Doppelstern Soundings

Shown in LYNER, MOLNAR, RAE at CUBE 4x4x4 + März Galerie, Augartenstrasse 68, D-68165 Mannheim, Germany. 9th Sept - 21st Oct 2017.

'Doppelstern Soundings' investigates alternative sonic mappings of Christian Mayer’s double star observations in Mannheim during 1776-77. The current positions of Mayer’s double stars have been located on 12th magnitude TriAtlas star maps through J.S Schlimmer’s re-calculations in the Journal of Star Observations (Schlimmer, 2007).

Two different sound programs have been used to analyse Mayer’s double star mappings. Sonic Photo (based on Photosounder) has been used to scan the relevant TriAtlas star map pixels and synthesise them into sound. Then VoceVista (Sygyt Software) synthesises this sound back into sonic visualisations. The star maps re-emerge during this process with some ‘glitching’ of pixels and a slightly altered linear spectrogram perspective. Both the TriAtlas map images and their sound visualisations are projected onto 360 degree dome mirrors, reflecting the disorienting spatial and navigational perspectives of stargazing.

The soundscape created by algorithmically synthesising the map data has not been altered apart from some equalising of volume levels, although acoustic choices were made as the maps ‘sounded’ more interesting as white lines on black rather than black lines on white. Surprisingly some of these synthesised sounds are not dissimilar to the radio waves received on earth from electromagnetic whistlers, explored in a connected work ‘Interplanetary Radio Frequencies: received from different planetary magnetospheres 1979-2017’ shown in Palazzo Mora, Venice, May- Nov 2017.

Vera Molnar was a co-exhibitor in LYNER, MOLNAR, RAE, one of the pioneers of computer and algorithmic arts. In 1968 she began working with computers to create algorithmic paintings. In the 1960s, she co-founded several artist research groups, GRAV, who investigated collaborative approaches to mechanical and kinetic art, and Art et Informatique, with a focus on art and computing.

• http://www.nicolarae.co.uk/projects/soun...
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Moln%...
• http://dam.org/artists/phase-one/vera-mo...