Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Mondo 2000/Fiorella-Terenzi

Text File | 1993-01-01 | 19KB | 356 lines

Dr. Fiorella Terenzi
IN CONVERSATION WITH JAS. MORGAN & BART NAGEL

 MONDO 2000: How many albums do you have out?

DR. FIORELLA TERENZI: Only one. This is my first one: Music
From The Galaxy  and itís a new project, itís galactic music. And
itís the first experiment that you can do transforming radiation
coming from celestial objects into sound.

M2: What is the method for translating the radiotelescope information
into sound?

FT: Firstly you need to collect the radiation coming from space like
stars and galaxies using huge radiotelescope astronomy facilities. In
my case I was using the New Mexico Siccoro(?) a very large area
radiotelescope. And we were using the Kit__(?)Nation Observatory
and the Ezone (?) European Souther(?) Observatory. And all of these
astronomers were working on a galaxy called UGC6697. And they
were collecting radiation. Once you collect radiation coming from a
celestial object you save the radiation into a tape or you can send it by
cable to every kind of computer in the universe.

M2: Is it recorded digitally or analog?

FT: Digitally. So it was the Center for Experimental Music at the
University of California San Diego where I get the data coming from
this galaxy. The first thing I did was to display all the numbers on my
computer screen. So as soon as you display the numbers what you see
on the computer represents the radiation coming from UGC6697 with
intensity and frequency. The first things that you realize is that the
radiation is coming at a billion of hertz and that you know that the
human can hear sound between twenty and twenty thousand hertz.
The first thing is to reduce the frequency from a billion hertz into
twenty to twenty thousand hertz. Then you have all these numbers
that represent the wave form and you send all this information to an
oscilloscope which is able to synthesize a sound and everything. If you
send information representing a piano or a violin to an oscilloscope
the oscilloscope will play a violin. If you send a harp, the oscilloscope
will perform the harp. In my case I sent this kind of data. And when
I sent the data to the oscilloscope I get to know what kind of sound I
could get from the universe. So it takes me almost eight months before
I get to hear a little bit of the sound of the universe. For each second
of sound that you have on the compact disc it takes about eight or
nine hours to work on the computer. Itís very long because the
computer has to process the numbers.  So after eight months I was
ready and I had four hours of sound from the galaxy. And then I
pressed execute and the data flowed directly from the computer to the
loudspeaker using a digital to analog converter.

M2: Why did you choose the particular galaxy?

FT: The galaxy is very complex. Itís a strange galaxy; itís a spiral
galaxy. Really powerful. And sometimes you have such a strong
emission from this galaxy. Itís easy to understand the reason. Itís
really far away. Itís one hundred eighty million light years away
from earth. This galaxy has a small satellite companion galaxy that is
spinning around. The two galaxies collided together and created the
complexity that is reflected into the sound of the galaxy. For that
reason I chose UGC6697. Also because the data was available. At the
beginning I was thinking of using a pulsar. A pulsar is a star that
pulses every second or maybe every millisecond. And a pulsar sends
to earth a precise signal in time. So for the next time I want to use a
pulsar because I want a cosmic drummer for my composition. But for
now there is so much to work with in UGCís sound.

M2: Do you perform this live?

FT: Yes. I did a Greenpeace Music Nature Festival with Paul Winter
and Montreux(?).  And all the income from the concert was given to
the park at the Antarctic. I performed the Galaxy using a synthesizer,
a sampler and an oscilloscope to show the wave form of the
vibrations. I had also part of the Galaxy on a DAT cassette just to use
up the ground. And I was playing from the synthesizer the raw data
of the galaxy. On the second part I had a musician playing shells,
stones. coconuts, flute and all that kind of thing. I associated the
galaxy with ancient and primitive musical instruments because itís
one hundred and eighty million years ago we are talking about here.
So I said I just want a little bit of the

atmosphere of musical primitivism. And then I got to the future: the
galaxy performed with harp, bass, saxophone, drummer, congas and
piano. And everybody was following a score.

