Daphne Oram, the inventor of the photo-electric music system defined Oramics, has already appeared in a previous post in the role of clever and stylish muse. Since the Science Museum in London is now expanding the exhibit dedicated to her and, since yesterday's post closed with an early '80s synth track, it sounds apt to dedicate a new post to Oram.
You can go back to that previous post to read more about her discoveries and achievements since, for today, I'm embedding the short video you can see at the Science Museum in the section dedicated to electronic music and Daphne Oram (it will clarify some of the points made in that previous post - please check out the drawn pattern for possible fashion/print inspirations) and I'm also reporting Oram's favourite quote from Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis (1627): “We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it: and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances...”
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