What's The Latest Buzz In Your Audio Recordings?

This post is about a link I've had open in my "too many tabs" horde for a while that has merits . . . and a caveat. I'm sharing it as a half-baked "this is interesting" idea.

Behold: The Hummingbird Clock. The idea behind this 2016 project by artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan is that minute fluctuations in the hum of the U.K.'s power grid make it possible to pinpoint exactly when any audio recording was made, based on the background noise of that electrical flow. This "fingerprint" could help determine if a video file has been tampered with or its timestamp altered.

There's a video at the link above that goes into more detail, although the website it connects to – hummingbirdclock[dot]info – no longer works. However, that site has been saved at archive.org . . . here's a link to the last capture they had in 2025. THAT WEBSITE MAKES NOISE! Beware if you're – say – wearing AirPods cranked at an overly loud level. Hypothetically.

The accompanying archived "About" page offers a smidge more info.

One reason I haven't shared it in the past six months I've had the tabs open (along with the fact that the page itself doesn't work) is that I can't quite figure out if this is a legit science-type phenomenon or a hypothetical "makes you think"-type art project. I haven't been able to find any real-world applications of this tech. Moreover, it doesn't have a Wikipedia page, which makes me question . . . well, everything.

Still, true or not, it's a cool possible idea, which makes it ideal fodder for (say) a bit of high-tech flavor for an adventure in GURPS Action or near-future cyberpunk.

-- Steven Marsh