Solar Wind Sonification!
The visual element of this piece is an attempt to capture the sheer magnitude of the events taking place in the music, the same events which are occurring in space at this very moment. There are still many mysteries behind the solar cycle, and this project seeks to further our understanding through an interpretive process known as Sonification. The music is driven by solar wind data that was captured by the ACE satellite during the year 2003. The sweeping wind sound is generated by both He++ density and velocity. Velocity controls the cutoff frequency of a band-pass filter that has been placed over pink-noise, this causes the whooshing sound that sweeps up and down. Density controls the loudness of this wind sound, the higher the density the louder the wind. During a Coronal Mass Ejection the wind is further amplified and processed with a form of distortion known as overdrive. This causes the wind to swell in a more violent fashion. The basic vocal ambience layer is created with 6 distinct vocal layers that correspond to carbon charge state distribution. The value average charge state of Carbon is represented by another set of voices that sing in a higher register. The He/O element ratio is represented by a chord composed of an extremely high frequency set of triangle waveforms. This sound can be described as a glistening. During a CME the reverb quickly swells to a much higher volume before slowly receding back to the baseline level, this creates the feeling of a sudden <b>...</b>
