CERN masterclass

A very innovative and interdisciplinary field of activity is rapidly developing, namely sonification of scientific data. It is a joint work of scientists and sound engineers. In principle, one can sonify everything – from heart beats to seismic waves. A team of scientists at CERN, has managed to map live events data from particle physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider into municipal notes. They have worked side by side with composers and musicians for improvising the data to be turned into amazing interactive musical soundscapes. Scientists and sound engineers have worked on sonification of seismic waves. It is known that seismic waves frequency is very low. They had to compress the seismic data from seismometers to speed up the seismic waves low frequency to the audio frequency range. In principle, for sonification and audiofication of scientific data one should use a properly developed software. However, there is a simple way for school students to do it. For instance, they can draw the relief of a mountain on a paper, place on it the transparent musical paper and mark the musical notes following the drawing. This can be performed with any scientific plot. The musical notes that are obtained in this way is not yet music. One must further work with musicians to improvise and turn it into a musical piece. Designed as an accelerator for schools, it will combine efforts of students, science teachers, music teachers, scientists and

musicians. It will help students (of all ages) better understand natural phenomena and learn sonification and audiofication. The collaboration between science and music shows how creative technique of listening to live scientific data has a social impact (on all the stakeholders) through a public ecologically driven audio broadcast.

Age 14 to 18