Short Prelude to the Afternoon of a Storm at 1.50pm – (Antarctica & Aurora)

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

This experimental sound-based video features the “global conversations” of Planet Earth on the grandest of scales, accompanied by ambient music on a grand piano and Antarctic imagery. The signals were collected by the VLF Receiver at Halley VI in Antarctica and directly converted to sound enabling us to listen to the amazing natural radio ‘sounds’ of our own planet. They include spherics, whistlers and chorus. The spherics, which sound like crackles and pops, come from lightning activity, principally over the Amazon and Congo basins which are both up to 8,000 km away. The whistlers are radio waves from lightning that have leaked out into space and travelled as plasma waves from one hemisphere to another along the Earth’s magnetic field lines before re-entering the atmosphere as radio waves.

They travel huge distances as plasma waves resulting in significant dispersion which converts the original signal to a descending tone. Finally, the chorus, which sounds a bit like the chirping of birds in the dawn chorus, is generated in near Earth space from electrons that have travelled all the way from the Sun. The generated chorus waves then travel along the Earth’s magnetic field lines down to Earth where they re-enter the atmosphere as radio waves and are subsequently detected by the receiver. These are truly “conversations” on a global scale.

Sounds: Dr Nigel Meredith, space weather scientist
Music: Dr Kim Cunio, composer, musicologist
Film & Production: Diana Scarborough, multimedia artist
Images: courtesy of British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge

To learn more about the science, art, music and full length track from the ‘Aurora Musicalis’ album by Sounds of Space Project click here: