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

[JESUSANDHOES]

Story requires a bit of background, but I'll keep it concise as possible.

TL;DR:

Examining the 'official' wav file (the one I downloaded from Bleep) of "Uritual" in a text editor revealed some interesting micro-patterns in the raw data that, at the very least, I think connect to the "up-down" palindromic theme that exists within the album.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

A friend emailed me regarding sound glitches, and it led me to think about how raw sound data could be manipulated. I can't explain how, but this thought led me to consider the Tomorrow's Harvest tracks, and I think I might have found something pretty damn intriguing.

I'm not an expert on this, so I'd love to hear what other people think.

Anyway, here's what happened:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

1, First, I opened up "Semena Mertvykh.wav" (the official 44,100 16-bit wav from Bleep) in TextEdit, a basic text-editor for Macs.

2. I went to the bottom of the text file and immediately noticed the prevalence of "U" characters. Some characters had accents on top, like "Ú", "Û", "Ù", etc. These characters are quite prevalent throughout the end of the file. After noticing this, I checked other wav files that have no connection to BoC in any way. It seems the "U" character with various accents on it is quite common in wav files in general. Which leads to my first question:


What is it about bit-depth, sample rate, etc that causes these "U" characters to be so common in character-based isomorphisms of raw .wav audio data? Or was my sample size too small?


3. Anyway, this pattern of the "U" character and its variants naturally led me to think of "Uritual". I mean, a "U" repeating many times, while viewing a character-based isomorphism of raw sound data... sounds like a "Uritual" if I've ever encountered one.

4. So, I opened up "Uritual" in TextEdit, went to the bottom of the file again, and found a large number of micro-patterns in the raw data, all of which followed a very specific, palindromic pattern: low - higher - highest - lower - low.

I have also found this pattern in various other places on Tomorrow's Harvest, on broader levels. For one example, take [2:33] in Gemini: there is a sine wave that whose pitch moves up and then back down, creating a mental image of one single phase of a sine-wave. A connection to the idea of something collapsing: Up, and back down.

Also, as they mentioned in interviews, "Collapse" is the centerpiece of the album. One could imagine the album leading up to, and then drawing back from, "Collapse." People have also found that "Collapse" itself is, to a certain extent, palindromic. So we have an album whose middle song is reversed upon itself in the middle… quite the pattern.


Anyway, I'm going to list 30 examples of the types of patterns that I found when I viewed the 41,000 16 wav file of "Uritual" as character data. Even the largest samples of these would be less than 2/1000ths (!) of a second of time. I'm not an expert at all on this type of stuff, but I doubt the likelihood of all of these happening randomly without a single deviation. Yes, sinusoidal waves comprise music. Up, down. Got it. But this happening randomly over .002 seconds and not again, not repeating itself, will not create audible, musical, "waves" in the conventional sense.

And the likelihood of this many patterns manifesting itself into ascii data without a *single* error is quite unlikely!

I literally found all 30 of these without one instance where something didn't fit the pattern. I checked each string. There are many more in the file.

For those who'd like an ascii chart as reference to line up how these "raw data strings" all end up participating in the same up-down pattern, refer to this website:

http://www.aboutmyip.com/AboutMyXApp/AsciiChart.jsp


If you're not familiar with how text characters are represented in binary form (which is what connects them to samples of music), then you'll have to educate yourself.. Sorry!

Here's my tentative conclusion:

I might be completely wrong, but I'm led to hypothesize that BoC have altered the contents of their digital music in a text editor... on a micro-level of scale, in a way that's there, but not necessarily directly audible.




Here are 30 examples that I copied straight from my text editor, without a single string deviating from the up-down pattern, with respect to any character's ascii value:

(EDIT: sorry that there's emoticons in here; i'm too lazy to add escape characters, but rest assured there aren't smiley faces popping up in the plaintext, lol)

1.


1
4
6
9;=
? ABCDEFFFFF
FEE
DDCBA@?
=<<
<
< ;:98 7 5 3 1



2.

