From Lip Reading to Plant reading - Passive Recovery of Sound from Video

So, I came across this video today (courtesy of FlowingData) and was astounded. In this YouTube video from MIT, researches use a High Speed Camera to recover sound using video.

From the project's website:

When sound hits an object, it causes small vibrations of the object’s surface. We show how, using only high-speed video of the object, we can extract those minute vibrations and partially recover the sound that produced them, allowing us to turn everyday objects—a glass of water, a potted plant, a box of tissues, or a bag of chips—into visual microphones.We recover sounds from highspeed footage of a variety of objects with different properties, and use both real and simulated data to examine some of the factors that affect our ability to visually recover sound.

Even if you don't have a High Speed Camera, an adaption of their program can be used with traditional cameras. By utilizing the Rolling Shutter many video cameras use, they obtained a high enough frequency to playback sound.

If this interests you, check out the video below.