'Geophonic music' is music from the Earth. Geologic data has patterns and trends that that can be embodied as music, while providing a different window into the scientific aspect of the data.
Geophonic music is also about time - it directly relates the almost incomprehensible 'deep time' of millions of years to the very human time of minutes and seconds, bars and beats.
An interactive audio-visual installation that plays back the last 5.3 million years of climate data from the geologic record as sound, with accompanying visuals and light. Eight speakers are positioned geographically, each representing a location where deep ocean sediment cores were extracted. Each speaker plays back the data from that particular core as sound.
Visitors are able to control time - setting the sound in motion either backwards or forwards through time at any speed, with fluid realtime control via a tactile timeline interface. One can hear temporal and spatial variations in ocean core data as the Earth's climate changes through time. Projected visuals display date and average global climate at the current location in geologic time. The software contains a library of important dates in geology, biology and human evolution that are indicated textually when the piece arrives at the corresponding date. A map display shows which cores are active at any given time and gives visitors a sense of geography. The space is also visually activated using computer-controlled lighting that reacts to the climate data - turning the whole space red or blue along with glaciations and warm periods.
Each speaker (corresponding to one deep ocean core) is an instrument that performs as part of the ensemble. Various elements of the sound of each speaker (timbre, pitch, amplitude, etc) are modulated by various parameters of the data from that core (Calcium Carbonate content, reflectance, deposition rate, magnetic susceptibility, etc). The octophonic sound landscape, which is impossible to represent in a stereo audio file, is intended to allow the listener to determine not just temporal, but also spatial climate patterns spanning the atlantic and pacific oceans.
Climate Controlled was an undergraduate honors thesis project of Arvid Tomayko-Peters. It was installed at Brown University's Production Workshop in March 2007 and was chosen for the Pixilerations gallery exhibit in downtown Providence in October 2007.
Climate Controlled Sample 1 - 4:34
Climate Controlled Sample 2 - 6:52
See Arvid's geophonics page for more documentation
Maestro Frankenstein is an end-user software tool for the composition and production of geophonic music. I think of it as a "Garageband for scientists" - if not quite as pretty looking as Garageband.
Maestro Frankenstein acts as a data sequencer, translating numeric time-series data into audio and/or MIDI. Basic compositions or sketches can be completed within the program itself, or individual samples and parts created in Maestro Frankenstein can be exported and reassembled in other software as the basis for a composition.
Maestro Frankenstein not only creates music or sound from data, but also provides facilities for analyzing data, including non-realtime spectral band pass filters and power spectra for data.
Maestro Frankenstein was created in collaboration with geologist Alessandro Montanari of the Osservatorio Geologico di Coldigioco and Gabriele Rosseti, with a generous grant from AEA/Loccioni in Le Marche, Italia.
Maestro Frankenstein and its MaxMSP source are maintained by Arvid Tomayko-Peters and are freely available. It runs on both Macintosh and Windows.
Climate Controlled and some of Arvid's other geophonic music have been featured on: