Leonardo Painting Has Coded 'Soundtrack'

If true, one of my most admired persons has become even more amazing.

Boy you aren't kidding !

is there a recording I can listen to?

I thought this might be of interest to some. Excuse me if some of the thinking is outdated now, but this was 20 years ago, just shortly after I became enamored with the Mac.

Macintosh Article:
TITLE: IF LEONARDO HAD ONLY HAD A MAC !

Copyright© 1997, Joe L. Wilkins, Architect

(Originally Written in 1986 - not submitted for publication anywhere at that time. Many of my perspectives are not so startling when viewed ten years after the fact, but the observations are still relevant and the suggestions worthwhile.)

As I view the manner in which my own life has been affected by a little machine, I have had cause to think about the future and, then, about the past. As I daily pour more and more of my own ideas, feelings and thoughts into this little machine, my ego reflects upon how things I have written might some day affect the lives of others. As I do this, suddenly it hits me! WOW! If only Leonardo daVinci and some of the other great thinkers and doers of the past had possessed this little machine of mine! Can you imagine what we might have gained from their thoughts and ideas? Mind you, I am not putting myself into the same category with Francis Bacon, Desiderius Erasmus, Leonardo daVinci or Thomas Moore but, as you read what I am proposing, it might not be so ridiculous to give the average person a little more credit than we normally do.

The reason that Leonardo came so strongly to mind was that he was not, apparently, a person of many words. The other individuals I mentioned and, for that matter, most famous people of history, who are thought of as great minds, have been primarily writers.

The writings that Leonardo left behind were mostly in the form of short, cryptic notes, frequently written as mirror images and appended to one of his sketches. There have been many reasons proposed for his having written thusly. Some have maintained that was how he actually saw things; others have suggested that, since he was left handed, it was easier to write from right to left, which is a distinct possibility, but one that I do not accept; still others believe that it was his guarded attempt at coded secrecy - to protect his scientific and engineering ideas from examination by the curious.

Unusual ideas were not well accepted in the late 1400's. Personally, I think it more likely that he did it, at least initially, as a challenge; since we all experiment with our handwriting from time to time and he continued to do it because it was fun. He may have viewed the secrecy element as a beneficent side effect. Regardless of his reasons, he could have done it better and more easily on a Mac. Certainly he wouldn't have done it that way on a Mac if the reason really had been his left handedness. At least, if he had done it on a Mac, it would have been easier for us to read it. If you have never fiddled with MacDraft or MacDraw you may not be aware that they have the ability to flop Text around in such a manner that it appears on the screen (and prints out) backwards, upside down or in a few other interesting, though impractical, arrangements. However, that is really a trivial issue when compared to the many other features of the Mac that would have confronted, challenged, assisted and delighted Leonardo. There are two very significant features of the Mac when considered together - pictures and synergism - that would have led to an even greater immortality for Leonardo. They are the underlying issues involved in what I am about to suggest as one of the most important activities for the future of computer programmers.

Leonardo daVinci left behind some 7,000 pages of notes and drawings. He left us with a collection of beautiful line drawings, on a wide variety of topics, performed in several different media; not to mention his great paintings - The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa and two renditions of St. Anne with the Virgin and Child. He lived, almost, to the age of seventy; which means that he produced, on the average, at least one document every third day of his entire life. He must have put down virtually everything that came into his mind. He must have routinely and quite painstakingly put his thoughts and ideas down on paper, mostly for his own satisfaction and the development of his projects for, although it is believed that he once intended to publish his work, with the technology available at the time he could not really have believed that his work would endure to affect the thoughts and very lives of future multitudes. Keep in mind that half of his life was over prior to the discovery of America and the printing press was only perfected by Gutenberg two years prior to Leonardo's birth and many miles to the north; while photography was still centuries away. Can you even begin to imagine what he might have left us if he could have done it on a Mac. One idea leading to another, one sketch in a multitude of variations until he finally got exactly the proportions that he wanted.

Leonardo, fortunately for posterity, was a solitary man who believed that, as he is quoted to have written, "If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself, or even less, in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his {the companion's} conduct; and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight". Here was a man who was ideally suited to interact with a Mac. He was in fact the most solitary of men. He could have sketched with a Mac and, while drawing, he could have pulled-down the Note Pad and jotted down a few notes about any one of his myriad ideas for later reference and consideration. And while drawing or thinking, there would have occurred a synergism between him and the Mac. He would have found that he was capable of doing much more than he had planned to do. He would not have come up with thoughts that would have disappeared into the mists of timelessness, having been forgotten before they could be acted upon, because he was too thoroughly involved in what he was doing to take the time necessary to record these other peripatetic mental ruminations. He would not have been frustrated by the expensiveness of the paper when he discarded mistakes or ideas that didn't pan out by merely flinging a few electrons into the air - no crumpled paper to fill his waste basket. There would be no pencils to sharpen, no chalky hands to wash. His options were open for the first time to experiment with Mona Lisa's smile. We think it enigmatic or whatever; I suggest that, with the true heart of an artist, Leonardo would probably have liked to have changed it - had not the paint dried firmly upon the canvas, which no doubt he had scraped off and repainted a dozen times or more already.

