A new computer algorithm is helping scientists record audio using a potted plant

Researchers at MIT have come up with a way to reproduce audio signals by examining video footage of the tiny vibrations made by ordinary objects.
“When sound hits an object, it causes the object to vibrate,” explained Abe Davis to MIT News. “The motion of this vibration creates a very subtle visual signal that’s usually invisible to the naked eye. People didn’t realize that this information was there.”
Davis is a doctoral student in electrical engineering and computer science and the first author on the study.
Labs at MIT have looked at amplifying and visualizing small motions in video before, he says. Previous work by his co-authors revealed that, in certain cases, the motions being amplified were caused by sound.
In the new study, Davis says, they started to ask, “How much audio information can we actually extract from these motions?”
So far they’ve had success recovering sound from potted plants, bags of various sorts and a glass of water, among other things. The objects that work b