00:01The Universe of Sound Data Sonification Project, it's all about taking NASA data, NASA images, and translating them into something
00:08that you can hear.
00:09This is done through a mathematical mapping, where we're taking the pixels and just translating them into different kinds of
00:16soundbeds.
00:17My name is Dr. Kimberly Arkand, and I'm a visualization scientist for NASA's Chandricks Observatory at the Center for Astrophysics.
00:25I'm Sophie Kastner, and I'm a composer, and I wrote the piece Where Parallel Lines Converge.
00:31My piece centers around the idea of spiraling.
00:33I'm always kind of looking for new things that we can try, new ways to understand things, new ways to
00:39process information.
00:41The initial plan was to take the original sonifications and translate them as accurately as possible into pieces to be
00:49played by musicians.
00:52When Sophie came into this project as a professional composer, she really brought a unique perspective.
00:59To me, it just seemed like this brilliant idea of converting data to sound, not only for visually impaired people
01:04who then can appreciate these images that they can't necessarily see,
01:08but also as a supplemental tool for someone who's looking at the image who can then hear it.
01:13It was different once I started thinking about it from a composer's point of view.
01:17All of these objects seem so unknowable, so it's incredible to me that we have these opportunities to bring those
01:25objects down to Earth, to help make them knowable.
01:27It is this idea of capturing light that's been traveling to us, translating scientific information into something we can perceive,
01:35something we can understand, something we can learn from.
01:52It's been such a pleasure to work with Sophie as she works through this idea of translating a translation into
01:58something that can be played.
02:00Paying attention to the NASA data, being authentic to the scientific story, but bringing it down into the sphere of
02:07human-playable sounds.
02:11What she very smartly and adeptly did was focus on moments in the data that would make it a bit
02:16more bite-sized for an ensemble to play.
02:19The significant sections of the image where there's a real cool story to tell, and a cool soundbed to make
02:25from that story.
02:35I was working with an ensemble of about seven musicians.
02:39I can't necessarily do this in the same way.
02:42Taking the data and incorporating computer software,
02:47okay, let me use the similar process to what the original sonifications did,
02:51but add my own spin to it, because I also wanted to make it a piece of music suited to
02:57the instruments I was working with.
02:59To me, that's just a wonderful melding of science and art.
03:04The concept of using data and then translating it directly to sound was a really interesting idea to me.
03:11There's this huge emotional layer to looking at these images of space.
03:17Oh my god, I'm so small in comparison to this vast object.
03:22It's such a large feeling to have.
03:26I wanted to dig into those emotions.
03:31When you're talking about things like gamma ray bursts, blazars, quasars, black holes,
03:36like all of these things sound too incredible to really understand, to have a personal connection to.
03:42But sound, or music, you can, you can have a personal connection.
03:57The galactic center, this sort of inner 400 light year region around Sagittarius A star,
04:03our very own supermassive black hole.
04:05It's this wonderful, dense, busy, active downtown region of the Milky Way.
04:10There's exploding stars, there are these x-ray binaries, there are these beautiful loops of material,
04:17all these massive stars.
04:19There's so much going on.
04:20The infrared data is mapped to a soft piano.
04:24The Hubble data is mapped to a plucky violin.
04:27And then the Chandra data is mapped to this sort of glockenspiel xylophone sound.
04:33Each of those sounds are very distinct.
04:35So as you scan, you sort of hear that soft, cooler gas and dust from Spitzer and that beautiful piano.
04:42But then Hubble's violin comes in, and you can very clearly hear those very plucky moments
04:48of these gorgeous extended arches.
04:50And then as you get over toward Sagittarius A star, that monster of a black hole,
04:55you hear this little crescendo of high energy from Chandra.
05:01Humans and computers are different, obviously,
05:04and humans have limitations in terms of what they can play, what they can read.
05:11The music has to be legible to musicians.
05:16I didn't have the tools of, like, an entire orchestra of strings.
05:20You know, I have two string instruments.
05:22And I think the two string instruments I have,
05:25they can make so many different types of beautiful sounds that are more than just a pizzicato.
05:33Extra light would correspond with a very pure, high-pitched tone.
05:42I kind of worked in that way, where I categorized sounds that I had available to me.
05:47I corresponded them with parameters directly from the NASA data
05:52and directly from the original sonifications.
05:56I picked specifically the flute because it can play so high,
06:01but also because it has so many different textures and timbres that it can make.
06:10I decided to use the clarinet because I can also have that instrument doubling bass clarinet,
06:15which gives me this huge registral range.
06:22I really wanted to have percussion instruments
06:25because there are so many different kinds of sounds you can make with percussion instruments,
06:29especially the mallet instruments, like the glockenspiel and the crotalis and the marimba,
06:34where, you know, it has a huge range,
06:36but it also has these really high, beautiful, like, pingy, pure tones.
06:43And they're very celestial in sound.
06:45And the original sonifications also use a lot of glockenspiel.
06:49So I wanted to kind of harken back to that a little bit
06:51and use the glockenspiel and the crotalis,
06:54which have these really beautiful pure tones to connote this celestial sound.
06:59You really hear this at the end of the piece.
07:02I have this whole section where it's zooming in towards the Sagittarius A star
07:07and you hear all of these repetitive, pingy, high textural sounds
07:13in the glockenspiel and the crotalis and the piano.
07:16And I really just wanted to convey this sense of vastness
07:20and also of just how many stars there are.
07:24They're all overlapping on each other
07:26and you can't even count them anymore.
07:34I don't think of these pixels, these photons, in the same way anymore.
07:39I learned so much about space that I didn't know at all.
07:44What else can we do to make this processing of our data more interesting,
07:49more fun, more experiential?
07:51I'm all for new ways of knowing.
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