University of Connecticut CT Scans Instruments And Im Paying For It
FAFSA Taxes and Research Waste
Leave it to the University of Connecticut to rig something up that has very little merit outside of a very small interest circle on the taxpayers dime.
So we all love instruments right? I mean hell we love music so when we stumble across a French horn at a yard sale and its missing a valve or two.. there is hope.
Well there is now- cuz the crazy kids and professors at UCONN have figured out how to use a CT scan to look inside instruments. Are ya stoked?!
Dr. Robert Howe, a reproductive endocrinologist in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts, says his medical practice showed him how computerized tomography could make precise 3-D images of body parts. As a student of music history, he realized the same CT scanning technology could help him study delicate musical instruments from the past. Howe, who is also a doctoral student in music theory and history at UConn, last year brought his idea to music theory professor Richard Bass, who contacted Sina Shahbazmohamadi, an engineer and the school’s director for advanced 3-D imaging.
The rest as they say.. is history reconstruction. Personally I think it’s a good thing but I also think we can be using that funding for something a little more profound than this. Call me closed minded but I see very little merit in this ‘preservation’ let alone using the instruments. There are something’s that should be allowed to deteriorate gracefully. It’s like Botox and Frankenstein efforts on a human.
Paul Cohen, a saxophonist who teaches at New York University, said Howe’s work could go a long way in helping experts understand what centuries-old music was meant to sound like. If they can accurately reproduce the dimensions in the mouthpiece that Adolphe Sax himself invented, it would be of fundamental, seminal importance in understanding our instrument,” he said.
It’s a waste of public funding and an atrocity considering the cost of college educations even ‘in state’.
Howe has already played one instrument, a 1740 recorder, with a replacement part made by the 3-D printer. “The universal availability of 3-D printing, which is happening as we wait, will make all this work very relevant and not just for musical instruments,” Howe said. “The ability to measure and replicate items that are difficult to measure and replicate is going to explode.”
And so will my wallet.
This entire exercise should be privately funded. To aspire to play a sax from the 18th century holds no value outside the musician who smacks his blow hole on it and writes a paper on it for all to read. It’s time we reassess where our money goes when we cut those tuition checks.
