[ad_1]
No listening will help you hear something as visual as a sunrise, especially one on Mars. Unless, of course, you do not create your own sound effects, like doctors Domenico Vicinanza and Genevieve Williams, with a photo of the 5000th morning rover Opportunity on the Red Planet. The end result is this two minute musical number which, by definition, is from another world.
Using a technique called "data sonification", the couple was able to translate the photo into a soothing and ethereal piece.
Although the data is read in a simple way, the interpretation is the intelligent part:
The researchers created the piece of music by scanning an image from left to right, pixel by pixel, examining the brightness and color information and combining them with the elevation of the terrain. They used algorithms to assign each element a specific pitch and melody.
The silent and slow harmonies are a consequence of the dark background and the brighter and more acute sounds towards the middle of the room are created by the sonification of the brilliant solar disk.
The music was not just for our benefit – it was presented last week at the SC18 conference in Dallas, where attendees had the opportunity not only to listen to the play but also feel this too:
[It was] presented using conventional speakers and vibration transducers so that the audience can feel the vibrations with his hands, thus enjoying the first-person experience of a sunrise on March.
I guess you can always put your hands on your speakers during playback. Not exactly the same, though.
[Anglia Ruskin University, via BGR]Source link
