Cataclysm from Celestial Incantations by Sounds of Space Project

Cataclysm
Location: Two colliding black holes, somewhere in the southern celestial hemisphere,1.3 billion light years (1.2x10^22 km) from the Sun
Date: the collision took place 1.3 billion years ago and the emitted gravitational waves were detected at Earth in 2015

Cataclysm is a setting of an ultimate Universal event and one of the most astounding breakthroughs in astrophysics. In this track we hear the chirp from the merger of two black holes that took place 1.3 billion years ago. This seminal recording is the first ever detection of gravitational waves, ripples in space-time produced by some of the Universe’s most violent events, such as the mergers of black holes and collisions of ultra-dense neutron stars. They were first predicted by Einstein in 1916 and finally observed nearly 100 years later on 14th September 2015 by the LIGO interferometers in America.

The scale of the collision of two black holes is almost beyond our human comprehension. It has been rendered into an acoustic chirp moving from an approximation of the notes A to Eb, something that is almost the ultimate in sonification to any musician or composer. This is because the sweep of the notes (a glissando, meaning that it covers all the notes in between two musical notes), is almost a diminished fifth, an interval also called the tri-tone or affectionately the interval of the devil. This interval has the most forward potential of any two notes and our minds inevitably imagine it moving to it to the next note, a perfect fifth, one of the most consonant sounds imaginable. As the chirp moves beyond the tritone our ears hear this unmistakeable sound, a sound that is mirrored in the opening to the well-known theme of the US animation series The Simpsons.

This sound was an invitation to really have some fun. The chirp is reproduced in a loop that is not quite regular (proof that the universe is not quite regular). It is also slowed down by a factor of 16 then transposed up an octave so that it sounds almost like birdsong, for we can ask, is this not the dawn chorus of our universe? The piano part is designed around the notes of the chirp that most excited me, a D F# G# and B. In this track a virtual piano is set up so that a switch triggers a note doubler, meaning that once the doubler is triggered every note will be played twice. As the piece builds the doubler is triggered and we are set off on a roller coaster that is beyond my human ability to play. The piano moves higher and faster and till there is nowhere to go, there nothing left but to stop and listen once again to the chirp, which bids us farewell from our sonic cosmic adventure.

Artwork Inspirations: Pattern on pattern as a kaleidoscope, original sources are ink drops and ripples, gravitational wave, complex, abstraction of the invisible.

The track cover design is a layered digital collage created by Diana Scarborough.

Tracklist

10.	Cataclysm	4:00

Credits

from Celestial Incantations, released June 21, 2021
Kim Cunio electroacoustics, virtual piano
Diana Scarborough track artwork
Nigel Meredith science and 'sound' curation
‘Sounds’ of the colliding black holes provided courtesy of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration

License

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.