CT researcher turns climate information into music

James is a graduate analysis assistant and PhD candidate at UConn, learning the “hydrology of the tides and of water flowing by way of the channels and the grasses of coastal salt marshes,” as she defined. 

She’s additionally an newbie musician who performs the trombone and tuba. Throughout pandemic lockdowns, James met Sophy Chung, a pianist in South Korea: “We simply began speaking and doing a language alternate as a result of she’s in South Korea, and I’ve an curiosity in Ok-pop.”

“She’s like, ‘Nicely, do you need to study some Korean? I need to apply my English a bit extra,’” James recalled. “So we simply began doing weekly video chats with language, after which we obtained to know one another so much higher.”

Chung is what James referred to as a “collaborative pianist,” which James mentioned is “extra than simply an accompanist, greater than only a soloist. She actually tries to make a much bigger music image with the folks she performs.”

They obtained to speaking, and Chung talked about a grant alternative in South Korea definitely worth the equal of $20,000, wherein researchers had been inspired to mix artwork and science. So the 2 did precisely that. 

Taking publicly out there climate information, Chung and James assigned notes to every information level and derived musical compositions, which Chung then performed reside on the piano.

The top result’s actually climate music, the music of rain, air and tides. James mentioned it’s extra “modern” in really feel. 

“There’s every day cycles or every day patterns that happen in information. One of many information varieties we used was air temperature. So, we had a week-long document from a climate station, and what we wound up doing was taking the every day most, the every day minimal and the every day common. These three numbers had been then translated right into a chord,” James mentioned. 

A few of these chords “sounded harmonious” whereas others had been “dissonant,” and whereas there isn’t any melody or theme one can comply with, there’s a rising and falling of depth because the temperature information rises and falls. 

Musical choices on points like octave and tempo had been, James mentioned, made considerably arbitrarily, “as a result of we would have liked kind of a typical or a zero, if you’ll, for the music to be relative in the direction of.”

For the piece primarily based on air temperature information, they determined the typical can be represented by a center C. 

“For example, if it was one diploma Celsius, that might be the center C, after which all the pieces relative to at least one diploma can be a unique relative word to that center C on the piano,” James mentioned. “So, two levels can be D, zero levels can be a B, after which that was how we assigned the notes.”

Tempo, too, was a creative, musical choice. 

“The piece that Sophy and I had been notably happy with was one which was precipitation as a result of we made the tempo comparatively quick to imitate the pitter-patter of rain,” she mentioned. “And it did. It simply seemed like an etude for contemporary composition as a result of it was these leaping notes when you have got numerous rainfall and a baseline if you had no rainfall. So it is a enjoyable piece that undoubtedly captures the phenomenon.”

The following step for the work is to have the information higher outline these arbitrary beginning factors and so as to add extra information for a fuller composition. 

“One of many huge objectives for the following section of the mission is possibly not orchestral, however chamber music, constructing our means up,” James mentioned. “We’re making an attempt to herald extra folks to be concerned, whether or not I add one other scientist or information scientist to the group or Sophy tries to discover a composer to collaborate with.”

The aim of the work, James mentioned, is to create “a enjoyable and fascinating technique to join folks to nature.”

“We’re going by way of a local weather disaster, and the way do you get folks to care on the finish of the day?” James mentioned. “Music is one thing that I’d say everybody has an emotional connection to, so making an attempt to foster or deepen that emotional connection to nature by way of music is, I feel, an avenue that we will use for change.”

The music may be discovered on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Spotify. A full live performance video from November is on Chung’s YouTube channel. James will likely be giving a public lecture about the harmony of nature at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 7 for the Coastal Views Collection at UConn Avery Level.