Hosted by OSOS , contributed by baneva on 25 February 2018
A very innovative and interdisciplinary field of activity is rapidly developing, namely sonification of scientific data. It is a joint work of scientists and sound engineers. In principle, one can sonify everything ‐ from heart beats to seismic waves. A team of scientists at CERN, has managed to map live events data from particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider into musical notes. They have worked side by side with composers and musicians for improvising the data to be turned into amazing interactive musical soundscapes. Scientists and sound engineers have worked on sonification of seismic waves. It is known that seismic waves frequency is very low. They had to compress the seismic data from seismometers to speed up the seismic waves low frequency to the audio frequency range. In principle, for sonification and audiofication of scientific data one has to use a properly developed software. However, there is a simple way for school students to do it. For instance, they can draw the relief of a mountain on a paper, place on it the transparent musical paper and mark the musical notes following the drawing. This can be performed with any scientific plot. The musical notes that are obtained in this way is not yet music. One has to further work with musicians to improvise and turn it into a musical piece. Designed as an accelerator for schools students it will combine efforts of students, science teachers, music teachers, scientists and musicians. It will help students (of all ages) better understand natural phenomena and learn sonification and audiofication. The collaboration between science and music shows how creative technique of listening to live scientific data has a social impact (on all the stakeholders) through a public ecologically driven audio broadcast.
RRI principles
One of the key aspects of OSOS is the inclusion of RRI — Responsible Research and Innovation — principles (more information at RRI-Tools.eu). This is how this Accelerator fits into the RRI model:
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Governance |
Students will collaborate with several stakeholders in their community, with whom they will discuss different aspects of the project and get feedback throughout all the stages. I.e.: students will discuss with scientists and musicians and share the democratic governance of purposes of research and innovation at scientific centers they communicate with and its orientation towards useful for the humanity impacts. |
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Public Engagement |
Students will contact different type of stakeholders, especially organizations close to science and education, organizations close to music that will help students to have the best solutions according to the problem addressed by this Accelerator. I.e.: several stakeholders, like teachers, local educational authorities, scientists, musicians and composers will be involved in this accelerator, |
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Gender equality |
The human resources management of this projects respects gender equality. I.e.: boys and girls will have the equal opportunity to participate in the project and the experts - scientists, musicians, composers involved will be both men and women. |
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Science Education |
This activity fits best the science education principle; it challenges the students with the necessary knowledge and tools to fully participate and take responsibility in a very innovative process of interrelation of research and music. I.e. students will use research data, they will consider a research problem, analyze the data, draw conclusions; they will apply these data to develop their project in the surroundings of the school. |
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Ethics |
Students are engaged in activity where high-technology and music collide and this reveals how science respects fundamental rights and the highest ethical standards in order to ensure increased societal relevance and acceptability of research and innovation outcomes. I.e.: taking part in this accelerator the students will share and learn about the ethics issues of scientific responsible research. |
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Open Access |
Participating in this accelerator students will accept the Open Access policy. Many scientific organizations, like CERN and others, have Open Data Portals where datasets are available with the corresponding software and documentation for use. Such data can be used for this accelerator to happen. Students will share resources and materials with the stakeholders involved in the project and also in the Internet, open and free, for the users interested in the project. I.e.: materials and resources collected within this accelerator will be available for free on the Internet, since they can help people in developing their own project |
References:
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~srsmith/projects/Earthquakes.html
http://scientifist.com/sonification-turns-data-into-music/
http://fasos-research.nl/sonic-skills/about/sonification/
This accelerator was developed by Foundation Open Science
in cooperation with CERN and the National Academy of Music in Sofia
contact Boyka Aneva fos@openscience.bg
Feel
This is an interdisciplinary activity on the interaction between science and arts. The students will feel curious and interested in natural phenomena and this will make them better understand natural sciences. The students will feel engaged in a reasonable activity.
The phenomena in nature and the world around us are explored through the accumulation and analyses of scientific data. For most of us this is annoying and boring. And why not listen to the sounds of the cosmic rays, the divine particle Higgs boson, the neutron stars or the gravitational waves. Everything in nature and space has its own sound, its rhythm. Musicians, sound engineers and scientists are already working together and turning boring data into symphonies.