With a Mac, Leonardo would have perfected his design for the immortal lady, pixel by pixel, until he was thoroughly satisfied or disgusted as the case might be. I predict that one day we will have electronic pictures, battery powered, that hang upon our walls - generating immortally the designs of our artists - in full living color with no need to restore the fading frescoes or to clean the encrusted, cracking and flaking canvas-bound oil; perhaps, three dimensionally even, as holographs. Certainly, if Leonardo were alive and pounding away at the keyboard of my Mac, he would be working on something like that, right this minute, I am sure.

From the tireless research of Giorgio Vasari, an artist himself who became possibly the very first modern art historian, we also know that Leonardo "could sing and improvise divinely" upon the lyre. With his tireless, imaginative mind and a musical proclivity as well, can you even begin to fathom what might have emerged from Leonardo's Mac ? The Mac is after all a tireless companion that makes no demands - only an occasional "beep" or two. If you conform to all of the pre-agreed-to semantics, supply appropriate input at all times - Mac will give you its very best. (I suppose if we treated people the same way, we would probably improve the results we get from them.) A modest diet of electrons and an immense capacity to engorge itself with software, accompanied by an ability to keep its eye(s) open forever, make the Mac an ideal companion for a solitary man (or woman). It can give your ideas a speed of operation and development that will enable the ideas to apparently have their own ideas - so rapidly do they flow, become refined and yield results. Mac can be an unfaltering associate, giving much more than it, apparently, takes. Such a co-conspirator would have made Leonardo even more of a master among men than he was.

What does all of this mean ? First of all, I think, it means that we will have more Leonardo's. To a certain extent, there is a little bit of Leonardo in all of us. We shall have more solitary thinkers engraving their dreams and aspirations upon all forms of electronic media. As the Mac continues to expand its sphere of influence, its magnetic personality, if you will, its ability to interact synergistically with its human co-conspirators, we will find ourselves deluged with a mountainous assemblage of tiny, plastic-encased, electronic recordings of ones and zeros, apparently signifying nothing. It will be imperative that we have some method of sorting the wheat from the chaff. What will we keep and what will we erase? We will have some very important ideas and thoughts that may only surface when a solitary individual leaves this plain of existence, perhaps for another. This individual may have thought thoughts and solved problems not even broached by others, much less resolved. Now that the Mac permits us to provide a record, not just in words, but in thousand-word-type-pictures and resonant tones as well, it would be a shame for these thoughts, ideas, solutions and dreams not to be examined for the intrinsic value they may possess.

That will not be humanly possible unless we develop an expert system designed for the sole purpose of evaluating and screening computer records. A computer program that can bring to the attention of the human community things that are different, things that may have creative significance to the future of humankind, must be developed sometime within the very near future. This is not a project that we can allow to be initiated and/or controlled by government - our's or any one else's; since the very nature of this program will permit the user to screen and evaluate all the private electronic media of the world whether we wish it to be screened or not. If the program is not begun by the private sector, some governmental department may develop "Big Brother" under the guise of developing the program I am suggesting we need. The basic structural concepts of the two program variations will not be very different. Certainly the data base required for much of the decision-making processes for LEONARDO (which is what I propose to call the program) would, if available to Government, make the programming and operation of "Big Brother" a cinch. I propose that we begin the study and formulation of such a Master Program now. This could well be the most important Programming task ever undertaken. It is time to start thinking about it. It is even time to starting doing something about it. Do I have any takers ? Suggestions ?

Sounds a bit like the opening riff to "Cat Scratch Fever" - - - or so I've heard.

I love his work, and this was an inspiring story.

40 seconds himn of god. Well it is exactly 39 seconds. This number giving out of it number 3 and here we are talking about holly number.

Andres

"There's always a risk of seeing something that is not there, but it's certain that the spaces (in the painting) are divided harmonically," he told the AP. "Where you have harmonic proportions, you can find music."

Well...harmonic proportions can easily been substituted for artistic proportions, both of which are derived from mathematical proportions.

It's an interesting thought, though. I'd would bet that if there is actually music, then it would show up in some other works by Da Vinci.

The biggest genius of all has many more mysteries under his sleeve which, we mere mortals, can only stare in awe at and bow down in respectful silence towards the greatest of human beings to have ever walked this earth - Leonardo da Vinci

Fascinating project. Thanks.

And that my friends is why Leonardo was a painter and not a musician.