Brown was inspired and immediately started working on his first project, Rawr! A study in Sonic Skullswhich is the work that Dinosaur Choir continues. The two projects are focused on the Corypyosaurus, but at different stages of their lifespan to study how the changes in the ridge of adult maturity affect their sound. However, the biggest difference between the two projects is the way sound is developed: the reimagination of the dinosaur vocal box.
“With Rawr!, We used a mechanical larynx, so people should really explode in a spokesperson to create sound. But once we started to exhibit it, we realized that it would not be possible for people to interact with him in a manner that was hygienic – and the pandemic knew this.
The work on dinosaurs officially started in 2021, Brown going to Canada, where the Corythosaurus is supposed to have lived, to update its research. She and Gajewski worked with the paleontologist Thomas Dudgeon, the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum, to analyze the most recent scans and 3D manufacturing. From these, they built a life-size replica of a head of adult Corythosaurus, to its complex nasal passages.
“I am extremely proud of my nasal passages,” jokes Brown. “I learned the CT segmentation for about a year to obtain them as precise as possible, taking into account the effects that are buried for millions of years would also have had on them.”
With the complete Skull model, the work then started on the vocalizations of the dinosaurs themselves. With the vocal box now in the form of calculation, he gave Brown much more control to test new research, and perhaps even contradictory without having to rebuild everything from zero.
“The models are based on a set of mathematical equations linked to voice mechanics – things like air pressure changes and a number of other variables affected over time,” she says. “I found some of these models in the literature and put them in the code according to the most recent research.”
In particular, Brown was inspired by a paper Looking in an ankylosaur larynx, which we only found in 2023. He led researchers to hypothesize that non -avian dinosaurs could have had a Syrinx more like a bird (which is located in the chest), and not the larynx of mammals and crocodiles (which is in the throat), as thought first.
Georgia Tech School of Music
