Presentation to "Heavenly Discourses" at Bristol University in October 2011

2. Acoustic
Cosmology
The utterance of a cosmological model?
Gavin Starks | gavin@dgen.net | http://www.BinaryDust.org

4. Cosmology
Dealing with the origin, structure and space-time of the universe
Utterance
Utterances do not exist in written language, only their representations do
Conjecture
In the non-verbal languages of music and cosmology, mathematics is a
representation of the utterance of the physics...
Mathematics can a representation of the utterance of a cosmological
model, rendered in code, through sonification...
How can we create the basis of a soundscape, a palette, and a music,
which provide frameworks for the utterance of a cosmological model?

7. Mathematical eloquence
Visual elegance

8. exploring extremes
10-43 ... 109
“can nature truly be this absurd?”
[Heisenberg]

9. On technocracy
“I believe that in approaching our subject with the sensibilities of statisticians
and dissectionists, we distance ourselves increasingly from the marvelous
and spell-binding planet of imagination whose gravity drew us to our studies
in the first place.
A scientific understanding of the beautifully synchronized and articulated
motion.... does not impede a poetic appreciation of the same phenomenon.
Rather, the two enhance each other, a more lyrical eye lending the cold data
a romance from which is has long been divorced.”
[Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons]
From Pythagoras, to Kepler, to Einstein, there has been a persistent desire
to find lyrical connections that join the disciplines,
part of our search for romance, part our search for Truth.

10. Acousmatic:
sound one hears without seeing
its originating cause
(Pythagorean disciples listened to his lectures
from behind a curtain, unable to see him)
“... the art of mental representations
triggered by sound”
Homont [1996]
“the sound world is not a space
into which we can enter;
it is a world we treat at a distance”
Goehr [1999]
“Poetry is the music of being human.” [Duffy]
and, perhaps … Music is the poetry of the mind?

11. Mapping
Symphonic Lattice
Form Dissonance Transformation
Polyphony Operatic Mass
Monophony Harmony Mathematics Dimensionality
Harmony Romantic Grain
Pitch Refinement Primes Curvature
Texture
Gravitation
Madrigals Beethoven,
Chant Bach, Mozart, Messiaen Symmetry
Baroque Wagner, Cage,
Handel Glass Spin
Stravinsky Wishart
...?
… 1400s … 1500s .... 1600s … 1700s … 1800s … 1900s … 2000s …

12. Music of the spheres
a music thought of
not as an audible sound,
but as a mathematical transform
- a cry for a lyrical unknown?

13. Music of the
n-dimensional hypercube

14. The mathematics of structure,
as spoken
through grains of rendered sound,
hewn from binary dust

15. Colliding galaxies NGC4038 and NGC4039

17. The “data cube” is like an image,
but instead of each pixel being
a single “colour" it is actually a
radio spectrum.
Each pixel/spectra has been
transformed into a visible colour
so you can see it, based on its
redshift or blueshift.
Take a Radio Spectral Cube
and turn it into sound Selecting a pixel with the mouse
takes that spectrum and transforms
the radio frequencies (light) into an
audible range (sound) with an
equivalent distribution.
You can listen to, and explore,
the structure of the spiral arms.

18. ds2

19. Absorptance

20. [Jean-Pierre Luminet // Physics World]

21. Acoustic
Cosmology
The utterance of a cosmological model?
Gavin Starks | gavin@dgen.net | http://www.BinaryDust.org | @agentGav