M2: So what you were playing was sounds that were sampled from the
galaxy and you were playing them back?

FT: Yes, playing sounds coming from this galaxy.

M2: Do you have that on tape yet?

FT: Yes I have a video.

M2: Why music and math? How is that possible?

FT: To me science_ in mechanistic physics or astronomy or
astrophysics_if you do astrophysics to a certain level_to me science
gets like art. And in one way art_in this case music_needs science.
Music is another form of science. Both science and music need
technique. And so theyíre really correlated together. I started to look
at the sky with my grandmother; going out to the country when I was
a baby. When I was seven years old I started to sing in a choir in a
church. So I grow up and go to a university in physics and at the same
time Iím singing in a choir. I get to the university to study piano and
opera and composition. But until two years ago astronomy and music
were really separate, not linked together. Then I was taking the course
of radio astronomy, and I realized that a radio wave coming from a
celestial object was very similar to musical notes. Both have an
intensity that gives you loud sound or soft sound. And they have also
a frequency that gives you a high or low pitch. So I went to my
professor and said, Listen, I have an idea: instead of looking for an
image of the universe, instead of looking at photos of stars, I want to
try to play the universe. I want to hear the sound of radiation coming
from a celestial object.  So I went to the Center for Music Experiment
using their big Vox(?) work station and I did it. It was just an
experiment and I believe the sound is a powerful instrument to
investigate the cosmos. Because sound reflects chemical and physical
properties of celestial objects.

Think about the universe. Many times you have a binary system of
stars. And they spin together. And they are a particular star system
because their frequency, the frequency of these stars is almost the
same, not quite equal but almost. So the two stars generate beats.  The
same phenomena of beats you have when you tune an instrument.
You are tuning your bass to a 440 A, and letís say your string is
tuned at 445 hertz. If you play together you generate beats, and the
beats stop when you tune your strings precisely. But you canít  see
beats. You canít see how the two fragments collided using your eyes.
The graphic representation doesnít show you. But if you play the
binary system of stars, youíre able to hear beats. So this is a
powerful way to investigate the cosmos.

A second example: Think about the Doppler Effect. When you hear
a car running down the road you hear it_low frequency to high
frequency. The sound changes. The same with the earth and the stars.
Some stars are going far away, some stars are getting closer. Letís
say a comet is passing through; thatís the Doppler Effect. Another
example is hydrogen. It has a special frequency. It is one thousand
four hundred and twenty megahertz. Every time you tune your radio
telescope to that frequency you have the distribution of the hydrogen
in the galaxy. So, using a sound classification of chemical elements,
maybe in the future you will be able to recognize, based on the sound
of celestial objects, which chemical elements there are in them.
Thatís a research proposal Iím putting together, but there are
many difficulties. Some professors said to me, Yes, letís do it; others
said, Fiorella, itís impossible to use sound in astronomy. But I
believe it is possible to have a sound classification of stars and
galaxies. Ten years ago it wasnít because ten years ago there
werenít computers or computer music software. Astronomers know
their work but they donít know about computers or computer music.


M2: What is the possibility of doing live performance with realtime
sampling of the cosmos?

FT: I would love it. Sometimes I have a dream of a big stage with a
satellite dish and this dish moves together with the music of the
galaxy. And then they focus over a galaxy or another star or maybe
over the hydrogen, so I can make music with the hydrogen. Or maybe
just to get the radio telescope pointing to the Voyager, get the signal
from the Voyager and convert the signal into sound and make music
with that.

M2: Is that possible yet?

FT: Itís possible and I think itís just a matter of course.

M2: You said this wouldnít have been possible ten years ago and
now it is. Where do you hope the technology will be ten years from
now and what will it allow you to do?

FT: I hope that the technology gets faster; like I said, for every second
of sound the computer had to work eight or nine hours. And I hope
that, letís say, if the astronomical facility on the earth can send me
the signal, I would like in realtime to transform it right away into
sound the observation data they are receiving from the universe. Itís
a matter of handling billions of numbers in a millisecond.

