Amazing Music Machine

Netlore Archive: Emailed video of an 'amazing music machine' allegedly manufactured out of farm equipment parts at the University of Iowa

Description: Emailed video
Circulating since: November 2006 (this version)
Status: Caption is false
Analysis: See below

Email example contributed by D. Sanchez, 18 November 2006:

FW: Check this out, made from John Deere equipment Subject: University of Iowa Farm Machine Music This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa, yes farm equipment! It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video but as you can see it was WELL worth the effort. It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian. Watch Video

Comments: False. The video is amazing, no question, but the "fantastic machine" depicted therein wasn't built out of farm equipment parts at the University of Iowa. It's an example, rather, of the incredible 3D computer animation created by Wayne Lytle and his team at Animusic in Austin, Texas. No such machine exists in the real world.

Nor, for the record, is there a "Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory," a "Sharon Wick School of Engineering," nor a "Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall" at the University of Iowa. The caption accompanying the video in emails circulating since November 2006 is entirely fictitious, authored by an anonymous prankster.

You can view a clip from the original video, entitled "Pipe Dream," in its proper context here.

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Sources and further reading:

Animusic Home Page
Creators of 3D computer graphics music animation

Computer-Generated Wonder
New York Times, 30 November 2005

Last updated: 12/04/06

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