ADFJNQTUVWWVVTROMJHFDA

3.

ABCDEEFHILNOQRSTTTRQOLIFC

4.

BG J
MP
QSTTSSRRRRQQQ
PO
N
LIG
C

5.

0123455 6!6#7$8$8'8'8(9)9)9+9+9+9+9+:+9*8)8)7'6&5$3#2!0.,*(&#!

6.

!$'),.
0
235
7
:
<?ACFIKMOQRS
R RQPNLIGEB
@
=
;


7.


&+169=@BDEFHHIJK
M
N
OPPQPPP
P
O
N MKHEA=83.


8.


)+.
1
4
6
9;=
? ABCDEFFFFF
FEE
DDCBA@?
=<<
<
<9>ADFJNQTUVWWVVTROMJHFDA@><8>ABD EGH
JKLNOPQRTTTSSRRQQQQQQQQQQQQ
POM
LIFC?:
6


11. (this one goes up-down-up-down; an overall up-down effect. ends on the ascii 36 value)

?
BDEFGEDB?=;865 4 3 456
8:<A>:50*$


12.

"%),
/
268:<A><9>
@BCCDDBA?<8>
@BCCDDBA?<84/*%



19.

"
'+/2579;<<8>
D
J
NS
X[_beilpsvy{}~}{xvtqmjfa]YTQMJGDB@><;987531/-*'$!



21.

"',058<?BEGHIIJIIHGFECA@=;:7641/-*&"



22. (very turbulent, but constantly up and down)


" (.
4:@GMRW\`cfijkllllkigedcba` `!_!^"]!\"Z"X!W"T P MHB<5-'


23.


!&,16<E>
<
:98887
7 7 766530
-


24.

!"$%&' (
)
*,.
0358;=@CDEEEEDC@<7>CGKNPRTUUUVWVWWVWV!V"V$V%U&T&Q&N&J$E"> 70(


25.

$' +.259 <C>;9
530.+


26. (utilizes only the lowest characters that are represented with symbols rather than space)

!""""#######""!


27.

;@DHK N
PR
STTTSRQOMKIFEB@><962,'



28. (lots of up-downs, but clear pattern still)

$* 07
>CGKNPRTUUUVWVWWVWV!V"V$V%U&T&Q&N&J$E"> 70(




29. (including a funny quasi-emoticon ^___^ )

!"# &(
*-02479;=?@BDEGIKM PR TWY[\]^___^\ZYUR
PMKI
H


30. (goes up almost entirely, but one letter goes back down)

!"##$&()*,--//
024
5 8:<>@BDEEEE
D


I made a few edits to make this more clear.

[Techboy]

you're way out in the realms of insanity here mate.

you hit the nail on the head when you alluded to the fact that waveforms are oscillatory.

They *always* go up and down; therefore so will the sample amplitude; therefore so will the 16 bit binary number associated with the sample amplitude; therefore so will the UTF (16 bit extension of ascii) character associated with those samples.

As for the U, the hex codes are U+00F9, U+00FA, U+00FB, U+00FC respectively for ù ú û ü - If the data is padded with 00 bytes (often happens) then these are close enough to the top value, "U+00FF" that I presume theyre used as data separators.

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode ... f8test.htm

[1991]

Sometimes too much is actually too much.

[JESUSANDHOES]

Thanks for the response. I'm sorry if this seems kooky.

The reason I posted was to figure out if this pattern was indeed just something that happens based on how digital audio is encoded, which is something I have a tenuous at best understanding of.

Techboy, I appreciate the knowledge you contributed on the "U" characters, but I'm not entirely convinced by your other point.

The pattern isn't simply "these characters go up and down, wow". Like I said, up down, got it. It's really the chances of these patterns constantly moving through the letters A-Z. Other tunes I've looked at (admittedly maybe only 7-8 other wav files) don't have ABBBCDEGHJKLLLLLDA type things throughout them. Maybe I've used too small of a sample, but that type of pattern with all capital letters really jumped out at me.

Also, there are points where the same character repeats many times in a row. If a character is repeating, then the waveform isn't oscillating...

