Imagine looking through a telescope to get a closer look at the stars in the night sky. Now imagine that you can hear them.
Since 2020, NASA's Chandra X-ray Center's “sonification” project has recorded digital data using telescopes and translated it into notes and sounds, allowing people to interact with lunar intelligence in a completely new way. The process allows the listener to “experience the data through the sense of hearing rather than viewing it as images,” according to NASA.
The team has been working with the data in X-ray, visible light and infrared for years, but has now found a way to develop versions that can be played by musicians.
“It's like writing a fictional story based largely on real events,” said composer Sophie Kastner. “We're taking data from space that has been translated into sound and putting a new, human spin on it.”
Kastner created a piece titled “Where Parallel Lines Converge,” which features “data sonifications” from NASA's Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. The music takes advantage of data recorded about 400 light years from a small region at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, where a supermassive black hole resides.
“In some ways, this is just another way for humans to interact with the night sky just as they have throughout history,” added Kimberly Arcand, a visualization and emerging technology scientist at Chandra. “We are using different tools, but the concept of drawing inspiration from the skies to make art remains the same.”
To learn more about the program and play “sonification” yourself, head overhere.
thanks to our partners at edm.com