M2: I was also thinking of increased fidelity and flexibility in the
radiotelescope.  Isnít there a project in the planning stages now that
they would have radiotelescopes positioned in triangular position
about the world. I think thereís one in Africa, one here_and
essentially theyíll turn a large portion of the surface of the planet
into one big dish. Would you work with a system like this?

FT: Itís called inter-telometry where all the radiotelescopes are
localized in different parts of the world. And when you correlate the
signal of each radiotelescopic light you have huge dishes combined
together observing the sky. The only problem is when you point the
radioscope at the sky you have to focus very well in a small portion of
the sky. With a telescope you cover a huge space. So then they are
complementary. If you want to take a picture in radio you have to
work very hard, because the radioscope covers a very small section of
the sky.

M2: I noticed when I listened to your album that a lot of the sound
that it generated actually sound like some of the space soundtracks
that Iíve heard in the past. Did you notice that similarity at all?

FT: Of course. Another thing I noticed like that is when youíre
tuning your FM radio you get a wahwah sound. You know why,
because youíre working with electromagnetic waves, you are shifting
between_so it is very similar to the sound of the galaxy. In a way the
radio station is human-made_like the galaxies they are
electromagnetic generated. Also the first synthesizer, like Moog
synthesizer, they were able to use a frequency modulation with that
wahwah sound with potentiometers. So you can modify your signal.
But I think itís the inspirational nature of electromagnetic signal,
this kind of noise, the noise of the electricity and the wire, the noise
over the phone communication. Sometimes when you call overseas
you can catch a little bit of the ground noise it generates by the
atmosphere of the earth. This is a strong signal.

The first star in radio astronomy was known in 1933. The man who
was working on it was Carl Iowsky(?) And he was working for Bell
Laboratory on communication from one ocean to another. And every
time he worked there was this big background noise like a hiss. And
he was wondering why. So he decided to point the antennae to look
for where it was coming from. And soon he realized that there was like
a ghost radio station moving all around the horizon in
synchronization with spring, summer, with the year. So he realized
that no one could do that kind of registration, moving in circles all
around the horizon. So he realized that the signal was coming from
the nucleus of our Milky Way.  Our galaxy is a strong radio emitter.
And he was the first one to catch a little bit of this background noise.
Unfortunately radio astronomy moved into another direction. Radio
waves became an image, became a graph. I am trying to use sound to
explore this possibility.

M2: In Hinduism the idea of the word Om is supposed to be the most
accurate wave that the sound that a human makes could approximate
this sound_this cosmic roar. How do you think they intuited that all
those years ago?

FT: Human imagination can go really far away. I believe in a
harmony, and if you can tune into that harmony, you are able to go
where ever you want. And harmony also means resonance. And how
with my body I can tune into that resonance and use my inspiration
and expiration and use my resonance. I practice yoga and Tai Chi
Chuan, so I have a little bit of experience with Om, and you have to
use your breath to realize the Om. But the Om is not a sound that you
make with the vocal chords. Itís your breathing that resonates in
your body. The resonant wave gets translated into far away. Like the
tuning fork_when you strike an A all the instruments start to resonate.
The same with our vibration when it gets in contact with the cosmic
and universal vibration.

M2: With the synthesizers do you use even-tempered tuning or do you
experiment with just tuning?

FT: With my synthesizer Iím only controlling the galaxy. Also what
Iím doing is breaking the galaxy into small fragments just to perform
a melody or harmony using the galaxy. Or if I use the library of sound
from my synthesizer I pay a lot of attention to the timbre quality.
Because if itís too much electronics it doesnít fit well with the
galaxy. Because the galaxy itself, the raw data is a strong digital signal.
You can recognize a strong electromagnetic signal. So I donít want
to overload the composition. For that reason Iím trying to use harp,
saxophone, piano, maybe in the future, voice.

