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Scientists figured out how to convert spider webs into songs
2022-02-04 00:00:00
I just read a long but fascinating article on Physics World about all the different data that scientists have converted into vibratory frequencies — essentially song-ifying their science. Back in 2019, a group of scientists translated amino acids into sound. But even more recently, a paper in the Computer Music Journal explained how to sonify spider webs:
We translate complex 3-D data from the original web model into music, using data sonification. We map the spider web data to audio parameters such as pitch, amplitude, and envelope. Paired with a visual representation, the resulting audio allows a unique and holistic immersion into the web that can describe features of the 3-D architecture (fiber distance, lengths, connectivity, and overall porosity of the structure) as a function of spatial location in the web. Using granular synthesis, we further develop a method to extract musical building blocks from the sonified web, transforming the original representation of the web data into new musical compositions.
You can listen to an audio clip of a spider web's song at Physics World.
Sonifying science: from an amino acid scale to a spider silk symphony [Markus Buehler & Mario Milazzao / Physics World]
Image: Stephencdickson / Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
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