I appreciate the jokes about Pi, and maybe I have confirmation bias, and maybe this is an unintentional artifact purely related to digital audio. But I still think there's room to wonder.

[Techboy]

It's just because it's quiet.

[Najlepsiejszy]

WATMM must be laughing so hard right now

[chronical]

Oh dear

We really need new material.

[pianoforte]

Sometimes too much is actually too much.

Off topic, but: BEST. MOVIE. EVER.

[warphead]

I'm not an expert on this, so I'd love to hear what other people think.

Sure. You need to get out more.

[2020k]

[Cyclosa]

I'm not an expert on this, so I'd love to hear what other people think.

Sure. You need to get out more.

I for one thoroughly enjoy your analysis of BOC material.
Please keep up the good work mate

[Mexicola]

Wow we all took a snippy pill tonight didn't we?? Person-makes-far-fetched-analysis-of-BOC-on-Twoism shocker! Give the guy a break, c'mon.

[Valotonin]

With the fact that boards' advertising campaign for TH contained clues that involved going in to source code and using programs to find hidden messages in gif images can you really blame someone for wanting to find patterns in the binary for the music? Given everything, that doesn't sound too far fetched anymore.

From my experience it is rare to find any recognisable patterns in binary data (for music at least)
So who knows? He may have actually found something.

Don't fixate your time on finding clues, though.
There is an awful lot else you could be doing right now

[thepastinsidepressant]

looks legit, we'll wait for mdg to confirm it otherwise i'm keeping an open mind.

[BunnyRabbit]

This reminds of how, after uncovering double agents in the 50's and 60's, intelligence services in the west formed counter intelligence groups that went looking for more moles. The problem was they were looking and looking and basically went silly trying to find something that either wasn't there or wasn't where anyone would be able to find it. But they were there to look, so they did. And they'd been caught out before so there must be more, right? On it went, wasting time and energy and even ruining careers with half baked theories. Eventually it became clear that it was largely futile and the whole thing was scaled back - much to the relief of the spies who were under constant fear of being suspected by these zealous but flawed watchmen. The crucial thing was that the soviets who set the whole thing in train were getting disruption and paranoia in their rivals organisations for free. It wasn't planned that way but the shock of finding such betrayal turned the victims in on themselves.

After all the tricks BOC got up to with Geogaddi and the Red Moon thing, and the reaction it got, they knew the TCH campaign would work. We were still pouring over the old case files for clues so any new tease would be taken up with gusto. It was fun but we knew when it was done. They knew how far they could go with it and didn't torment us with stuff that went nowhere. The game was played and then it was over.

I don't think BOC expect people to go to the lengths described above. It's not intended. One day they might want to play again, knowing that we're ready, but when they do I believe we will know that we are playing.

[Iced Cooly Beatnik]

5.

0123455 6!6#7$8$8'8'8(9)9)9+9+9+9+9+:+9*8)8)7'6&5$3#2!0.,*(&#!

boc is trying to tell us they think the album is p. cool

[JESUSANDHOES]

You need to get out more.

Haha, I get out plenty, my friend; don't you worry.

I appreciate the negative feedback. It has forced me to think more about all this stuff and if it really makes any sense at all.

Let's look again at a handful of patterns I found in near the 90-95% mark in "Uritual." These are directly copied from the song viewed as plaintext:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

