Interstellar Incursions from Celestial Incantations by Sounds of Space Project

Interstellar Incursions
Location: Beyond the heliopause (18-20 billion km from the Sun)
Date: June 2012 - December 2015

The sounds of Voyager 1 leaving our solar system are symbolic of the growing breadth of our journey. Though it seems we have travelled so far, in reality our journey is only now really beginning. This Voyager 1 ‘sound’ has been placed into a virtual doppler to simulate the feeling of moving across space. Alongside these sounds we hear the sound of the North Indian tabla play. It starts slowly and playfully at first before going into a fast groove that builds steadily before a finale where the tabla really takes off, symbolising the speed in which Voyager is moving away from our planet and solar system. The energy of our young tablist Samarai Cunio (15 at the time of this recording), symbolises the hopes of this new journey.

Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause and entered interstellar space in August 2012. In this piece we make use of a recording from the plasma wave instrument on board the spacecraft that has been compressed so that 3 years plays back in 18 seconds. The events we hear are plasma oscillations in interstellar space, excited by solar activity.

Artwork Inspirations: Nought but in the void, look forward, look back for the stars, take your pick, pick again, imagined glimpse of space through a telescope portal.

The track cover design is a layered digital collage created by Diana Scarborough. Some source material is from NASA. https://hubblesite.org/image/388/gallery

Tracklist

8.	Interstellar Incursions	6:58

Credits

from Celestial Incantations, released June 21, 2021
Kim Cunio electroacoustics
Samarai Cunio tabla
Diana Scarborough track artwork
Nigel Meredith science and 'sound' curation
‘Sounds’ of interstellar space provided courtesy of NASA and The University of Iowa (space-audio.org)

License

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