Sun Bath from Sunconscious by Sounds of Space Project

This track features dispersive, chirping plasma waves in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles and magnetic field that flows outward from the Sun through the solar system. The waves were detected by the Fields Experiment on the Parker Solar Probe. These plasma waves shift quickly from one frequency to another as they move through the solar wind. These waves are relatively rare in the solar wind near the Earth but are much more common closer to the Sun.

The dispersive chirping waves have a constantly changing pitch that sounds to the ear like the cracking of a whip in time, giving an impression of movement because of the inherent velocity curve of the sound. Similar sounds can also be created by twisting the parameters of an analogue synthesiser, again showing the great similarity between 20th Century electronica and the 'sounds' of space and the Sun.

The music for this piece is derived from 3 crystalline bowls, in the pitches of C, Eb and G, bowed by the fingers into a close microphone array. The sounds were then placed into a doppler processer, which simulates the effect of the siren of an ambulance on a static sound. After removing the panning from the doppler we are left with an eerie sound that is ‘organic’ yet hard to understand. As a final change the signal strength was reduced by 25 decibels and pitch shifted down 2 octaves so that it could also maintain a dispersive echo just in the range of human hearing.

The abstract artwork by Scarborough is inspired by the sound of the crystal bowls that create a rhythmic dance with the chirping plasma waves as a willing partner. Using light colours, and layers of transparency created by divided gouache washes on paper, there are hints of entanglement here.

Tracklist

5.	Sun Bath	3:50

Credits

from Sunconscious, released December 1, 2022
Kim Cunio crystal bowls and processing
Diana Scarborough track artwork
Nigel Meredith science and 'sound' curation
‘Sounds’ of the dispersive chirping waves courtesy of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

License

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