Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Mania Garedaki on 4 May 2019
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:
|
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. |
|
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, |
|
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. |
|
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. |
|
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. |
|
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
Music School of Therisso
website:
e-mail: