The soundtrack of today’s BBC World Service Discovery podcast episode “Sounds of Space: Deep Space” uses data from CSTAR telescopes sonified by Andrew Blanton as part of the data-sound project “INSTRUMENT: One Antarctic Night,” an interactive artwork currently under collaborative development by a team of national and international artists, scientists, and Antarctic researchers.

The BBC Discovery segment uses sounds from “INSTRUMENT: One Antarctic Night,” the techno musical beat of pulsars spinning, and other audio data from across the universe alongside NASA Voyager recordings, Carl Sagan’s message to deep space lifeforms, and interviews with other scientists trying to experience and understand deep space.

“One Antarctic Night” is an interactive artwork that will use 287,800 images of the universe captured by the CSTAR robotic telescope in Antarctica to help people experience and understand data. The installation will allow participants to interact with telescope data through remixing it into sonic and visual creations – a video and musical jam session occurring in the gallery, on large scale displays, on mobile devices, and online simultaneously.

The work in progress is being created by a vibrant and ongoing art + science collaboration led by Ruth West (UNT), Roger Malina (UTD), Lifan Wang (CSTAR Antarctic Observatory/Texas A&M), Scot Gresham-Lancaster (UTD), Alejandro Borsani (RISD), Andrew Blanton (SJSU), and Brian Merlo (UTD).

INSTRUMENT: One Antarctic Night is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and will show at the San Francisco Exploratorium, New York Hall of Science, Adler Planetarium, Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, Arts Catalyst, UK, Beall Center for Art + Technology and other venues.

Learn more about “INSTRUMENT: One Antarctic Night” at http://oneantarcticnight.com.

You can listen to the BBC World Service Discovery podcast or download the mp3 at the BBC Discovery website.

News@xREZ July 9, 2015