The music created by sonification of scientific data enriches the researchers' perception of phenomena and complements their deeper understanding. A team of scientists from CERN, Geneva, together with composers and musicians, was been able to turn real-time events from experiments with elementary particles on the Large Hadron Collider (the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world) into musical notes. Scientists in a peculiar way show the interrelation between man-made and high-tech achievements. The melodies created by this unique combination of the science physics and musical art have been performed on major music scenes such as the Montreux Jazz Festival (2013, 2014 and 2015) and the WOMAD Festival in London (2016). Enjoying the exciting musical sounds, listening to the cosmos music the students will be able to sense how physicists explore the mysteries of the quantum world and the universe.
The sonification of scientific data is an alternative way of presenting experimental data such as graphs, diagrams, etc. It is useful for students, as it helps them to feel the natural phenomena, to understand their essence more easily.
Imagine
The students will hear the music and rythmes of natural phenomena and imagine the composition of Nature. They will relate this with musical compositions.
Student's contact with music from scientific data broadens their horizons, helps them to better understand phenomena, feel the essence of natural processes, present them more formally, and understand the complexity of scientific discoveries. Listening to the melody, the students also feel the beauty of the natural phenomena. The meaning of sounding is also that it allows to sense and predict things that remain invisible in the usual analysis of the data. This can help a blind researcher to participate fully in process studies.
A good example in this direction is the one with the astrophysicist Vanda Diaz Merced of the South African Observatory in Kaiptuun. Having losing her sight she was led to investigate new ways of studying space physics, using sound rather than visual information. To continue her research, she began working with computer scientists. They helped her to start listening to scientific data, and as a result, she successfully continues her studies at the same scientific level as she was before she was blind. Moreover, listening to the melody of the sound of astrophysical data, Vanda Diaz Merced has made a discovery. She has detected the presence of electromagnetic waves in the data generated by high energy starbursts, something that was not noticed by her colleagues in the collaboration, who in turn acted in the standard way, as they analyzed the astrophysical data by using only their graphical presentation.
In medicine, for example, the heart-sounding sound of the sound is different from that of the sound, and this would help in more efficient diagnosis and treatment.
When students get acquainted with the sounding of scientific data and present the changes from this knowledge, it will also help their career guidance and career development.
Artistic rendering of a neutron star about to explode.
Create
The students will learn to turn into musical notes data from plots of experiments they do in class or out-of-class actiity. They will work with the musicteachers and/or musicians to improvise and create their own music from the raw musical score.
The sonification of scientific data is an alternative representation of scientific charts and diagrams. The simplest way of sonification, which can be done by students up to 12 years old, is to put transparent note paper on the chart and note the notes that correspond to the points on the chart. This is not yet music, but students can improvise on it and create their own music. The sounding follows a basic principle known already by the Pythagorean school that the harmonics of the natural phenomena are related to the harmony in music. A repetitive periodic phenomenon is presented as naturally sounded by a recurring periodic melody.
The sound algorithm carries the same qualitative and quantitative information as the graph, but with notes. The following principle is being used: 1. The same number is associated with the same note. 2. The melody changes by following the profile of the chart, as shown in the picture:
25 –> C 26 –> D 27 –> E 28 –> F 29 –> G.
Това значи, че ако асоциираме числото 25 с нотата C (от средната октава) винаги когато екпериментът дава получавме 25, то ще свири нотата C. Ако графиката върви плавно от 25 до 26, след C ще свири D. Ако от 26 прави скок към 29, тогава ще свири съответно G.
This means that if we associate the number 25 with the note C (from the middle octave) whenever the experiment yields 25, the note C will be played. If the graph goes smoothly from 25 to 26, then after C will be played D. If 26 jumps to 29, then G will be played.
The sounding of scientific data is an alternative representation of scientific charts and diagrams. The simplest way of sounding, which can be done by students up to 12 years old, is to put transparent note paper on the chart and note the notes that correspond to the points on the chart. This is not yet music, but students can improvise on it and create their own music.
The sounding follows a basic principle known by the Pythagorean school that the harmonics of the natural phenomena are related to the harmony in the music. A repetitive periodic phenomenon is presented as a natural sound with a recurring periodic melody.
The sound algorithm carries the same qualitative and quantitative information as the graph, but with notes. The following principle is used: 1. The same number is associated with the same note. 2. The melody changes as follows to the profile of the chart, as shown in the picture:
This means that if we associate the number 25 with the note C (from the middle octave) whenever the experiment yields 25, it will play note C. If the graph goes smoothly from 25 to 26, then C will play D. If 26 jumps to 29, then play G.