M2: But with the even tuning, A440, youíre getting esthetically
pleasing but definitely it has a certain amount of beats that exist
because of the all around modification of the tuning. Youíre using
say an open D tuning all the way across, you wouldnít have those
beats in between notes. Now, do these man-made, intentionalized
beats that exist between keys introduce any damage to the
performance?

FT:  Thatís a good point. You mean if there are too many beats
generating together_a collision between them_

M2: It was a man-made invention to make a keyboard that you could
play in any key on, but before that we used to have a different piano
to play in any different key. It was a little more accurate, a little
unwieldy, but a more accurate tuning system.  Thatís why I was
wondering; because itís possible in synthesizers now.

FT: I think you hit a major point, because the tonal system of solfege
is a little too small to experiment over the galaxy. And for this reason
I would like to put between the musical notes A and B five or seven
steps more to have more microtonizing.

M2: This indicates the Eastern tuning system, the existence of quarter
tones. Does the galaxy sing in quarter tones?

FT: It does. And sometimes when I compose Iíll go to the piano and
Iíll try to look for some tonality like a B flat. Then Iíll look for
some musical notes and write them down on a score. Then I have to
combine together these musical notes following harmony and melody,
and thatís my tonal composition over the galaxy. I would love to
know more about Eastern, Arabic, Chinese_they are more fine tuning
systems that fit very well with the galaxy. I would probably need the
expertise of someone else.

M2: How about Keplerís work_are you familiar with that and did
it influence you?  He had the music of the planets_

FT: I found out about Kepler and Pythagorus after my degree. It
happened during an interview in Italy. He said, Are you familiar with
Kepler? And I said, Yes, the law of Kepler, and he said, No, the music
of the spheres, and I said, No. So I went to the library and discovered
that Kepler had the intuition that planets moving around the stars
emit a note like a musical note, and that the intonation is related to
the distance of the planet from the sun. And so our solar system can
perform a scale. And based on that he invented a wonderful theory.
And there was also Pythagorus who was the the first one who built a
musical instrument. He believed that numbers are perfect and for that
reason only numbers can reflect the cosmic and universal harmony.
And Socrates was saying that the movement of celestial bodies
generates notes, music. But man doesnít hear that music anymore.
Because man is born with the music of the stars in the hearing. So we
grew up with this kind of music and so we are unable to hear this kind
of music because we grew up with a sound in our mind, and we are
unable to recognize anymore that sound.

M2: So when the universe sings, what is it singing about?

FT: Itís singing harmony; itís singing Please listen to me. When a
star explodes, for you it is a silent process. When something explodes
on the earth you are able to hear the explosion. If a star like our sun
explodes in the universe do you think there is no sound associated
with that phenomena?

M2: I think if our sun exploded Iíd hear it.

FT: Each time that something explodes the explosion generates sound.
Because sound is generated by a wave of compression and
decompression. If you are able to see how air vibrates you will be able
to see the atoms of the air getting compressed and decompressed.  This
kind of wave is typical of an explosion. So when a star explodes itís
a huge sound.  The sound is not heard because the sound is not
propagated into space. But that kind of wave gets transformed into an
electromagnetic signal that we are able to receive. Think about how
the Big Bang would be.

M2: I think it would make for a good concert for you. Are there other
types of celestial phenomenon that you are interested in recording?
Black Holes?

FT: Pulsars, because I need a cosmic drummer for my compositions.
A black hole absorbs everything_the light_so from a black hole we
donít have anything back, no radiation, because everything is
absorbed back into the hole. Light, which usually goes straight, as
soon as it gets closer to the gravitational field of the black hole, curves
and spirals into the black hole. So pulsars, stars, galaxies_I would like
to do a catalog of sound_a classification of stars and galaxies where
you can go and hear Saturn or Andromeda, and you push a button
and you hear it. But also once you get one of the celestial bodies into
sound you can use a statistical process to recognize the sound of the
chemical elements or the physical, etc.

M2: When will you be on MTV? You have a music video, right, so
youíre one step away.

FT: Yes, Iím on Island Records.