The origins of Binary Dust date back to 1993. I’d just finished my first degree in Astrophysics and was studying for a Masters in Computer-Music. By coincidence, the music dept at Glasgow University was directly opposite the Maths & Astronomy building: a short walk across the road into a different world. Gavin Starks https://binarydust.org · … Binary Dust – some reflections c2026
A wonderful birthday gift from Andy! Generate sounds from Digitized Sky Survey data using sonification techniques https://github.com/AstroAndyN/SonifyDSS OutlineSonifyDSS is a python code that using sonification techniques to turn FITS data from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 collected from the NASA SkyView system (https://skyview.gsfc.nasa.gov) into sounds. It is focussed on generating sounds for composition or exploring … SonifyDSS – generate sounds from a galaxy
“Quantum Tide” refers to the idea of quantum effects—like particles behaving in strange, wave-like ways—shaping and influencing a space or system, similar to how tides on Earth are influenced by the moon’s gravity, but on a much smaller, atomic scale. Stylistically, this is a bit of return to my Jean-Michel Jarre origins infused with a … Autonoe – first wave of the quantum tide
We start the year with eight pieces released (and, in some cases, re-released) widely across Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, Deezer, Soundcloud, and dozens of others. If you would like to download (for free, or pay-what-you-want) please use this Bandcamp page. If you just want to get the whole album now, use this. Listen here
[adapted from this #Thread] sonon (n): one wavelength ∂sThe equivalent of a photon in a sonic universe (soniverse) Over the past 20 years, my stupid, grasping mind has trying to find ways to combine music and cosmology. This began with writing music that I (and others) have struggled to describe verbally. When I first stumbled into … Escape into the multiverse – an acoustic cosmology
New sounds, based on quasar spectra from “The next generation atlas of quasar spectral energy distributions from radio to x-rays” (http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0067-0049/196/1/2) Gavin Starks https://binarydust.org · Soniverse – 2018 – 02 – 28 Quasar
ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY PRESS RELEASE Adventures in acoustic cosmology RAS PR 17/30 (NAM 13) 3rd July 2017 A project that explores whether there is a musical equivalent to the curvature of spacetime will be presented on Thursday 6th July by Gavin Starks at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull. Starks, who has … Adventures in acoustic cosmology
Below is the optical image of the “Antennae Galaxies” colliding, as taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Overlaid below is a radio-image taken by ALMA. In the ‘image’ in this case, each pixel is actually represents a spectrum of frequencies across the electromagnetic radio spectrum: the ‘image’ is actually a data-cube. We have transformed this data-cube in … Listen to the radio-cube of the Antennae Galaxies
Interesting to compare: the sound of electromagnetic measurements of Earth transformed directly into sound, and then slowed down Original: https://www.nasa.gov/mp3/687631main_687014main_emfisis_chorus_1.mp3 Slowed down: Compare with this excerpt of a transitional piece I wrote when I was 19yo (I was moving from traditional tone/rhythm-based music to electronic).
A next step in acoustic cosmology
Evolving thoughts on the language of music, I wonder if our reductionist adoption of the language of physics (cf. Wishart On Sonic Art) should extend to adopt the language of cosmology and quantum mechanics?
Here’s a copy of the presentation I gave at ISEA 2012. Acoustic Cosmology ISEA 2012 from Gavin Starks
Here’s a copy of the presentation I gave at Heavenly Discourses. I’ll post the video when I get it. Acoustic Cosmology :: Heavenly Discourses 2011-11 from Gavin Starks View more presentations from Gavin Starks
Cross posting between my two blogs (not sure what the best approach is for this kind of thing, which is quite apt given the collision-nature of the content), but here’s a sneak preview of some of the work I’ll be presenting on Sunday…
“On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. 2011 sees the fiftieth anniversary of that event…” I am speaking at Heavenly Discourses on Sunday 16th October 16:45 – 18:00. PANEL: Music I’ll be presenting new work (including sounds and pictures derived from ALMA) … The utterance of a cosmological model?
Joan of Arc is now available. I took the photo on Arran in December last year. Hope you like it.
experimenting with the copper printout of the name…
So, “roughly monthly” didn’t quite happen… mostly work taking precedent, and partly getting a photo to go with it. Absorptance Composed nine years after Tempest, Absorptance was the first experiment in pulling together the textural soundscape aesthetic with more melodic and rhythmic style of some of my earlier pieces. You can listen here, and if … Binary Dust, “Absorptance” – now live
Hello, Well, here we go – this has been a while coming… 17 years or thereabouts. Tempest, originally composed in 1993, is the first release of “Binary Dust”, a series of works that I’ve developed since then, and am continuing to develop. Very much a slow-bake project, I’ll be releasing new tracks (roughly) monthly, for … Binary Dust, “Tempest” – now live
A reclaimed 32m Radio Telescope in the middle of the Lativan forests… brought to life over the past 10 years as the only radio telescope in the world that is dedicated to both science and art. ACOUSTIC SPACE: RT32 Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the conversion of the RT32 telescope at VIRAC, Riga & Irbene, … Latvia performance
