Listen To Wikipedia Turns Every Entry Edit Into A Beautiful Piece Of Music

You Can Listen To Wikipedia Being Updated In Real Time And It's Surprisingly Beautiful

According to Wikipedia's Wikipedia entry (that's a bit meta isn't it), there are over 5 million English language articles on the site, and over 37 million in total.

As of February last year Wikipedia had 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors every month. Imagine then, how often the open encyclopaedia is edited.

Well you don't have to imagine, you don't even have to see, you can listen, in real-time.

'Listen To Wikipedia' was created in 2014 and shows a live visual feed of every update and subtraction to all of Wikipedia's entries as they're happening into a continuously evolving piece of music.

Don't think it's just a constant wall of noise either, creators Stephen LaPorte and Mahmoud Hashemi set out to make sure that at its very core, the blend between music and data was seamless, in their own words:

"Bells indicate additions and string plucks indicate subtractions. Pitch changes according to the size of the edit; the larger the edit, the deeper the note."

We realise this might not be news to everyone but it's one of those projects that's intriguing enough that it deserves a second mention, not least because t's remarkably calming to listen to. With plucks and bell chimes occasionally interjected by a deep string chord that signifies that arrival of a new Wikipedia user.

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