AcousticCosmology

The utterance of a cosmological model?

Gavin Starks | gavin@dgen.net | http://www.BinaryDust.org

exploring extremesexploring extremes

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“can nature truly be this absurd?” [Heisenberg]

mathematical eloquence // visual elegancemathematical eloquence // visual elegance

On technocracy“I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies in the first place.

A scientific understanding of the beautifully synchronized and articulated motion.... does not impede a poetic appreciation of the same phenomenon.

Rather, the two enhance each other, a more lyrical eye lending the cold data a romance from which is has long been divorced.”[Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons]

From Pythagoras, to Kepler, to Einstein, there has been a persistent desire to find lyrical connections that join the disciplines, part of our search for romance, part our search for Truth.

“the sound world is not a space into which we can enter; it is a world we treat at a distance”Goehr [1999]

Acousmatic: sound one hears without seeingits originating cause (Pythagorean disciples listened to his lectures from behind a curtain, unable to see him)

“... the art of mental representationstriggered by sound”

Homont [1996]

Cosmology Dealing with the origin, structure and space-time of the universe.

UtteranceUtterances do not exist in written language, only their representations do.

ConjectureIn the non-verbal languages of music and cosmology, mathematics can be treated as a representation of the utterance of the physics...

Mathematics describes cosmological models and, revealed by algorithms, rendered in code, can be interpreted into sound...

Can we create an architecture, a soundscape, a palette, and a music, which reveal the utterance of a cosmological model?

Music of the spheres

a music thought of not as an audible sound, but as a mathematical transform- a cry for a lyrical unknown?

Music of the n-dimensional hypercube

The mathematics of structure,as spoken

through grains of rendered sound, hewn from binary dust

MonophonyPitch

Chant

PolyphonyHarmony

MadrigalsBaroque

FormHarmony

Refinement

Bach, Mozart,Handel

DissonanceMathematics

Primes

Messiaen,Glass

LatticeMassGrain

Texture

Cage, Wishart

DimensionalityCurvatureGravitationSymmetry

SpinManifold

...?

… 1400s … 1500s .... 1600s … 1700s … 1800s … 1900s … 2000s …

SymphonicOperaticRomantic

Beethoven, Wagner,

Stravinsky

Take a Radio Spectral Cube and turn it into sound

The “data cube” is like an image,but instead of each pixel beinga single “colour" it is actually aradio spectrum. Each pixel/spectra has been transformed into a visible colourso you can see it, based on its redshift or blueshift.

Selecting a pixel with the mouse takes that spectrum and transforms the radio frequencies (light) into an audible range (sound) with an equivalent distribution.

You can listen to, and explore,the structure of the spiral arms.

[Jean-Pierre Luminet // Physics World]

Absorptance

ds2

AcousticCosmology

The utterance of a cosmological model?

Gavin Starks | gavin@dgen.net | http://www.BinaryDust.org