There's nothing like a whomping dose of volatile organic compounds to fire up a whacked-out free-jazz composition. That's the only conclusion to be reached after listening to soundscapes designed by two California professors who draw musical inspiration from an unlikely muse: smog.
"We're trying to take the rich set of patterns you find in music and apply that to air-pollution data so they become audible," says Greg Niemeyer, of the University of California at Berkeley's Center for New Media.
Niemeyer and Stanford University electronic music composer Chris Chafe take air-quality data sampled in locations including Katmandu, Shanghai and Tokyo, then turn the measurements into herky-jerky free jazz that streams for registered users on their Black Cloud site.
To capture readings for light, temperature, noise, carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds, the duo dispatched grad students around the world with instructions to embed 3-inch-by-5-inch PuffTron sensors on bridges, lampposts and other inconspicuous spots.
Designed by Niemeyer's grad students Reza Naima and Eric Kaltman and marketed by San Diego-based Aclima Labs, the cheerful red PuffTron box prompted hostile responses in some quarters, according to Niemeyer.
"Installing those sensors was fairly tricky because some cities weren't too keen on having their air quality displayed around the world," he says. Russian authorities prohibited sensors in Moscow while officials in Egypt's famously polluted capital city Cairo arrested students taking part in the project.
Political blowback notwithstanding, the Black Cloud team seeded about two dozen sensors around the world, which relay air-quality reports wirelessly. Chafe's algorithm-driven music software processes variations in the pollution readings and spits out an ever-changing soundscape of blipping, bleeping melody set against a thicket of percussive effects.
Plucking the Smog Guitar
Niemeyer and Chafe's previous experiments in atmosphere-based sound include an oxygen-flute museum installation, which responded to the rise and fall of carbon dioxide levels, and a virtual smog guitar "fed" by pollutants detected in the garage, second floor and rooftop of the Pasadena Museum of California Art. "The melody with the plucked guitar sound was created directly from C02 data being uploaded every two minutes," Chafe says. Chafe wanted the experimental "sonification" project to address one central question: How do you get emotional about patterns of environmental data?
"Our intent is to [travel] under the source of these fluxes in a way that is somewhat emotionally meaningful," he says. "The twist I've put on this overall approach of listening to data is to put together real-time data with my own musical interests so it adds up to a world that keeps unfolding in an interesting way for my audience."
Now that they've got Black Cloud up and running, the professors have teamed with Aclima Labs to commercialize the air-quality sensor, now marketed under the name Messenger, as a means of triggering awareness about invisible pollution on a large scale.
"We think we found a way to make air quality a personal issue," says Niemeyer, who serves as Aclima Labs' creative director. "What we're doing is not so much about sound and music and art -- it's more about getting people to take interest in changing their behavior."
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