With the tools, I created participatory sound installations and contemporary music compositions for an electroacoustic music group. My intention behind the participatory sound installations was to explore embodied actions that could involve the participants in political micro-activism activities. In contrast, the contemporary music pieces seek a poetic perspective through musical performance, within a more conventional performer/audience domain.
In this project, I worked with sonifications, which is “the transformation of data relations into perceived relations in an acoustic signal to facilitate communication or interpretation”1. To create the sonifications, I wrote code in SuperCollider, which is a sound synthesis programming language. The aesthetic sounding qualities of the code were inspired by the conceptual representation of the scientific theories. The sonifications were created once the code was fed with the data sets. This process is going to be further explained in the section "Going from Data to Art". For a brief representation see below.
I conducted my artistic practice-based research project Sounding Numbers, as part of the Advanced Postgraduate Diploma at the Rythmic Music Conservatory, from September 2020 until June 2022.
During this time, I researched how to create sounds with scientific data and how to use these sounds for my artistic outcome. I used programming techniques to create structures and relations between data, scientific theories, and sound potentialities. Here I explored textures, qualities, different data mappings, and ways for sound deployment, development, and cessation in a musical context. In brief, I investigated how I can use different data sets to craft synergies between science and my aesthetic music universe, with the following research question:
How can I use scientific data sets to create expressive sounding tools
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for contemporary composition and participatory sound installations?
I believe that the artistic beauty of these sonifications lies in the potential poetry that can be unfolded from them- whilst simultaneously representing hard data from reality.
In Sounding Numbers, I searched for sound structures and textures with a sense of curiosity - showing a dystopic reality through an emotional soundscape, full of hope and beautiful darkness. I sought meaning that could lead toward an empowered critical thought. Ultimately, this project aims to propose questions through the embodied action of emotional transgression.
My ambition with this project was to investigate the performative and aesthetic potentialities of sonifications, within a composition and installation context, by programming my own sounds and ways of interacting.
My intention was to build a deeper and personal connection between my musical universe and science. I believe that the resulting artwork could be a powerful dissemination tool to actively engage an audience under unexplored world views and understandings for a better society.