If human history and knowledge had a sound, what would it sound like to you? Certainly, it will have very different sounds for each person in different regions of the world —but a clear sound identity can activate similar sensations in any part of the shot, see the short sounds that identify the start of a Netflix production, the Windows startup ringtone or from an Apple device to adapting “Fur Elise” for gas trucks. Because Wikipedia went after a sound to call its own too.

the result is a mixture of book pages turning, keyboard clicks and other synthetic sounds which encapsulate, as the name implies, “the sound of all human knowledge”.

The brief four seconds of this sound logo came from a Wikimedia Foundation contest. More than 3,000 collaborations were evaluated until they opted for the noise of knowledge created by Thaddeus Osborne, a nuclear scientist, who won US$ 2,500 (about R$ 13,000) for the feat.

Wikimedia will also take you to a professional recording studio to help produce a final version of your experiment. The result should come out by June this year.

“Thaddeus’ presentation captures the curiosity and joy that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects create for millions of people around the world,” said Zack McCune, director of marketing for the Wikimedia Foundation. “We are honored by his contribution to the free knowledge movement and grateful to the selection committee and voters for choosing a song that wonderfully represents free knowledge.”