13455555431
01234667899999887541
0122210
ACDFGHJKKKLLLLLLKKJIH
ACDFHIKLMOQRSTVXXYYYYYWVTQUMJGEA
BDFHJKLNOPPQQQQPONKIF
ACDEFGHIIIIHH
ABDFHJLMOQRSSTSQOMKIF
01123456777776544210
CEFGHHHGFDCA
BFJMOQSTUVWWWVVUTRQONLJ
ABBCCBBAA
HNRUVWVUUUTVY
BDEFFEA
234433332
gkoprrrrrssuu
chlpsuwwwvusplgb
023677642
ABCDCBA
BGKNOQQPONMLJIGFDB
378998420
AFLOTVYYYXVUSQON
CIMOQQRRRRSTUV
AEIOU (not the pattern, but interesting)
02444321
CDEFFGGGHGGGFEDBA
CFHIJIHGFDB
246776420
124565543322121223321
CDEEEEDC
EHJLMNNMLJHFDB
BEGHIIJIIHGFECA
BCDEEFFFFFFFGGFFEEEDCA
1344556666677654310
ADFJNQTUVWWVVTROMJHFDA
CGJMLSTVXYYXXVT R O M JHEB
ABCDEEFHILNOQRSTTTRQOLIFC
13455421
0123345555554310
24677652
01222211
12456889999875320
BDFHJLMNOPPONLJHFDA
BDDEEEDDCB
0124578999:::::::998776554332210
ABDEFFEDA
ACFDDDBB
adeghghhgedb
abbddddca
023566677766666554321
AEGILOQRUV VW XY XY X UUSRQQQ ONMLKIHGFDA
ABDGIKMPQRSS S S R Q ONLJIGFEEDDDDCCC
BCDEFGGFD
0134444320
0245788877643210
ACCDCDDCBA
245555431
0233555654433320
023334333222

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This particular specimen is a good example:

01234667899999887541

The characters move upward from a starting point, reaching a 'plateau' (often sustained), then moving back down to near the beginning point. It basically maps the first half of a sinusoidal period. Additionally, the movement is always contained within the subset of [0-9], or [A-Z], or the set of [a-z].

I've considered the possible ways that someone could create these patterns in sound data, INCLUDING the sustained plateau:

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1. From distortion

As a signal moves above 0dB, it will clip at its max amplitude before coming back down. Therefore the clipped signal would create a sustained character at the peak amplitude. Once mixed and mastered, each micro-pattern somehow ended up in either the 0-9, A-Z, or a-z region every time. Also the threshold for distortion changed for each micro-pattern, somehow.

2. From hard limiting

This is similar to the above distortion theory. A limiter won't allow the signal to go above a certain threshold value, so all signals at or above that threshold would be forced to the same upper-limit character. Once mixed and mastered, each micro-pattern somehow ended up in either the 0-9, A-Z, or a-z region every time. Also the threshold for limiting changed for each micro-pattern, somehow.

3. From square-wave-like oscillations

The sustained plateau is somewhat reminiscent of a square-wave oscillation, with the top being sustained. But I'd expect to see negative oscillations as well, which I haven't found. The pattens in the characters go up then down, but they never go down then up using the same characters.

4. From editing the UTF-16 data in a text editor

This would allow the most freedom and capability for precision on a bit-by-bit level, and it would create the possibility of encoding messages. Take the above string "AEIOU", for example. None of the above methods would provide an explanation for that coincidence.


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I think the most likely possibility is 4, and here's why:

Upon further analysis, I found some other intriguing strings within "Uritual", and I decided to use them as input for google searches. Each time, one of three websites (sometimes all of them) came up at the top of my search. I googled for exact matches, so the actual query was "XTNID?:52" including quotes.

The intriguing strings that I found inside Uritual are:


XTNID?:52
ZWTPLIE
xuqmif
YUPMJFC
XUROLHF
zwvtrqolgb
YUPMJFC?;60
omid^XRKE
dhkortvu
zwtpkea
vohaYRKE
ZWSOLHD
AEHLPSVY
XTOJE?80
XURMHC=71

These all led mainly to the following three sites:

1. http://pdsimage.wr.usgs.gov/cdroms/Voyager/vg_0032/browse/saturn/c3564xxx/

These are all pages for individual photographs from the Voyager mission as it passed Saturn in early December, 1980. I downloaded an application called NASAView which allows you to look at the .ibg files. They're beautiful photos.

Saturn is also the 6th planet from the Sun.

The etching of the nuclear family from disc 3, side B of Geogaddi (the sixth side) is clearly a reference to the golden records that are on board the Voyager.

