'Radioactive Orchestra', a web-based musical interface resultant from a collaboration between Sweden's royal institute of technology (KTH) and nuclear safety and training institute (KSU), is designed to render aurally the processes of atomic gamma decay.
KTH professors Arne Johnson and Bo Cederwall and doctorate Karin Andgren envisioned and developed the project, which was formalized by electronic artist Kristofer Hagbard into an interactive web interface for data exploration and sound track generation.
Gamma decay occurs when a nucleus is unstable, as an atom emits a gamma ray to bring itself to a lower, more stable energy state. every type of material (and every isotope of each type of atom) gives off a characteristic signature in this process,
which the KTH scientists were interested in representing in some physical form. 'radioactive orchestra' was also designed to draw attention to the fact that ionizing radiation is not just a product of nuclear accidents or artificial processes but insteadis omnipresent in our bodies and environment.
The team explains:
'if we could hear the radiation we would have constant sound around us all the time. we would hear different notes repeated,
maybe at quite a steady rate, but it would always be something new. [as it is,] we can't feel ionizing radiation with our senses,
but we could translate it, and that is what this [project] is based on. we translate these characteristic gamma energies to notes
instead, to frequencies. then you get an audio impression directly from the characteristic radiation. these are the patterns
we explore and make [music] from.'
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment