Kronos Plays Live to the Solar Eclipse
Wayne Grim, a composer based at the Exploratorium, San Franciscos science museum, has devised a way to turn what is essentially a silent viewing event into a musical one as well. He calls it the sonification of the eclipse.
At the suns core, subatomic particles smash into each other. Grim plans to soak up the resulting nuclear fusion and turn it into notes. Photons from the fusion, captured by telescopes in Casper, Wyo., are converted to pixels. Those are sent back into space and relayed via satellite to the Exploratorium, where Kronos is on stage. Grims special software recasts each pixels digital fingerprint into unique tones. Kronos will perform with the sounds of the sun, adapting as the eclipse comes and goes.
Grim has pre-baked part of the music, organizing samples from the quartet into a colorful score with 23 cells that looks more like a collage than your standard staff notation. There arent any specific instructions; its a kind of road map to follow as the eclipse proceeds.
This is Grims initial collaboration with Kronos, but it isnt his first time with sonification. He created musical evocations of the 2012 transit of Venus and last years total solar eclipse in Micronesia.
https://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse?media=11585