Also, each image has a duration of 1.44 seconds, which is 1/60,000 of a day.. or 60(10^3). Reminded me of Sixtyten.

Also just as a side-note, Europa and the prospect of water on Saturn's moons fits nicely in to the whole "future of humanity" theme.

"XTNID?:52", "ZWTPLIE", "xuqmif", "YUPMJFC", and "XUROLHF" all led to subpages of the above.


2. http://mhd.sr.unh.edu/~jraeder/RUNS/

This is the webpage of a professor of physics and space science. A lot of the sub-pages that were linked by the below strings had massive amounts of text data, like near 1GB in some cases, but I'd bet it's a lot of satellite data.

"zwvtrqolgb", "YUPMJFC?;60", "omid^XRKE", "dhkortvu", "zwtpkea", "vohaYRKE", "ZWSOLHD", "AEHLPSVY", "XTOJE?80", & "XURMHC=71" all lead to subpages of the above.


3. http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/

This site provides satellite weather data for the US. "AEHLPSVY" & "ZWSOLHD" both lead to different subpages of this site.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=


I think that we can all agree that at the lowest possible level of scale, there is a very high degree of precision in these up-down, sinusoidal, AABBCCCDDDDDDCCBBA patterns. But regardless of the intentionality behind those precise patterns, unless I'm missing something, it would be incredibly unlikely for all these seemingly random strings above (ie, "XUROLHF") to point to the same websites. And for those websites to share the common theme of satellite data!

But this begs the question… How is it that the same strings link to several of these same websites, and often ONLY those? How could that be? And if these strings were placed into the song with the intention of linking to these sites, how could BoC have known that all these sites share the same random strings? WTF?

...

Anyway, here's what I make of this:

-- THIS IS COMPLETELY MY OWN SUBJECTIVE POINT OF VIEW --

I think it's unlikely that this is all here randomly and by accident. I still have my doubts because I can't "prove" anything, but there seems to be a good deal of evidence pointing to intentional action.

So, I would argue that there seems to be some amount of intention by BoC here, and the character data seems to contain some number of messages that were put there on purpose. If true, the data would therefore function, for brief windows of time, simultaneously as music and text.

Also, as I mentioned in my first post, I find the up-down, gnarled sinusoidal micro-pattern to be reminiscent of an up-down theme permeating the album. You can hear a good example of this at [2:33] in "Gemini". The album also is apparently somewhat palindromic according to BoC, with the track "Collapse" in the middle having a palindromic structure itself.

So we have on the broadest and most atomic levels of scale, a reference to a downward trend after an upward one. The've said in interviews that they're interested in fractals. This "up-then-down" pattern seems to occur on various levels of scale, so I'd say it's fractal-like.

And regarding how it connects to a political / historical message, well, I think that much goes without saying.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

So, that's all I got.

If you have ideas or thoughts to contribute, I look forward to hearing them. That includes criticism!

All I ask is that if you're going to provide negative criticism (which is again, welcome), I'd prefer that you use reasoning and evidence instead of ad hominem accusations.

And for those of you who've been kind about my analyses, I appreciate it.

Thank you,
jesusandhoes

edited for clarity & flow within an hour of posting.

Last edited by JESUSANDHOES on Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:02 am, edited 13 times in total.

[zeoevil]

I OVERFLOW MAN.

[JESUSANDHOES]

I don't think BOC expect people to go to the lengths described above. It's not intended. One day they might want to play again, knowing that we're ready, but when they do I believe we will know that we are playing.

I disagree with the above perspective, and I cite the following quote:

Have you found more musical ways to integrate mathematics into the fabric of the music on Tomorrow's Harvest?

"Yes, it's loaded with patterns and messages. There are various tricks embedded throughout the whole body of this album, so it'll be interesting to see whether people pick up on these things."

[2020k]

I OVERFLOW MAN.

LMAO THIS WINS THE THREAD.

I'm actually thoroughly enjoying this thread, even though I don't really understand all of it. The uncoverings are interesting and nothing surprises me with Boards. They're smart fellows!

Any thing more to share??