2015-ongoing

Sound installation, Data sonification

Directors: Tara Knight and Adam Burgasser
Programmers: Jake Cushnir, Yuka Murakami, Melissa Talis

2016 Frontiers of Innovation Scholars Program project

The Sound Planetarium is a six channel audio installation in which you hear the night sky. Through a process of data sonification and ambisonics, we used star data and its properties provided by Adam Burgasser (Professor of Physics at UCSD) to convert into sound, and spatialize across a multi-channel speaker system. The program is designed so that you hear the stars travelling in their projected travel path - this mimics the way audiences would experience a planetarium, but in a total sonic form. As of 2018 we have developed a version of this program in VR, which was tested at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., presented by the NSF. This project is ongoing and fluid to new adaptations as we explore the disciplines of media performance, big data processing, and cross-modal sensory perception.