Ever wondered what Isaac Asimov would sound like beatboxing?

April 24, 2024 9:27 PM

Or Nixon? Shirley Chisholm? Thanks to Brian Foo, the data driven dj, wonder no longer!

Brian Foo is a an artist and computer scientist that works in the field of data sonification, which sits at the intersection of art and science.

Some other projects from artists aside from Foo (but do explore Foo's other work, it's fantastic) are:

• Atlas Eclipticalis by John Cage - sonification of star charts
• On Time Out of Time - William Basinski's album made in collaboration with LIGO using the sounds of two black holes colliding.
• Oscilloscope Music - audiovisual project where images are produced on an oscilloscope along with the corresponding sonification. (Previously)
• Pictures of Sound: One Thousand Years of Educed Audio - reproductions of pre-recording music and audio inferred from historical images and other documents.
• Pattern of Plants - Composition by Mamoru Fujieda created by measuring and sonifying the micro-changes of surface-electric potential on leaves.

Many more sonification projects are indexed over at Sonification.Design or, for the brave, this spreadsheet curated by composer/researcher Samuel Van Ransbeeck

You may also enjoy this video from David Hilowitz in which he turns earthquake seismographs into an virtual instrument as he show the process of how he gathered the data and sonified it.

posted by forbiddencabinet (6 comments total)

I love NASA's work on sonifying data collected by experiments looking at our galaxy's black hole and around the universe.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:44 PM on April 24 [1 favorite]

oh, i just saw today an article on steve parker, who's arranged a bunch of musical instruments hooked up to an eeg for a single-member audience

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2024/04/steve-parker-sonic-meditation/
posted by Clowder of bats at 10:37 PM on April 24 [2 favorites]

NASA's sonification program is more accurately Chandra's Sonification Program, an important distinction given that NASA is planning to kill Chandra.
posted by miguelcervantes at 5:22 AM on April 25 [1 favorite]

Am epileptic - my seizures are not at all as lovely as that track.
posted by somebodystrousers at 8:30 AM on April 25

FINALLY!
posted by Wild_Eep at 10:55 AM on April 25

Nobody has my permission to do this with my voice either now or after I've died.
posted by newdaddy at 10:58 AM on April 25