GÉANT’s Senior Research and Engagement Officer, Domenico Vicinanza teamed up with Genevieve Williams (University of Exeter, UK) and professional flutist Alyssa Schwartz (Fairmont State University, West Virginia) to extract patterns from Mars data and turn them into music.
The project, created for the virtual NASA@SC20 research exhibit, consisted of creating very delicate ringtones to celebrate NASA’s Mars Insight mission, enabled by their Pleiades supercomputer.
The scientists and musicologists started their process by studying Mars’ weather forecasts. The team used an imaging tracking system to study the movement of cloud formation on Mars and then extracted patterns to map them into music intervals and create melodies that then were arranged for harp and flute. In other words, the ringtones are the sound of Mars’ clouds in motion, as predicted by Pleiades supercomputer.
Read NASA’s press release and download the ringtones on the NASA@SC2020 website.
