were a Text document. Because WAV files are often uncompressed (although not necessarily raw data), JAH was able to see patterns in the resulting text data — oscillations, data going up and down. Wave forms oscillate by nature, so all JAH saw was the result of a Text-based program trying to parse audio data as raw text. There's nothing more to it.

JAH's "analysis" is really more just a case of someone dicking around, mashing files into programs that aren't equipped to correctly read the data, and then claiming results because something came out the other end. All with zero understanding of what they're actually doing.


Open an (uncompressed) EXE file as a Raw (u-Law) audio file sometime for a similar effect. The larger the EXE file, the better. The results are often* pure audio chaos, but at least the patterns in the noise are interesting, even if EXE files aren't meant to be heard.

*Sometimes, in least in some older PC games, raw audio is actually embedded within the EXE file. But that's another topic altogether.

Yezzir.

Let us also not forget that there is often some encryption and whatnot to files like this. Not only that, but .WAV, .MP3, what have you.. they all have meta-data as well. Title, length, author, and even some midpoints in the music. The fact that you can't find author, title, etc. verbatim in this raw text lends more to the encryption point.

It's not just "music-to-text".. Like 3noneTwo, it's just a program trying to understand a file meant for another program.

[Techboy]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/inn ... h-an-echo/

[miklatov]

Some people are coming across a bit jerk-y about it, but on the whole I agree that this is likely to be a coincidence.

What you need (and sorry if this has been mentioned) is a negative control. More like several.

Apply the same that you've done to a number of random tracks and see what you get.

[arcticsunrise]

interesting. i know lots of artists that use text editors to manipulate images and sound afterwards but generally would assume proper words or more easily readable stuff. we not all into cicida 3301
that said. anyone used any steganography software and tried loading images in and seeing what hidden text or data comes out ?