In my Inbox today... a video of an amazing music machine!

In my Inbox today... the amazing video of an incredible music machine which 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.

Watch this:



Absolutely remarkable right? Amazingly, 97% of the machine's components apparently came from John Deere Industries, who make tractors and farm machinery and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft Iowa. Yes... farm equipment! (presumbably except for the bongos!)

The email says 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.

Ahhh... but wait just a second....

Hoax Slayer, famous for "debunking email hoaxes and exposing Internet scams since 2003"... in fact... perhaps sadly, two years ago, exposed this "incredible Music Machine from the University of Iowa"... excellent and remarkable as it is... as a prank... yet another of the many internet hoaxes that go (and come) around daily!!!

In December 2006, Hoax Slayer said the video itself is certainly an incredible and inspiring piece of work. However, far from being a remarkable work of engineering, it is in fact a very clever piece of computer animation and does not depict a real machine made of farm equipment at all!!

The video features a piece of music called Pipe Dream, (if you liked the video you'll love this link) that was created by Wayne Lytle and Dave Crognale and their team at Animusic, a content creation company located in Austin, Texas in the USA.

The company has created a number of quite amazing 3D computer graphics music animation videos that are available via the company website. According to information on the Animusic website:

"Both the graphics and the music are entirely digitally synthesized. Virtual instruments are invented by building computer graphics models of objects that would appear to create the sound of the corresponding music synthesizer track. Graphical instruments range from being reminiscent of existing instruments to arbitrarily abstract."

Some unknown prankster saw fit to create this email and fanciful tale to go along with the unusual video. No names no packdrill... but one can't help giving a sideways look at John Deere Industries and Bancroft of Iowa... a nice bit of advertising for them! :)

Even the university departments named in the message appear to be fictitious. There is no record of the 'Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory' or the 'Sharon Wick School of Engineering' at the University of Iowa... or anywhere else for that matter!

According to an article about the prank email, on Iowa's KCRG:

"The machine is supposedly a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering but if you search the campus high and low you’ll never find either of those buildings. They don’t exist."

Hoax Slayer rightfully concludes "there is no need to malign this fantastic animation by tacking on a foolish and totally fictitious cover story".

"Such clever work speaks for itself and needs no embellishment. Moreover, the real creators of the animation deserve credit for their genius."

If a friend forwards this email to you, now you can let them know the reality... and true origin of the remarkable 'farm machine music' video!! :)